Amazon's Ring to stop letting police request doorbell video from users
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
Those server side components provide a lot of value and that’s why people choose to buy those products, as opposed to similar products that are just dumb wifi cameras.
He's wishing that things like your e-mail, videos in the cloud, etc, required a warrant for the police to search, instead of just a subpoena to a third party.
The article falsely implies that a warrant is required, but in practice police can just subpoena the information.
He's referencing that we have early 20th and late 19th century case law about third parties holding documents, etc, that is used to make everything sitting at a cloud service subject to subpoena without a warrant (email, etc, too).
There's all kinds of precedent that was based on sane tradeoffs for the 1800's that doesn't make sense anymore with the more complicated ways we transact and interact and with the ability of technology to commit mass surveillance.
The problem has only been super significant for 15-20 years, which is a blink of an eye in this sense; not even enough time for the populace to really understand and appreciate the issue.
It is, of course, still broken.
And in this case, judicial precedent follows evolving (both popular and legal) ideas of what the words in the constitution mean.
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures..."
"Persons, houses, papers, and effects" has been interpreted in terms of what things a person had, excluding things that they had given someone else to hold. It was a pretty reasonable interpretation and compromise, until it was the governing case law that covered the cloud.
Legislation can limit what Federal agents are allowed to do totally irrespectively of whether those things would separately violate the constitution.
s/federal agents/local police/g
And in any case: the law is a blunt instrument. It's (usually) better as a slowly changing representation of conventions and social consensus instead of something that we make sweeping changes in (whether legislatively or judicially).
Attitudes have changed a lot.There is an episode of Yes Minister where the minister does not want to push a shared govt database law because of privacy concerns. Another where the idea of ID cards is called political suicide. Absolutely true at the time, but the former is happening, and the latter is still not with us the UK but its no longer unacceptable to push the idea.
Kids are growing up expecting to be tracked (a lot of parents use "apps" to track what their kids do) so it will become even more normalised. People are used to being tracked as the tradeoff for map apps. There is a lot of surveillance anyway (CCTV and face recognition, number plate recognition, paying by card) so its already normal
Someone goes into politics because they want the power to run things.
Bureaucrats and agencies of the government want the power to run things for similar reasons, and it makes their jobs easier. Will the police ever say they do not want more powers to investigate crimes, or catch criminals? Will social services either? There are all kinds of things that can be better enforced with more information.
On top of all that they are part of the same cultural change that puts a lower value on individual liberties. It means politicians are a lot less inclined to refuse. There has also been a political drift to following expert advice with less scepticism, and the experts on these issues are the police, intelligence agencies, etc.
One cause close to my heart is that in the UK a number of local authorities keep hassling home educators (trying to bully them into sending their kids to school) even though their kids tend to do better than school going kids (their are studies showing better outcomes) because it seems inconceivable to them that people can do a better job than they do. I know people affected by this. A lot of them are utterly opposed to the idea that parents can make this decision at all.
So you admit they are not actually liberals and when they say they are they are incorrect.
Eventually, this has to change for the better. Right now, users don't understand/don't care...
How? Things don't magically get better "eventually" just because we wish for them to. Things change if rich and powerful people push for them or if millions of little people revolt about it in order to impact the elected leaders, otherwise everything stays the same or gets worse.
Currently the rich and powerful are not on your side on this, and the little people care more about putting food on the table and making rent rather than who gets to access their cloud storage.
>Right now, users don't understand/don't care...
Nor will they anytime soon if what happened after Snowden (nothing) is anything to go by.
You'd be surprised how easy it is to get time one one-on-one with a congressperson/senator and their entire legislative team. My strategy is simple, I just call and ask if I can stop by and say hi for 20 minutes or so. If you get 10 minutes, you are doing as well as most lobbyists. If you do get a meeting be nice, even if you disagree with the Senator. Your not going to debate them into changing their vote. But... if you share engaging and emotional stories, especially about people back in the home district, you might just get what you need. Also, be ready for this question: "What's your ask?" That is where you can be really direct: "I'd love it if we could get ___ passed, or It would be really good for the home district if ____ didn't pass." Have a quick story answer for why: "so people like ___ don't have to close ____ on ___ st in home city." Schedule around meals - a lot of time the legislator will go to lunch (and pay for yours) just to avoid another hour with legislators and negotiators.
The problem is that the market success of products from Ring and similar companies have obliterated the market for DIY systems, so the few RTSP doorbells that exist aren't very good.
