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Comment by bart_spoon | Hacker News Reader

I am seeing increasing numbers of these types of articles, but I don't know how I feel. First of all, many of them, like this one, seem to conflate two separate issues: poor security practices and then the dystopic, surveillance concerns. I don't see the two being particularly related.

I absolutely agree that Ring products should have better security features like required 2FA. But I'm not sold on the idea of our society becoming a surveillance state because people have video doorbells. It seems like a stretch and one that is born out of a tendency for people to see all technology as "the thing" that will be what ends our society and ushers in a 1984-esque dystopia. I'm skeptical.

I don't have to be convinced that I shouldn't be trusting Amazon or Google with my best interests. But I don't see how security cameras, or at least the video doorbells, are more dangerous than all of the other things we've just already accepted, like constant tracking of our positions via smartphones and our online browsing habits.

Perhaps I'm wrong, I suppose time will tell.

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"First of all, many of them, like this one, seem to conflate two separate issues: poor security practices and then the dystopic, surveillance concerns. I don't see the two being particularly related."

Since the poor security practices have led to people getting spied upon and harassed, those poor security practices are clearly related to dystopic surveillance concerns.

The article also directly addresses larger issues than poor security practices. Two examples:

"And Amazon's surveillance doorbell cameras are just the start: The company is selling a multitude of other gadgets equipped with microphones, cameras and sensors, all designed to gather enormous amounts of data, which Amazon refines -- like crude oil -- into power and profit. Alexa, the company's "home assistant," is constantly listening and explosive investigations revealed that Amazon employees have also listened, via Alexa, not just to private conversations, but also to deeply intimate moments such as couples having sex or kids singing in the shower. Amazon even marketed its microphone-enabled Echo Dot Kids directly to children."

"Amazon devices aren't just giving hackers and Amazon employees an eye or an ear into our homes. The company has also partnered with more than 600 police departments across the country to tap into the surveillance network its customers are creating for them, developing a seamless process for government agents to request footage from tens of thousands of Ring cameras without warrants or any judicial oversight."

> Since the poor security practices have led to people getting spied upon and harassed, those poor security practices are clearly related to dystopic surveillance concerns.

Typically, these dystopias generally imply state surveillance on an unwilling or unsuspecting populace. Yes, hackers can gain access to your indoor security cameras, but that only affects people willingly installing security cameras inside their own homes and adhering to bad security practices. Doorbell cameras aren't compelling targets for hackers, which is why all of the stories we hear are about cameras installed in someone's bedroom. And I don't see how this differentiates Ring's products in any way from having your bank account hacked, or your email, or any other personal data. Problematic and worth consideration? Yes. Dystopic? Not really.

> "And Amazon's surveillance doorbell cameras are just the start: The company is selling a multitude of other gadgets equipped with microphones, cameras and sensors, all designed to gather enormous amounts of data, which Amazon refines -- like crude oil -- into power and profit. Alexa, the company's "home assistant," is constantly listening and explosive investigations revealed that Amazon employees have also listened, via Alexa, not just to private conversations, but also to deeply intimate moments such as couples having sex or kids singing in the shower. Amazon even marketed its microphone-enabled Echo Dot Kids directly to children."

Entirely valid complaints, regarding Alexa devices. Its unrelated to Ring, and especially doorbell cameras. Unless people are having numerous and long private conversations in front of their doorbell, it seems again like those concerns don't apply here.

> The company has also partnered with more than 600 police departments across the country to tap into the surveillance network its customers are creating for them, developing a seamless process for government agents to request footage from tens of thousands of Ring cameras without warrants or any judicial oversight.

Can someone verify this? Because I was under the impression that customers had to opt in. And regardless, I still fail to see what people might be concerned about regarding doorbell cams. They aren't capturing anything that isn't readily available.

Perhaps these are arguments against putting Ring security cameras in your house, but I still am not seeing the end of the world scenarios these articles are prophesying resulting from doorbell cameras.

