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Comment by gibsonf1 | Hacker News Reader

For sure criminals would fully be in favor of this idea, as that's who the police tend to go after.

Disclaimer: My wife runs a police intelligence unit that catches actual criminals from ring info, like those people stealing the packages from your front door or breaking into your house.

Disclaimer2: I fully do not trust Amazon with the info, but I do trust the police having the info to catch criminals, as thats what they do with it.

Disclaimer3: The police only get ring videos that are forwarded to them from ring users, they have no generic access to ring data. The victims of crime tend to forward videos of the criminals in hopes the police can catch them.

My wife actually wrote her thesis on the win win aspects of this for fighting crime [1]

[1] https://calhoun.nps.edu/handle/10945/56879

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People should be free to volunteer their own footage when they or their neighbors have been victims of a crime. Police should not be free to pull footage without asking or telling the owner of the camera.

That's actually how it works, the police only get info forwarded to them from ring users. The police have no access unless the video is forwarded to them from a ring user.

> People should be free to volunteer their own footage when they or their neighbors have been victims of a crime.

Yes, that’s how it works: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/06/ring-changed-how-polic...

> Police should not be free to pull footage without asking or telling the owner of the camera.

They are not free to do that.

It's a false choice. If you say no, and the police really want it, they can subpoena Amazon and compel them to turn over "your" footage. You would never even learn that it happened.

You shouldn't trust a 3rd party with your personal privacy. Please don't draft all of your neighbors into the digital dragnet.

The police can subpoena "your" footage even if it is in a bunker in your basement.

Are you positive ring wouldn't tell you that your footage was subpoenaed?

Maybe, but you could contest the subpoena, and you would certainly know if the police busted into your bunker.

>They are not free to do that.

Wouldn't they subpoena Amazon directly, who by virtue of this partnership is likely to oblige? The owner of the camera would have no agency in that transaction.

"Criminals would be in favor of this" is a discussion-killing point to make in basically anything about crime and law. Some other things that criminals would be in favor of:

- the right to not be obligated to testify against themselves

- the right to a speedy trial

- the right to a lawyer

- the ability to appeal judgments against them

- the ability to walk away free when the police have gathered evidence illegally, even when that evidence clearly proves they did it (the "fruit of the poisonous tree" doctrine)

- the very idea that certain methods of gathering intelligence are illegal

- the idea that it's better for them and their nine buddies to go free than that one innocent person be punished

- the deprecation of the rack as a method of extracting confessions

and so forth. It's uninteresting that criminals support a justice system that is not fully skewed in favor of the government - people who care about a free and just society also care about those things, and those are the arguments to engage with.

In particular, it is vital that anyone who cares about a free and just society care about those things so that the government cannot simply declare people as criminals on a whim.

This is even more critical in a jurisdiction where criminals, either those still serving their sentences or even those who have completed them, have their voting rights removed.

> For those of you who down vote this post, I'm guessing you support criminals?

You have a good comment here, but this line really hurts its credibility IMO.

Agreed, and removed.

Perhaps the phrasing is imperfect. However, there is a trade-off in the opposition of allowing Ring owners to voluntarily share their video footage with law enforcement organizations in support of solving crimes and administering justice. Implicit in that trade-off are outcomes favorable to criminals. That is, of course, not the only consequence. But surely it is one of the outcomes. So, said simply, there is some support of criminality implied.

Yeah I lost the author right here in these two totally incompatible statements.

> As a part of the partnership, police promote Ring products and engage with Amazon’s neighborhood watch app, Neighbors. In exchange, Amazon provides police departments with an easy way to request and store footage from thousands of residents at one time

You have no expectation of privacy in public or in someone else’s domicile with some specific exclusions (like bathrooms or bedrooms). And sure, maybe you could argue this for basically any indoor residential camera (though I would disagree)

But here is where I lost him

> Amazon + Police surveillance partnerships function with no oversight or accountability.

This statement and the one above it are completely incompatible. The oversight is literally done by the owner of the camera.

It seems built into the application. And I will admit I myself have avoided these, and instead used Wyze cams with rtsp only specifically because of that mistrust (and the principle that Amazon can comply without my consent, even if they don’t currently)

There's a difference between "no expectation of privacy in public" and a permanent record tracking your every movement, fart, and sneeze in public. Combined with gait and facial tracking, it can become very problematic.

> The oversight is literally done by the owner of the camera.

Not if the footage is subpoenad.

But that isnt what is being discussed by the author. He is specifically calling into question private Ring cameras. Which citizens are free to buy and put up.

