Tenants Outraged Over New York Landlord's Plan To Install Facial Recognition Technology (gothamist.com) 281
A Brooklyn landlord plans to install facial recognition technology at the entrance of a 700-unit building, according to Gothamist, "raising alarm among tenants and housing rights attorneys about what they say is a far-reaching and egregious form of digital surveillance."
[Last] Sunday, several tenants told Gothamist that, unbeknownst to them, their landlord, Nelson Management, had sought state approval in July 2018 to install a facial recognition system known as StoneLock. Under state rules, landlords of rent-regulated apartments built before 1974 must seek permission from the state's Homes and Community Renewal (HCR) for any "modification in service." Tenants at the two buildings, located at 249 Thomas S. Boyland Street and 216 Rockaway Avenue, said they began receiving notices about the system in the fall. According to its website, Kansas-based company StoneLock offers a "frictionless" entry system that collects biometric data based on facial features. "We don't want to be tracked," said Icemae Downes, a longtime tenant. "We are not animals. This is like tagging us through our faces because they can't implant us with a chip."
It is not clear how many New York City apartments are using facial scanning software or how such technology is being regulated. But in a sign of the times, the city's Department of Housing Preservation and Development last June began marketing 107 affordable units at a new apartment complex in the South Bronx. Among the amenities listed was "State of the Art Facial Recognition Building Access...." Across the real estate industry, New York City landlords have increasingly been moving to keyless entry systems, citing convenience as well as a desire to offer enhanced security. Over the years, in response to appeals filed by tenants, HCR has ruled in favor of key fob and card entry systems, saying that such substitutions did not violate rent-stabilization and rent-control laws. But the latest technology has triggered even more concerns about the ethics of data collection....
Last month, the management company reached out to a group of tenants to assuage their concerns about StoneLock. But tenants said the presentation, if anything, only deepened their fears that they were being asked to submit to a technology that had very little research behind it.
"This was not something we asked for at any given time," one tenant complaint, while one of the attorneys representing the tenants said that, among other things, their landlord had "made no assurances to protect the data from being accessed by NYPD, ICE, or any other city, state, or federal agency."
"Citing concerns over the potential for privacy and civil liberties violations, tenants at Brownsville's Atlantic Plaza Towers filed an objection to the plan in January..."
It is not clear how many New York City apartments are using facial scanning software or how such technology is being regulated. But in a sign of the times, the city's Department of Housing Preservation and Development last June began marketing 107 affordable units at a new apartment complex in the South Bronx. Among the amenities listed was "State of the Art Facial Recognition Building Access...." Across the real estate industry, New York City landlords have increasingly been moving to keyless entry systems, citing convenience as well as a desire to offer enhanced security. Over the years, in response to appeals filed by tenants, HCR has ruled in favor of key fob and card entry systems, saying that such substitutions did not violate rent-stabilization and rent-control laws. But the latest technology has triggered even more concerns about the ethics of data collection....
Last month, the management company reached out to a group of tenants to assuage their concerns about StoneLock. But tenants said the presentation, if anything, only deepened their fears that they were being asked to submit to a technology that had very little research behind it.
"This was not something we asked for at any given time," one tenant complaint, while one of the attorneys representing the tenants said that, among other things, their landlord had "made no assurances to protect the data from being accessed by NYPD, ICE, or any other city, state, or federal agency."
"Citing concerns over the potential for privacy and civil liberties violations, tenants at Brownsville's Atlantic Plaza Towers filed an objection to the plan in January..."
Reliability (Score:2)
Now, I realize even humans are not 100% perfect at recognizing faces, but is facial recognition really good enough for this kind of application? You know it will get it wrong at least some of the time.
Detecting unauthorized subletting? (Score:2)
Tenants of rent stabilized apartments are allowed to sublet their apartment [nyc.gov], but this incurs a 10% surchage, so there's an incentive to sublet without notification.
How is this different from doormen? (Score:2)
How is such technology different — in principle — from doormen? They too would look at everyone and remember — to the best of their ability — who walked in and out, and when?
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You know who the doormen is, and have an opportunity to explain strange circumstances to them, and can actually provide assistance in case of difficulty. An anonymous tracking report, scannable by unknown people with no verification to the residents is a different. And it provides none of the help that a human doorman provides.
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So it's wrong because it's not a doorman? Door men can be bribed, convinced to lie, etc. Is that really a better system than a single facial recognition system in the lobby?