I know that's not helpful, and I'm sorry. My process is to research options when the time comes that I am actively trying to solve a problem and just buy the one that fits best. For surveillance cameras, for me, this means "dumb" ones that I feed into a control unit that manages multiple cameras and applies any smarts I may want.
One of the more ridiculous examples I have come across, unpasteurized milk. In the US, as well as Canada and other western countries I believe, it is illegal to sell raw milk for human consumption. Meaning that if I have a neighbor with a milk cow, I can't buy a gallon of milk from them to drink or cook with. Stores can obviously do what they want, and requiring FDA certification for example would effectively block raw milk from stores. But why can't I choose to ignore FDA guidelines meant for industrial milk production and just buy a damn gallon of milk from a local farm?
We have dairy cows these days. Raw milk straight from the cow takes an extremely long time to actually spoil in a dangerous sense. If left out it will sour and eventually separate, while it isn't usually what a person would want to eat it isn't dangerous. It absolutely doesn't go bad in a fridge, we've had jars in the fridge for weeks with absolutely no problem.
3 day old, unrefrigerated pasteurized milk is absolutely dangerous, don't drink it. Pasteurization of milk became commonplace as a solution for shipping milk long distances and storing it in warehouses for days or weeks. If pasteurized and managed properly the flavor won't changed. Raw milk will effectively ferment at room temp as the lactic acid bacteria begins to consume lactose. The byproducts aren't dangerous and are effectively the curds and whey that Little Miss Muffet told us all about, that's just not what you want to find in a jug of milk at the store.
After reading the product description on Amazon, it looks like it is the hardware that you need to buy in order to use Amazon's doorbell and monitoring service.
See: In order to view "your" video history, you must subscribe to the Amazon Protect plan.
I genuinely don't get the angle here you're suggesting Bloomberg has.
Also, they call it “modifying public safety stance”? How about calling it “stopping privacy violations”? Also notice, they interweave the real information into the article so that they could say, well we actually told you all of this. But they are artfully trying to create a misdirection.
Is this actually true? My understanding was that Amazon was allowing law enforcement a simple form to ask the user of the Ring device if the police could access the videos, without a warrant.
How is this not stopping the police from asking users for surveillance video? Are you saying this statement is a lie?
I don't think anyone is stupid enough to think that Amazon are somehow physically restraining the police from knocking on people's doors and asking them face to face. It's about requests facilitated by Amazon.
Only for their made-up definition of the word "collecting", which in some cases is "retrieving the data which we have already collected and stored".
I mean, in general, there shouldn't be situations that are described as "mistakenly asserting rights". But as you say, the alignment and incentives are opposed, and it's too easy, not better, for companies to choose the path of least resistance, rights be damned.
Also, companies in particular have lawyers whose entire full time job is to know when to tell the government to “stuff it” (though usually in much classier terms). Apple famously did this with the FBI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple–FBI_encryption_dispute
Your comments read as someone who isn't aware of all the terrible stories of cops not doing their jobs correctly and in some cases going after innocent people on the flimsiest of evidence. They should not be trusted by default.
Cut out the person who actually owns the device. And who supposedly owns the recording.
This was a voluntary program though. Blocking the police from asking for help is unnecessarily adversarial. You are right about police collecting video from Ring without user involvement, but this was transparent and voluntary.
It isn't like they were pulling videos without consent to send tickets for rolling stops. Although if they did, they could collect enough revenue to fix every road in the country. :lol
A good lawyer got the case dropped pretty quick, but not before she spent a weekend in jail, got fired as a teacher, and spent thousands on legal fees. The police had “video evidence” and therefore refused to drop the case even when the ex retracted the claims, and required months of fighting the legal system.
Beyond that awful freak incident, there’s tons of cases of police planting evidence, police ignoring real evidence, and police using an individual’s voluntary will to help them catch one crime to implicate an innocent person in a petty crime unexpectedly. There’d have to be a pretty big crime for me to voluntarily show the police any video of myself.
That's setting aside that this was also all about interior cameras, which are really a different subject from the exterior cameras. There are much stronger arguments for public requests for external camera feeds than interior ones.
"Which do you want for dinner, broken glass or razor blades?"
> True, but nothing about this stops someone from having their own cameras and selecting for themselves.
A lack of a time machine does; the post upthread says "after they broke up". You won't be able to go back in time and install a second set of cameras to provide the cops with the full context.
I feel like my point wasn't clear. Nothing about Ring's decision here stops the bad one from doing what they did in your scenario. If the bad person controlled the cameras (and it sounds like they did), they'd still do the same thing regardless of this policy.