The biggest problem with door cameras is they're 24 hr survellence of the houses across the street without their permission or a court order

The block watch captains already do this and are way nosier. Sure maybe only 12 hours per day rather than 24, but busy bodies are nothing new and even worse if you ask me.

I've lived in a few different places in the US, including the Bay Area, and never met a block watch captain. Do they actually walk around that frequently?

No, they usually watch from a window or the front porch. Typically they are the ones who know everyone's business in the neighborhood.

It'd probably better to require the camera to have near focus so anything ~30ft+ will be blurry and out of focus, aka the houses across the street.

Do police require a warrant to surveil a location from the street (or some other location)?

If the cops actually show up on my street for a 24/7/365 stakeout you bet your ass I'm complaining about that scenario too!

No. Anything they can see from the street, they can watch. The gray area AFAIK is what a drone can see from the street, but at higher elevations. That said, you and all your neighbors can file a complaint.

> Doorbell cameras aren't compelling targets for hackers

They will be when people discover creative new ways to abuse them, but it doesn't even needs to be a "compelling target". Some people simply think browsing cameras on the internet is fun.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cWck_xcH64?t=428

Exactly. If I can watch your doorstep and the doorstep across the street from you, I know when you received a large package. I also know when nobody is home. I know when latch-key kids are home alone. I know when a single woman is home alone. I could be any sort of deviant.

Aren't you contradicting yourself?

First, you say "I don't see how security cameras, or at least the video doorbells, are more dangerous than all of the other things we've just already accepted, like constant tracking of our positions via smartphones and our online browsing habits."

Then, you say "Entirely valid complaints, regarding Alexa devices. Its unrelated to Ring, and especially doorbell cameras."

They're not unrelated, you explained the relationship yourself (that they're both "dangerous" examples of pervasive corporate surveillance), and the article quite explicitly argues that we SHOULDN'T "just accept" these "devices that constantly monitor, track and record us simply for our own convenience or a sense of safety".

How am I contradicting myself? I'm saying that devices like Alexa that monitor our conversations, or constant tracking via smartphones, are way more invasive than a video doorbell. Equating the two, which seems to be very common recently, is irresponsible in my opinion. There is nothing contradictory in thinking that its dangerous to utilize devices which will monitor your private life practically 24x7, vs a video doorbell which solely views a public area, and doesn't invade anyone's privacy, nor collects sensitive data.

>> developing a seamless process for government agents to request footage

> Can someone verify this? Because I was under the impression that customers had to opt in.

Opt-in to what? Opt-in to fulfilling the request, or opt-in to receiving the request? It appears to be the former, not the latter: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/43kga3/amazon-is-coaching...

> They aren't capturing anything that isn't readily available.

In 1984, Big Brother monitors both public and private spaces, but in V for Vendetta I believe the roving vans and stuff only monitor public spaces. Am I interpreting you correctly that scenario like V for Vendetta but with CCTV, where the government monitors everyone's public movements and interactions at all times, you would fail to see anything wrong with?

I'm saying I'm skeptical of doorbell cameras leading to a V for Vendetta like fascist state, the same way I'm skeptical of machine learning applications leading to Skynet. I'm saying that the "techno-literate" crowd likes to see themselves as informed and skeptical, and yet they show a willingness to wholeheartedly believe in the dystopic futures of science-fiction and comic books the same way cultists see signs of the apocalypse in news reports.

There are reasons to worry about incursions into our privacy by corporations and the government. I'm not convinced Ring doorbells qualify.

Sounds like there’s a logical fallacy in there somewhere. Death by 1000 cuts? Isn’t that how we got into the current situation — by slowly giving up privacy one step at a time?

With a phone, I can at least make the choice whether to track myself or not (by using the phone). With a doorbell cam, now you’re involving everyone in your neighborhood. They don’t have a choice.