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I'm afraid your question was "how such technology different". I provided a few distinctions. I also meant to say that the _doorman_ can actually provide assistance. They are, in fact, expected to provide assistance, to accept packages and to screen visitors in a way that a mere visual recording cannot. A doorman is a more transparent resource, accessible to the residents who might reasonably ask "did my kids get home?". They might also be notified that "I'm divorced, and my husband is not welcome." or actua
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How would you like to have a record of everyone who visited your building for the last 20 years and who they were with?
How is this any different from a security camera and sign-in book in the lobby of the building?
This is at the entrance to the 700 unit apartment building, and BTW, a 700 unit apartment building is a pretty big structure, I bet their lobby/elevators aren't open to anyone that chooses to ride the elevators on a whim...
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Doormen don't keep detailed ledgers of every single person living there and their visitors, when they came, who with, forever - etc.
It's called a guest book, and every time I enter a skyscraper in NYC I am photographed, ID'd and the date/time of my entry/exit is recorded - exactly how is this different? Because it allows me to potentially avoid stopping at the reception desk, getting out my ID and posing for a picture?
Someone doesn't want to lose fee money (Score:5, Interesting)
When I lived in NYC, I knew lots of people renting "rent-regulated apartments". One worked at Goldman for 200K+ a year. It was a good deal. The person with the apartment pocked the rent spread each month. The Goldman guy paid about 75% or 80% of full market value and was able to save each month to buy an apartment.
If you have a NYC rent stabilized apartment, market forces push you very hard to live outside the city and sublet. I'm going to guess the people who were subletting, the leasors, were not paying taxes. They were well motivated to not get caught.
If the goal is to give poor people something for free, letting them sublet accomplishes that goal. Doubly so if they skip taxes.
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What rights are being infringed if there is no log of when people enter/exit? A face recognition system can be as simple as a face unlock, but without logging the activity. Unlike key cards and such, which can be passed off to people who are not actually on the lease, a face recognition can simply check if you are on the lease and bingo, it opens. Nothing would be needed if you are visiting and someone comes to the door to let you in as well, no logging or anything like that.
So, you want to enter with
Decptive or idiot landlord (Score:2)
The police can request any camera information and warrant for that data to be supplied under the Homeland security act (IIRC).
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The police can request any camera information and warrant for that data to be supplied under the Homeland security act (IIRC).
The police can interrogate the doorman.
The police can review security camera footage.
The police can feed the CCTV footage into their own facial recognition software, if interested to.
The police can stakeout the lobby.
What does the on-site facial recognition system add to the already existing way the police can monitor anyone's comings and goings from any apartment building?
Thank goodness (Score:5, Funny)
Thank goodness the police or government would never misuse such a wonderful surveillance tool.
The Reality of What's Going On (Score:5, Informative)
The tenants are living in rent-stabilized or rent-controlled buildings, which offer highly discounted rents. However, the tenants are required to use the discounted apartments as their primary residences. The city does not want tenants to turn around and sublet their apartments at market rates, and pocket the difference. So landlords have been installing cameras to see who is living in the apartments. The facial recognition system is another step in that direction.
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A tenant can sublet their apartment, with the landlord's permission, and for a 10% fee. The tenant can not establish primary residence elsewhere - if they do, and the landlord can prove it, the lease can be broken.
https://www1.nyc.gov/site/rent... [nyc.gov]
Sorry, I'm going to sound like a dick here... (Score:2)
But I don't see a single thing wrong with this... people who don't like it can move to another building.
The landlord would, however, be voiding any leases currently in place since these facilities would not be in the lease's terms, and people should be free to find another place without violating any lease.
Re:Sorry, I'm going to sound like a dick here... (Score:5, Informative)
The landlord in general would be happy as a pig in mud to void the leases of rent-regulated tenants. The whole point of this exercise is to obtain evidence that the tenant isn't coming and going frequently enough to prove that it's his/her "primary residence" so that the landlord can evict them.
It's not for security. It's not to make it easier for the tenants to enter without carrying a key. It's to claw back the few remaining affordable apartments.
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If they are being illegally sublet then they are not "affordable." They are being sub-letted out at a profit, illegally, by the people who's rent is being controlled by the government.
If the people who were the original tenants under rent control still live in the apartment then the rent control is valid and they are allowed to stay at the low rent as the law intended.