And the "lack of accountability" was the Amazon Neighbors app, where users are given specific agency on whether they want to provide recordings/access to LEO's or not.

>Not if the footage is subpoenad.

Again not really called into question within the article and is a thing for any hosted service. Or for that matter...something you also self host. Similar to a warrant.

> For those of you who down vote this post, I'm guessing you support criminals?

This is the sort of black-and-white attitude that allows corruption and abuse of police resources to go unpunished.

I disagree with you because police don't go after criminals. They go after suspects. The duty to determine if a person has committed a crime falls on a judge and jury.

>For those of you who down vote this post, I'm guessing you support criminals?

It takes a certain amount of stunted moral development to so fully invest yourself into this binary. A total lack of caution around unlimited state power. A total lack of awareness of the privilege you have to be able to ignore or encourage that unchecked power.

"If you aren't for frictionless sharing of your home video feeds with police, you must support criminals" is something straight out of an Orwellian dystopia.

You see nothing wrong with an intimate relationship between the violent, white-supremacist infiltrated[1] arm of the state and a monopolistic corporation that imposes such severe time constraints on its workers that they regularly have to pee into bottles[2].

1. https://theintercept.com/2020/09/29/police-white-supremacist...

2. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/amazon-drivers-peeing-in-bottle...

> For those of you who down vote this post, I'm guessing you support criminals?

In many cases police are also criminals and because of their job they are above the law, which to me is much scarier than other criminals out there.

I think the old adage "don't talk to the police" extends to not providing them a video feed of your property. People should be free to do what they want with their video, but you're putting yourself at unnecessary risk.

"don't talk to the police" is the situation for when you are a suspect or potential suspect for a crime. Do not talk to them, do not allow them to enter your property etc.

It doesn't (necessarily) apply when you want the police to catch a criminal who committed a crime against you.

You do not always know when you are a potential suspect of a crime, or that you will not be in the future. Nor do the police need to actually suspect you of a crime to harass you. If the police come to you and say "we suspect a crime has occurred in your neighborhood, can we have your video?", you don't know whether you are the suspect in that crime, or if the crime even occurred.

If someone has stolen something off your porch and you have identifying evidence, get the video yourself, and select the portion that identifies the thief. Give them a still photograph of the thief's face and/or their vehicle. Giving them a lengthy video that captures your own activities is "talking to the police" in the bad sense.

the problem in my state is the troopers are just as apt to go after any infraction they see.

they may not be able to catch the guy that stole your tools, or fuel, but they will easily turn on you for any low hanging fruit evidence they perceive while in contact with you

>like those people stealing the packages from your front door

What jurisdiction actually takes this kind of thing seriously? Petty theft, even by organized groups, is routinely ignored.

That probably depends a lot on jurisdiction, DA, the police and the people of said jurisdiction. SF gov kind of treats this as 'part of the fabric of life' but not all places see things the same as the example set by SF.

Thank god for that. The way Sf treats property crime with such indifference is unacceptable in most of the developed world

Bored suburban cops. They have bait packages and everything around here. They caught the woman who stole the passports out of our mailbox, so they seem to be doing some good.

Amusingly enough, my wife's response to the website in the OP was "Gee, that's some pretty good ad copy for Ring. Should we get one?"

Some jurisdictions do, particularly in smaller cities like suburbs, where police staff aren't fully occupied with higher priority calls. However, many bigger cities are simply too understaffed compared to the past, and ignore property crimes as you say. This is especially true in West Coast cities like SF, Portland, and Seattle.

For example Seattle has lost hundreds of police officers in the last year due to the push for defunding, hostile attitudes towards police from activists/local politicians, and the opportunity to have a less stressful/better paying job elsewhere after a very rough year dealing with near-daily rioting. At present, the city has only around 1000 officers and it is expected to lose some more due to the vaccine mandate. This is around half of what the average city has per capita, and in the last decade the effects of a lenient city attorney, crime-friendly local government focused on "restorative justice", and falling per capita officer counts has led to a massive increase in crimes. Just like in SF, people have given up on even reporting them since even if someone is arrested, the city attorney will just release them anyways, and insurance claims require a deductible. Even businesses have given up on crime reporting (example: https://tinyurl.com/4nhn45bw).