I have no doubt someone is going to say that those people are in a public space, but there there is a huge difference between the theoretical concept of being in public, and the actual reality of public spaces being under video surveillance 24x7.

Have you not heard that Amazon has been partnering with local law enforcement to give them access to a bunch of cameras? It’s not about just giving your data to Amazon or Google anymore.

Also, in the US, there is the Third Party Doctrine. Any data you give to a third party can be given to the government without any Fourth Amendment protections. By using these services you are giving up your Constitutional rights.

Well the "slippery slope" argument is also a logical fallacy.

> With a doorbell cam, now you’re involving everyone in your neighborhood. They don’t have a choice. With a phone, I can at least make the choice whether to track myself or not (by using the phone). With a doorbell cam, now you’re involving everyone in your neighborhood. They don’t have a choice. I have no doubt someone is going to say that those people are in a public space, but there there is a huge difference between the theoretical concept of being in public, and the actual reality of public spaces being under video surveillance 24x7.

I'll say it. There is nothing being tracked that isn't public information. There is no information being revealed other than the fact that someone was walking by house A at time Y, which is information anyone looking at the street at that time would have. What is the meaningful difference between the "theory" of being in public, and a particular area being under surveillance 24x7?

> Also, in the US, there is the Third Party Doctrine. Any data you give to a third party can be given to the government without any Fourth Amendment protections. By using these services you are giving up your Constitutional rights.

Again, what is the worry about the data a doorbell cam generates falling into the hands of the government? I do not argue that it can be dangerous to serve up private information and data in a way that can be obtained by undesired third parties and the government. I argue that a doorbell cam doesn't generate any data of the kind people need to worry about. Hence, why these articles are largely sensationalism in my view.

If you don't feel in your bones the difference between "someone might be watching, and perhaps—unlikely, but perhaps—if they're a real weirdo or I've done something to really draw their interest, recording, but probably neither is happening" and "several someones are, at all times and wherever I go that's not somewhere I have complete control over, definitely recording", I don't even know how to begin to have a discussion about this.

> Well the "slippery slope" argument is also a logical fallacy.

Only if the slope isn't actually slippery.

Slippery slope is only a fallacy when being made as an argument before it happens. At this point with privacy, we’ve already slipped down the slope, and pointing it out is just a statement of historical fact.

Slippery slope fallacy gets trotted out too often, and I'm starting to sour more when it does. The actual fallacy is assuming that all slopes are necessarily slippery. But it is equally a fallacy to assume that none of them are.

Increasingly, I see the slippery slope fallacy being used to advocate against paying attention to or correcting very clear, observable trends.

Of course not all slopes are slippery, but I think people should be more cautious about this kind of argument. It's easy to forget that absent friction, this universe tends to preserve motion.

People don't really grok the problems of things like web access or location privacy because they don't understand what that kind of privacy means.

They've seldom had access to their own data at all (or at least a clear view of it), nor have most suffered with snoopy busybodies with access to it... nor have they had that data about other people.

But for Cameras that record video (and maybe sound) people have a much more visceral understanding of the privacy consequences even though audio/video is often _less_ of a wide scale privacy problem than web access data, location, or phone/email metadata (because of the logistics about manipulating and analyzing that data).

But whatever. Just because people should care a lot more about their other (web/geo/meta)data than they do, doesn't mean that A/V privacy isn't a huge deal. If we, as technologists and experts, can manage to motivate the public on this issue we should do so. Advancement on this front will make success easier on others. Failure on this front-- where people do have an innate understanding of the privacy problems will bode very poorly for areas where they do not.

Consider two scenarios: 1. Your neighbor buys an Alexa for their house. Now Amazon gets to learn all about your neighbor's private conversations. Your neighbor is presumably OK with this, or possibly unaware, but either way their decisions only affect them. 2. Your neighbor buys a Ring. Now it's you who are being monitored. Amazon will learn details about you and anyone who comes to visit you, and they will profit from it. (Also they will share the details with law enforcement.)