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I didn't mention subletting. The rent-stabilization rule in NY is not that "the people who were the original tenants under rent control still live in the apartment" as you state but rather that the original tenant(s) must be physically in that apartment for (1 + 365/2) days per year, every year. So it's a bit like being under house arrest except without having committed any crime beforehand.
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The real reason is so those who are NOT on the lease are not the ones living there. So, no problem if you don't show up often or anything like that, but if people not on the lease keep going in without the owner, doesn't that imply that there is a violation of the lease, because people not on the lease are living there?
I agree that for the most part, it DOES make it easier for those who should be there(on the lease), and not as easy for those scamming the system.
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I didn't say anything about people not on the lease, however NYS law is that at least one person who is not on the lease may reside with the leaseholder (the "roommate law").
But as I replied to Altus, it is definitely false that there is "no problem if you don't show up often or anything like that". The NYS rent stabilization law requires that you show up often - specifically at least (1 + 365/2) days per year. Landlords love to claim that the tenant is there less frequently as a means to evict them.
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Stay at your SO's home some nights, they stay at yours some nights. If you're not tucked in to your rent-regulated apartment at least (1 + 365/2) days every year then it's not considered your "primary residence". So you can sleep on the street from then on. These cameras are intended to provide easy data collection for that.
But try to get the landlord to fix the peeling paint, the broken toilet, the hole in the ceiling, the hole in the floor, the windows that their contractor broke while doing exterior "
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Its unlikely that this violates any leases. The lease does, generally, promise that public areas are not monitored and it would depend on your local laws if they even need to tell you that the public areas are monitored. Its possible that anything might be put in a lease but it is not something that is a part of a standard lease and you should not have any expectation of privacy outside of your unit because as soon as you leave your unit you are in a public and shared space.
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I never said I have nothing to hide... everybody does.
But to be frank, no... it wouldn't really bother me if something like this were installed in the apartment I lived in.
Like I said though.. people who don't like it should be entirely free to leave, and not be in violation of any lease that did not explicitly and prominently include mention of this sort of monitoring provision.
Dumb. (Score:2)
Mount that expensive and unpopular tech where all of these low income people can see it. Let me know how that works out for you.
Yet buildings with doormen are preferred. (Score:2)
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"It can't be that the police can check it's records, a doorman will tell them just the same."
Doormen don't usually work 24/7 and timestamp every entry to the second. Also, they generally don't remember who came/went perfectly for years after an event.
Just like its ok for police to see you walking around public, but most people wouldn't like them recording every movement for posterity.
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I'll never understand why people worship NYC. I don't want to be within 500 miles of it, personally.
Technology will make it's way to Birmingham soon enough.
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Cartman? Is that you?
Re:Wouldn’t you want this to keep you safer? (Score:4, Insightful)
"wouldn’t you want this if you are not a criminal" = "Why not just allow cops to check your asshole on demand, assuming you don't have drugs up your ass?" = Fuck your reductive argument, there are more ramifications to consider here.
Skipping over considering even a single one of them isn't actually advancing the debate, you're skipping weighing any cons entirely as if pretending there were none. That just says to me you haven't read a whole lot about dystopia.
Don't be a mindless toady. We have an entire Republican party for that.
What are the cons? (Score:2)
Skipping over considering even a single one of them isn't actually advancing the debate, you're skipping weighing any cons entirely as if pretending there were none.
Pretty suspicious that a bigot like yourself tries to attack someone on the basis of "pretending there were none" as if it were his place to point out the cons, when he's just questioning how bad they are.
If you claim they are bad, then present us some evidence or insight as to why they are bad - why wouldn't even attack you from not pointing ou
Re:What are the cons? (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember the last swatting guy got twenty years. How about if the landlord gets the same, when their system falsely identifies someone and they get shot, the landlords facial recognition swatted them. How about locking people out and not letting them because, cough, cough, the facial recognition system told them to. How about you guests are they not entitled to privacy, so what if they wear a face mask or scarfe they are not allowed in the building. You can have cameras, you can not have facial recognition, the intent there is clear, the landlords control of the tenants, monitoring all their comings and goings, locking people out to get rid of them, harass them and their guests and blame it on the computer because it told them to do it.