A good overview of the Seattle situation can be found in a couple documentaries, "Seattle is Dying" (https://youtu.be/bpAi70WWBlw) and "The Fight for the Soul of Seattle" (https://youtu.be/WijoL3Hy_Bw). The city's transformation from a safe clean city to what it is today took place in a decade. I expect it can also be fixed just as quickly with only a small set of changes like a) doubling the staff counts at the police department b) replacing the activist city attorney with a moderate c) enforcing existing laws d) cleaning up drug dens and theft rings masquerading as homeless encampments e) increasing the number of patrols and beat cops f) using technologies like facial recognition.

After the Koch and Dinkins admins, NYC had descended into a high crime city and it was thought it was 'endemic' but then Giuliani was elected (before he went off the rails) and cleaned up the city in one administration, so much the citizens hired him again. So, it's possible with the right recipe of Mayor, DA and Police Commissioner to do it pretty quick --but the citizenry have to have "had it" with crime, so they elect a tough on crime admin.

What kind of data protections and access control is in place? Could a cop access the ring data of an ex lover?

Only if the ex lover forwarded the video to the cop.

Or if the ex's neighbor across the street did, right? Hopefully that neighbor cares about the ex's privacy as much as they do, or no crimes occur within half a mile of them.

Police can’t access feeds.

Users have to volunteer their footage of incidents to the police.

> Disclaimer3: The police only get ring videos that are forwarded to them from ring users, they have no generic access to ring data. The victims of crime tend to forward videos of the criminals in hopes the police can catch them.

That’s fascinating. How exactly are you so intimately familiar with Amazon’s inner workings? You’re fully confident that this system can’t be abused because of… what experience, exactly?

Edit: yes. I fully and unequivocally support criminals. I figure if a silly cop propagandist is going to respond to this post, that will be the first silly vague salvo against not wanting to give cops full control of society, so skip to rebuttal(2)

Edit:typos

Because my wife runs the intelligence unit of a police department, and they only get ring videos forwarded to them from victims of crime. And some of those crimes are horrific, like armed home invasion robbery, and those videos have led to capturing those criminals.

So your wife has access to [Amazon surveillance product x], therefore the existence of [trivially producible Amazon surveillance product y] can’t be possible.

Is your wife the head of the police intelligence unit of The World?

> My wife runs a police intelligence unit that catches actual criminals from ring info

Cool, I wasn’t aware that Amazon and regional police were the same organization. I was under the impression that a multibillion dollar corporation could keep secrets from a an HN poster’s wife, but I guess your point that she’s some sort of cop negates that

The point of contention is how amazon and local police interact with each other, specifically what constraints amazon has on its data sharing with local police. Wife of an HN poster or not, testimony from someone who directly works with those constraints on a daily basis should matter, I believe.

The point of contention is indeed how Amazon interacts with local police. I am pointing out that one second-hand example of one police force and their access to one technology does not necessarily describe an entire surveillance apparatus and its possible uses.

Are you of the opinion that it does?

No, I’m not. I mean, it’s just words written on the internet, the whole thing could be made up, right? My opinion is that the police as an institution needs technology to keep up with the world, especially if we want a smaller police force with better training, higher qualifications and accountability. Sensible regulations must be passed and enforced in order to minimize the risk of abuse, which is really where I think the ball is being dropped here. Without governance, corporations bear the burden of figuring out the sensible thing, and people are (rightly) suspicious of their judgement.

> …My opinion is that the police as an institution needs technology to keep up with the world, especially if we want a smaller police force with better training, higher qualifications and accountability…

Do you think that that’s the goal? I personally view “tech that makes cops’ jobs incredibly easier” as a thing that doesn’t lead to “cops quit in droves to support newfound theoretical efficiency”

I don’t believe that people will leave the police force voluntarily, either. But I do think that, now that the idea of sizing down the police force is politically viable, more efficient policing will put extra weight behind the idea by making it harder to justify oversized personnel budgets. Obviously, if we fail to follow through with down-sizing, we run the risk of ending up with a more powerful police, no less corrupt. Well, I think we just need to take that risk and try - most meaningful social achievements require balancing two or more levers at the same time.

What the actual fuck are you talking about?

Police unions (who entirely derive their power from their memberships) will decide that they want less power?

Make policing cheaper, more efficient. Continue pressuring with the ongoing cultural/political shift, cheaper policing adds weight to the argument that we don’t need as many police officers. Less officers, less assholes. If that’s clear enough for you, I’d like to add that I do not owe it to you to come up with a perfectly viable policy to solve policing in the US. You may feel that acting the entitled critic without putting your own ideas on the table gives you an air of superiority, but in the long term, you’ll find that people are increasingly less willing to engage with you in debates.

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