The current big tech companies have established a new business model based on two important facts: your time/attention/data are valuable to them, and you are encouraged to give them your time/attention/data for free. You should have the right to not do business with Amazon, in exactly the same way that you should have the right to not do business with, for example, a fast-food place you don't like. But anyone who lives near a Ring owner is going to be contributing to Amazon's business, whether they want to or not.

None of my neighbors have Rings yet. I'm going to have a talk with them the first time I see one get put up.

> 2. Your neighbor buys a Ring. Now it's you who are being monitored. Amazon will learn details about you and anyone who comes to visit you, and they will profit from it. (Also they will share the details with law enforcement.)

How though? What information could possibly be gleaned from a Ring camera that isn't already available? It's a unidirectional facing camera with limited range pointed at a public area. The amount of information it could possibly collect on passerby is miniscule, and is already information that is readily available via: smartphone tracking, satellite imaging, or literally anyone on the street with eyeballs, including law enforcement. I fail to see how a neighbor having a Ring doorbell meaningfully changes anything for their neighbors.

> anyone who lives near a Ring owner is going to be contributing to Amazon's business

Again, how? I fail to see how a person's Ring is going to generate anything in terms of usable data on their neighbors for Amazon to act on. It seems like jumping to the worst possible conclusion, on par with those who assume every new application of AI is one step closer to Skynet.

Smartphone tracking only works on people who voluntarily carry their smartphones around and enable tracking features. Satellite imaging is an interesting example - the level of detail at present is roughly the same as what you'd see out of a plane window. But if it gets to a level where facial recognition is possible, that would be pretty worrying. And "anyone on the street with eyeballs" (law included) cannot identify people by sight alone, unless they're already aware that they need to look for that specific person.

Amazon, on the other hand, has put a great deal of time and energy into facial recognition software. They will be able to identify virtually everybody that walks by - even if they don't know a person's name at first, Amazon will keep the facial data and build a profile for that person over time as it accrues more data. That data will be correlated with other businesses and facial recognition software, and Amazon/Google/FB will all profit from the data exchange (especially if they can sell it to advertisers and law enforcement). At no point did the person being recorded agree to have his/her information used for this purpose.

Also they can be hacked and used for harassment, too. We already have the tech to prevent this - it's called "closed circuit".

> is already information that is readily available via: smartphone tracking, satellite imaging, or literally anyone on the street with eyeballs, including law enforcement

It's not "readily available". It's distributed across multiple parties that rarely talk with one and another, and each of them is collecting different types of information. In particular, you can't easily turn "literally anyone on the street with eyeballs" into a searchable database of information.

What makes information useful is it being collected, preferably by a single party, in an aggregate that can be searched and can have analysis run on top of it. Ring checks all of these boxes, and is provided by a company that has already proven to not pay particular attention to ethics or customer well-being if more profit can be made this way.

> not sold on the idea of our society becoming a surveillance state

If the police can access them without warrant and even promote the devices on their twitter accounts? I am completely sold on it.

I am more skeptical about calling door bells with cameras a technological innovation or progress.

> things we've just already accepted, like constant tracking of our positions via smartphones and our online browsing habits.

I don't think people have accepted being tracked 24/7. I know plenty of people that actively use guards against these practices and that isn't restricted to technically inclinded personalities. It is just that legislative powers seem to be sleeping. But accepting invasions of privacy as inevitable is certainly a dystopian development.

>> But I don't see how security cameras, or at least the video doorbells, are more dangerous than all of the other things we've just already accepted, like constant tracking of our positions via smartphones and our online browsing habits.

Nothing personal, but I can't fathom such naive viewpoints in this day & age, specially as a parent. One of the many stories: "Man hacks Ring camera in 8-year-old girl's bedroom, taunts her: 'I'm Santa Claus' " https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/man-hacks-ring-camera-8...