Whoa there fella (Score:2)
Remember the last swatting guy got twenty years. How about if the landlord gets the same, when their system falsely identifies someone and they get shot
Hey man, we aren't talking about face recognition tied to the ED-209 that is going to blow you away if you are not a match. We are talking about a system that MAYBE will just make you check in with a doorman instead of automatically opening the door. Would kind of prefer to avoid false positives you know? In fact if I could register the faces of friends i
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It actually sounds more than a little creepy.
Re: Wouldn’t you want this to keep you safer (Score:2)
Are you on crack, broham? You expect the NYPD to... fight criminals??!! Have you ever _been_ to New York?
Get real. The cops here have no interest in reducing crime. They are basically a gang of street thugs. If the City gets safer, the police budget might get cut. Preventing that is job #1.
This dystopian technology will be used to kick the poor and squeeze the working class. NOTHING good will come of it. The City will remain as dangerous and filthy as ever.
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I would sleep better knowing my neighbors are not rapists or murderers.
Isn't that the purpose of the landlord's background check before renting the apartment?
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You're literally asking for state surveillance of people coming and going from their homes
No, you failed to read the first line of the article summary - the facial recognition system is being installed on a camera in the 700 unit building entrance, not in front of every door or hallway. Such a system would be incapable of tracking/correlating "people coming and going from their homes".
guest / kid fees per person? Late night door fee? (Score:3)
guest / kid fees per person? Late night door fee?
Can they make you wait days to add an new person to the door system?
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Did you even bother to read the very first line of The Fine Summary - I quote:
A Brooklyn landlord plans to install facial recognition technology at the entrance of a 700-unit building
How, exactly, will the landlord connect anyone that walks in the entrance of the 700 unit building with a particular apartment to charge your imaginary "guest/kid fee"?
Re:What have you got to hide? (Score:5, Insightful)
As long as you're not violating occupancy laws, your landlord has absolutely no right to know who, what, or when people or things are going to or from your flat.
The United States desperately needs an information ownership law that revises the existing "you collect it, you own it" data practises. If companies can't sell data about you, they won't bother to collect it.
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Exactly - as long as you're not violating laws. Subleasing, AirBnB etc is a real problem for landlords and rent controlled is already scraping the bottom of the barrel of both tenants and landlord profits.
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Re:"What have you got to hide?"= Inspect my asshol (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a great argument - can we apply it to gun rights? Lets see, there are 300 million guns in America, and several thousand (give or take) are used in crimes during the year - so why infringe everyone's rights to own a gun because of a few bad apples?
I don't think the issue is Airbnb, I think it has to do with rent subsidies/rent control.
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Well, to give a car analogy....
When someone kills 1 or more people with a car...you don't blame the car or try to ban them, you know?
Guns like cars are just tools, plain and simple.
They don't kill people on their own...it takes a person to misuse a car,
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Guns are nothing like cars when it comes to defining thema tool. Actually the biggest tools are those making this argument in the first place.
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Murders have remarkably stable over the last 20+ years at around 13,000/year +/- 1,000. That means, that as the population has increased murders have decreased.
Each year about 400 people are murdered by rifles.
Knives are about 1800/year
Blunt objects are about 600
Personal objects (hands, feet) kill around 850
The choice of killing are handguns. However
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Hunting is a functional purpose.
Not being helpless in the face of tyranny is a functional purpose.
The US today, is going through it's version of the Chinese Cultural Revolution.
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The media's coverage of defensive gun use is close to non-existent. Not because it doesn't happen but because they are, in this arena, propagandists. Depending on what is constitutes defense gun use the stats run from over 1000/week to 10,000 a week.
The following article, using a very strict definition of DGU
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We don't have a gun accessibility problem. We have a gang problem. Take away gang related violence and our gun problem magically goes away.
So, the real question is why are you so adamant about removing guns? If it was about safety you would be focused on gangs. If you were truly concerned about the instrument of destruction you would be concerned about pistols as they account for about 90% of the gun violen
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I dunno where you live...but there are things in most of the country, even NICE neighborhoods call home invasions, or just people breaking in while you are home.
The cops are NOT going to be saving you from that....all they can do, is try to gather evidence at the crime scene. If you are not armed, they may be trying to then investigate who broke in and killed you o
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Oh and you should be required to own gun insurance.
Got it. Its part of my homeowners liability policy. And the increased risk is so far down in the statistical noise level that my insurance agent says they don't bother to ask about gun ownership.
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No, because guns don't murder people. Criminals do.
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A criminal could steal your gun and use it. Happens literally every day.
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That still is the criminal doing the criminal things not the gun.
