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Comment by duxup | Hacker News Reader

Amazon's Ring device and how they work with police raises a lot of questions about what these devices will report, to whom, and etc:

https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/10/8/20903536/amazon-ring-do...

Makes you wonder that even if you choose not to share with police, if your amazon devices will help someone else's device do so...

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> Makes you wonder that even if you choose not to share with police

This is a false choice, because police don't need your permission to obtain video evidence on Amazon's servers if they have a warrant or court order. They don't even have to notify you if they look at it or use it as evidence, either.

Most of the time law enforcement just asks providers nicely for the data they want access to, and providers comply. No warrant is even needed in that scenario.

My understanding is that police have been asking the owners for the video. It would seem that direct access to Amazon beyond finding out who has the video isn't entirely open.

If they can get a warrant then yeah it's moot, but that's not always the case.

This is law enforcement just asking nicely for the video. They do this before getting a warrant because it is less work. If you don't comply, they'll just go to a judge and order Amazon to release it.

They should be universally told to pound sand without a warrant. You don’t give the armed representatives of the state everything they ask for just because they’re being polite; make them go through the proper procedures with oversight.

Probably when you know that your neighbor was burglarized or attacked, etc., you don’t want to impede the investigation. That’s worse than not taking care of your weeds or garbage in your yard in terms of getting along with neighbors.

“Don’t impede the investigation” is second only to “think of the children” for the erosion of our rights. Those who will abuse their powers will always have a great excuse for it, which is why we must be vigilant.

And of course the neighbor can freely hand over their own data to the cops if they want to; the cops should need a warrant to get that video from Amazon directly.

There's both. Amazon has a feature for law enforcement to ask the owner nicely, but since these things upload to the cloud they can also get a warrant to get it from Amazon directly.

https://www.govtech.com/security/Amazons-Ring-Video-Camera-A... (warrant part right the end)

A system that requires warrants would be superior, even warrants are often rubber stamped. Just giving whatever law enforcement wants, even audio recorded in your own home, without even a shred of oversight is the literal definition of a police state.

Yep. In the US you generally have no standing to resist a warrant for your data that you handed over to a third party.

Don't use cloud based cameras.

Products like ring could easily be designed so that your data would be protected-- e.g. encrypt on the device, all storage is encrypted.. you give a password to any client to view it that amazon never sees. Yet even though its straightforward to do so this is not available in any commercial product that I'm aware of. I don't think that's an accident: These products exists to spread monitoring, -- mostly for marketing purposes, the fact that they can be abused by authorities for dragnet surveillance without (adequate) due process is just a "bonus".

> mostly for marketing purposes, the fact that they can be abused by authorities for dragnet surveillance without (adequate) due process is just a "bonus".

It's not just a bonus, it's a selling point. Not for normal consumers, but for law enforcement, and Amazon would like to keep the police surveillance use case secret[1].

From The Secret Scripts Amazon Gives to Cops to Promote Ring Surveillance Cameras[2]:

> Documents obtained by Motherboard reveal that Ring provides 46 standardized comments that cops can post on social media, and several documents with scripted responses to possible questions from the public.

[1] https://www.cnet.com/news/amazon-ring-wants-police-to-keep-t...

[2] https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/wjwea4/revealed-the-secre...

There is a big advantage of cloud based cameras and that is that the data is off premises and can't be just taken away on an SD card. Of course you could send video to your own server but that is beyond the capabilities of most users.

I use 'rclone' and 'motion' to push video and images to my google drive account. If I wanted to, I could easily encrypt it first. I think it's superior to most cloud video providers. I don't think most LE agencies would think to check something like Google Drive for active video feeds.

I also delete anything over 3 days(thanks rclone) and use a script which detects the presence of either my wife's or my phone on our LAN so the cameras auto-start when we're not home.

That's cool but accessible to about 0.1% of the population.

So a standard HN solution then

It’s not any harder than using an ftp account with curlftpfs as a Dropbox replacement!

Amazon can protect you too. They don't care who they are protecting as long as they get paid, see:

https://nypost.com/2020/09/24/amazons-new-dashcam-gadget-all...

>Makes you wonder that even if you choose not to share with police, if your amazon devices will help someone else's device do so...

It's safe to assume whoever's buying a ring doorbell probably has internet access as well so it's a moot point.

I'm guessing those devices will happily use the sidewalk network as a backup as well, you still might be sharing.

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