This is why I never bought anything Amazon owned, other than Kindles; and I have dropped the latter, too.
I was always suspicious of Ring and never understood the people using it.
I was always suspicious of Ring and never understood the people using it.
I swapped out to the Logitech doorbell which I like better anyway
They had some kind of deal with Amazon surely because it came with some amount of time free.
They're also illegal because you're not allowed to film public spaces without a good reason (it's up to the judge and case law to decide, e.g. if there has been arson in the area recently then it's reasonable to monitor your car that's parked at the kerb, for example). Nobody has yet gotten in trouble to my knowledge
Gotta love hypocrisy
In America we have this concept that a police must have a real reason to pull over your car. Except they can just setup an arbitrary checkpoint and pull every driver over and this is magically different and acceptable to do, no violations of rights at all.
As for the actual question (finally replying to your first paragraph now): sorta. GDPR has exceptions for law enforcement. Pretty broad ones for actual enforcement, iirc much less so for e.g. a statistics bureau or random other government services. If the municipality wants to put up a camera in the busiest places, I think they can use the same argumentation as a private person about their need being greater than people's privacy there, and I'd imagine a judge or privacy agency are more likely to accept it because it's less likely to be abused (the people monitoring the cameras are bound by rules that the organisation makes, and not personally involved) and that changes the up-/downsides analysis. You, the govt, and businesses always need to hang a sign, also on private property (to avoid someone spies on housemates or guests), afaik a judge needs to stamp when a camera needs to be placed secretly somewhere for a defined duration and purpose
I buy their mice. They've been good mice and I'm increasingly unhappy with Logitech.
Occasionally I buy some cables. I think that's it.
If it was free, I could almost understand. Nothing is free, and if it cost the customer nothing, then the customer is the product. However, people paid for Ring gear and as a thanks have their privacy violated with no notice, no info and no choice.
There were women being stalked by ring employees. It was that bad. Teslas had (has?) a similar problem.