If we were to structure our lives around things that evil people misused good-intentioned processes for, then we would be continually paranoid and society would grind to a halt.
I am certainly in favor of limited police powers, but the conversation you are having is a different one from that.
And that police do bad things, and someone giving them more evidence of their own life is probably not in anyone’s best interest. Because no one can guarantee that the police won’t decide to use it against themselves.
Considering the point I was replying to was someone discussing using cameras to watch for crimes, I think we’ve pierced the topic around paranoia and structuring life around evil people - that’s the whole topic at hand with security cameras.
I'm fully on board with assisting with a real investigation. But unless they have a warrant, I get to have oversight of what they get.
This is ridiculous. The default view in a parliamentary democracy should be that government is your employee and that its job is to watch out for you. Where your interests collide with those of your fellow citizens, government or judiciary should be mediating and managing, seeking consensus or compromise, ideally with your involvement.
Yes, this is naive. But it's the core function we should be able to rely on; it should be the measure we use to assess the efficacy of our governments. Anything else and you're replicating feudalism or dictatorship.
If you default to government being your adversary, your system is broken and you should be working to fix it rather than giving up and calling it the enemy. Frankly, this labelling of government as the enemy is exactly what allows opportunists to sieze power.
It is a matter of trust of other humans with power. Government can do good but is made of flawed humans. Trusting the government to always be good and stay good is a recipe for disaster. For government to stay trustworthy it requires people to oppose oversteps. It is an adversarial relationship. That isn't a bad thing. It is necessary for everything to work and stay working.
Would you like datapoints about times the government lied and subverted communities?
Bc I have data points.
Many data points.
From many cultures that were illegally infringed upon hy the government.
And practices
Just say the word.
Please share, if you please.
Jim Crow laws
Nypd use of stingers to violate your privacy then replicate a criminal investigation independent of the stinger information to subvert DoJ processes and the rights of protection against unlawful search and seizures.
internment of US citizens due to their Japanese heritage.
CIA involvement in the Iran Contra debacle fueling the cocaine epidemic
The burning of unarmed civilians at Waco Texas
Would you like more?
I appreciate the Starship Troopers reference, and yes.
I’m not sure what it says about the state of the world or about me that I’m already familiar with all of these things, but I do sincerely appreciate you for taking the time to share them with the rest of the class.
The corpse of John Adams probably has a smirk.
> government ... people ... as an adversary.
Adams had some interesting views, ones the courts dont share but he did. In his thought, the final check on power was the jury. It did not matter what the LAW said, it matters what the jury thought, that a jury at any point could just choose to nullify a law.
In many places talking about this near courts will get you held in contempt. But at lest one of the founding fathers though "telling the government to stuff it" was the right thing to do.
Also another reminder, for everybody throwing a lasso around everything and hating on it, you're actually upset with the bureaucracy (which contains law enforcement).
Remember folks, the U.S. gov't is split into four parts: 1. Legislative branch (makes laws for the executive branch to approve, and for the judicial branch to possibly overturn, and creates functions within the bureaucracy) 2. Judicial branch (throws away or reenforces work done by the legislative+executive branch) 3. Executive branch (controls the bureaucracy, great filter for the legislative branch) 4. Bureaucracy network (the informal branch of the gov't of employees rendering services for the citizens, most people end up complaining about: law enforcement, department workers, the postoffice and military)
So yes, tell the bureaucracy to stuff it. Telling one of the other three branches to stuff it probably doesn't fly too well.
This is never ever going to be the default unless it is legislated. A business has much more to gain by aligning itself with the government than with the general population.
A better law would simply say video that is viewing your property from the outside cannot be used as evidence or something like that.
I fully agree governments should not be participating and they shouldn't have a secret backdoor. I also agree that you should have the expectation of privacy in your house (hence why I question whether the video ought to be admissible). However, handicapping people's equipment is against even the most basic principle of private property.
Like, if you’re in a public park and someone takes a picture that includes you, generally we say that you consented by being in public. If someone takes a picture of you every morning as you jog by the park because they’re stalking you, we don’t extended “implied consent” to that. If you aim a camera at my house, does that count as implied consent, or is it closer to stalking?
What next? Anyone with a cochlear implant can't use the phone because it's a recording device?
A camera is an extension of our eyes. If we have a right to look out from our property and observe so do the cameras.
It's not nice but this is clearly a situation where two competing and important rights coincide and conflict.
> A camera is an extension of our eyes. If we have a right to look out from our property and observe so do the cameras.