So don't install a security camera in your 8 year old daughter's bedroom, especially if you don't intend to use good security practices. That isn't a societal issue, that is an issue of the parents being idiots. Like I said, I fail to see how a doorbell camera, even with bad security practice, is going to be more dangerous than a smartphone which tracks what you are browsing on the internet and your positional data within a few feet at literally every second of the day.

You're not entirely wrong. Parents, and individuals in general, have to more careful. I won't call them total idiots though, because these companies promise those very use-cases through their marketing.

Any device that compromises the privacy of you/others without your/their permission is dangerous, as is a video doorbell for your street and neighbors, a voice assistant secretly used for persona marketing, or even a webcam on your laptop. A false sense of security with a huge potential for misuse.

I won't go into details, but my past gov projects tell me it's better to be safe than sorry.

I was pretty unconcerned until I saw https://www.insecam.org/ which really disturbed me. The dystopia might just arise from cheap cameras, fast networks, and no commercial interest in security.

Privacy isn’t a huge concern in a free society, which is likely why none of us really care. But imagine having those systems in a country where having a specific opinion, or sexuality could result in a death penalty.

You wouldn’t want to be filmed sneaking into your lovers house in such an area, and you really wouldn’t want to be overheard.

In the west, it’s much more a question of what you want companies to know about you, than what you have to hide. But we haven’t always been free. Imagine planning a revolution to overthrow a despot with the current level of surveillance.

> You wouldn’t want to be filmed sneaking into your lovers house in such an area,

This is particularly ironic because Bezos, now part owner of Ring.com, is facing a multi-billion $ divorce bill for doing exactly this and getting caught.

> But I don't see how security cameras, or at least the video doorbells, are more dangerous than all of the other things we've just already accepted, like constant tracking of our positions via smartphones and our online browsing habits.

Things add up, that's all.

Before, you had the danger to personally be tracked in an area around you and listened to.

Now you add a device that can get sound, image and movement of anybody in a zone, and possibly extrapolate their position and potentially face recognition.

The phone story is bad, very bad. But at least we can switch it off, not take it with us, etc. When you walk in the street in front of those camera, you have no choice but to be spied on.

The sum of all the phones + smart speakers + e-health devices + Ring-like products has a deadly potential for democracy. Their coverage is monumental.

Right now we feel like the benefits are huge, and the cost minimal: most people are not affected in their daily life by the surveillance, or at least not in a way that is annoying enough. So we accept it.

But the issue is not about what it does right no. Just like climate change, it's about what it can do in the future.

I just find it bizarre that it's people's doorbells that somehow seems to have been the triggering point, and not the billion or so closed-circuit surveillance cameras already deployed. Of all the cameras to complain about, seeing who is at your front door is, IMO, the least possibly offensive.

Yeah, I guess that's my point. I can understand if the conversation was more centered around the security cameras people are putting up, especially within their own homes. And we already get tracked nearly 24/7 both geographically via our smartphones, as well as online. The possible scenarios where footage from a doorbell cam gets misused seems pretty limited and innocuous. And yet I've seen article after article in recent months about how Ring doorbells are what leads us to 1984.

I agree. How is this any different from previous offerings from ADT and others? Cheaper to own, easier to setup.

I think the argument is that people are more skeptical of Amazon and Google behaving, perhaps justifiably so. But I guess my feeling is, even assuming they are bad actors and people's fears regarding these devices are realized, it still seems far less dangerous than the ways we've already allowed these companies to insert themselves in our lives and have just accepted. I feel like there is a relatively low ceiling to the damage that can be done by something like a Ring doorbell in the case Amazon lives up to people's worries. But the recent trend of these kind of fearmongering articles make it sound like it could be the end of human society and civil liberty.

Does ADT encourage police to get the footage they record without a warrant?

That's a big difference from the smartphones tracking our location thing you mentioned—police need a warrant, companies don't actively work to make it easier for police to access that information without a warrant.

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