Personally, for me, it's about recording and storage that I'd be uncomfortable with. I have a hearing aid and I it's "recording", sure, but only to apply some kind of amplification/equalizing and then the audio is gone. Not stored, not sent to Amazon, not sent to police. If doorbell cameras worked the same way, then that'd be awesome. But afaik they don't.
The behaviour must give you good reason to fear for your personal safety and it must have no legitimate purpose
It doesn't apply here.
Believe it or not you have neighbours watching you leave your house every morning. All streets have nosey neighbours.
Genuinely don’t know, but do you have a right to fly a drone overhead and film “your property” and your neighbors backyard while they skinny-dip? Do you have the right to videotape your driveway… and the elementary school across the street?
I’m very suspicious that “if the video includes your property, you have the right to film it” - which is the implication here.
"I saw them walking down the street yesterday" is not the same as "I saw them walking down the street yesterday at exactly 4:27 PM and returning at 9:19 PM here's exactly what they look like, what they were wearing, what they were holding and since everyone else on my street is also doing this you can get a full recording of their actions the entire time they were outside."
https://www.aclu.org/cases/moore-v-united-states
https://www.aclum.org/en/press-releases/us-supreme-court-dec...
In the case, Moore v. United States, federal agents, without a warrant, surreptitiously installed a small surveillance camera near the top of a utility pole in a Springfield, Massachusetts neighborhood and used it to record the activities at and around a private home over an uninterrupted eight-month period. Agents could watch the camera’s feed in real time, and remotely pan, tilt, and zoom close enough to read license plates and see faces. They could also review a searchable, digitized record of this footage at their convenience. The camera captured every coming and going of the home’s residents and their guests over eight months, what they carried with them when they came and went, their activities in the home’s driveway and yard, and more.
And that should not be allowed, if we want to continue to live in a free society, where freedom includes not being digitally trackable at any time.
This really, truly does not follow for me. You do not have a right to not be viewed in public. That is fundamentally not a right. It's like... if you and your friend set up shop on a sidewalk, and shout at each other your conversation, and someone records it... should they be charged for illegal recording? If so, why is that any different than recording a street preacher / politician's speech? At some point there's an implied consent w.r.t fair use.
There should be limitations. I do think you should not be able to redistribute such content without permission, but that's not what's happening here. The cameras are meant for your own viewing. There are ethical issues in my opinion with the data being sent to a third-party 'cloud' provider, but there is no fundamental ethical issue with simply recording the view from your abode in such a way that any human would normally be able to also view.
Look... I get the creepiness aspect. I get it might feel wrong. Rights are like that. The right to do what you wish with your property, including to look out from it and view whatever it is you see, is actually also a basic right, and insofar as the rights are coming into contact, I don't see why it would be held subservient to your alleged right to privacy on a public view.
I don't see why we arbitrarily draw a line saying 'being recorded in public' means it's not a free country. Couldn't you also say that 'not being able to record what you'd otherwise see from your person' is also anti-freedom. I feel there's an immense amount of nuance lost here and people are quick to sacrifice one freedom for another.
If there is no agreement on these things being materially different, and thus requiring a different evaluation of competing rights, then further discussion is mood.
I’m much more ok with a static image of the front of my house than a continuous stream of everyone coming/going and everything that happens in the windows.
https://blog.ring.com/about-ring/ring-announces-new-neighbor...
This is pretty narrow wording with no explanation of why.
I'd be a lot more bullish about this if it talked about some new commitment to user privacy, but I'm a bit suspicious there's just a new tool somewhere.
https://ring.com/support/articles/7e3lk/Understanding-Video-...
If you own the camera and put it on your property, please don't allow all recordings to be sent to a emote server you have no control over. And seriously please font leave the camera accessible to the public internet 24/7, it may be convenient but its also begging for trouble.
Do you hide it in a wall or in an attic somewhere?
If I wanted to get clever I'd have a dummy setup of some kind. Stash a few real enough looking and literally label it "cameras". I'm not worried about defeating Danny Ocean here, I'd be surprised if an intruder even looked for the storage system let alone would recognize it.
https://www.theverge.com/23573362/anker-eufy-security-camera...
> First, Anker told us it was impossible. Then, it covered its tracks. It repeatedly deflected while utterly ignoring our emails. So shortly before Christmas, we gave the company an ultimatum: if Anker wouldn’t answer why its supposedly always-encrypted Eufy cameras were producing unencrypted streams — among other questions — we would publish a story about the company’s lack of answers.