I personally have never seen a gun jump up and shoot someone without a human holding it. Well I saw it in a video game, you're not imagining video games are real life are you?
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Pretty much this. I however advocate for the removal of warning labels. So there's that.
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Yes, protecting yourself and your family. I'm gonna say that's a utility that should surpass everything your little car can do. Not to mention hunting. And well, I fucking like guns so.. This is why it was enshrined in the constitution. And owning a vehicle was not.
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If companies can't sell data about you, they won't bother to collect it.
Not true. Most of the data collected is not sold. It is used directly by the companies collecting it.
Google does not sell data. They use the data to place ads on behalf of their clients. They do not give the clients access to the data.
Re:What have you got to hide? (Score:4, Interesting)
As long as you're not violating occupancy laws, your landlord has absolutely no right to know who, what, or when people or things are going to or from your flat.
Of course, like nearly every other poster below, you ignored the fact that this is installed in the building entrances, not on every apartment entrance.
The landlord has an interest in knowing who enters the building, especially if the apartment is rent-subsidized, and the recipient never enters the building.
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Are you familiar with the purpose of rent controlled apartments? Is it to keep down the rent for people who continue to live in the same place for a long period of time, or just to give an increasing break to people the legal resident decides to rent the apartment to?
If you live anywhere near a large city like New York, you know that crime will ALWAYS be a concern, and making sure that only people who live there can provide access. If you live in a rent controlled apartment, then decide to move out, wha
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Occupancy laws, including people who get a rent controlled apartment and then rent it out to others for more money than they pay? When talking about 700 units and rent controlled apartments, there has been a big problem where people move out and then rent to other people to "keep" the lower rent. The problem is that the fair rent would be three or more times higher than what the tenant has been paying. Passing a rent controlled apartment from person to person actually goes against the rent control law
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You apparently missed the very first line of The Fine Summary - I quote:
A Brooklyn landlord plans to install facial recognition technology at the entrance of a 700-unit building
How, exactly, will the landlord connect anyone that walks in the entrance of the 700 unit building with a particular apartment?
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But generally speaking, the property management company has the right to know who, what, or when non-tenants are on the property...
Not where I live they don't. The property manager will tell you they have all sorts of rights, but they are usually lying.
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This is from a typical lease agreement:
> The Lessee shall not assign nor underlet any part of the whole of the leased premises, nor shall permit the leased premises
to be occupied for a period longer than a temporary visit by anyone except the individuals specifically named in the first
paragraph of this lease.
Part of the problem is "rent-stabilized" housing is additional tenants who are not on the lease, using parking and utilities, and sometimes creating hazards for other residents.
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As noted in the very first line of The Fine Summary - I quote:
A Brooklyn landlord plans to install facial recognition technology at the entrance of a 700-unit building
They aren't interested in who's going in which apartment, they are identifying who is on the property, who passed through the entrance .
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As long as the tenants have another way to enter and exit the building without being surveilled, then the landlord is welcome to put the system in.
If the system covers every entrance and exit, then there is absolutely no practical difference than surveilling them at the entrance to their own flats.
But if it doesn't cover every entrance and exit, then it's hardly worth installing, as anyone they would ostensibly want to profile (AirBnB-ers, sub-lessees, etc.) would be using the un-monitored entrance.
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Keeping the information from law enforcement makes the whole system useless. If you find that your Tennant is violating the lease, subletting illegally, over occupying the property or what have you then you need to go to the police to have them evicted. The police will want evidence and the system provides that. This is almost certainly the exact use case the landlord has for installing the system, monitoring access to their property.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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The big problem comes from rent control, and people abusing that system. Your parents get into a rent controlled apartment, they die and because you have lived there, it is now yours, but paying what your parents had paid for rent, which may be only 1/10 the going price. You have a good job, you live somewhere else, so you now rent that apartment out to other people who are paying you and not the actual building owner. So you make a profit on a rent controlled apartment that you don't even live in.
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Landlords can absolutely place restrictions on guests, particularly overnight guests. Many standard leases limit the amount of time any guest may stay including no overnight guests. While no guests at all might not hold up the landlord has huge leeway to restrict guests staying on the premises and can restrict areas that they have access to outside of your apartment (any common areas in the building). Further, a landlord my also bar a particular guest from the premises if the guest violates any of the ru
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It's an apartment if you rent/lease it. It's a Condo if you own it. What the hell does being rich have to do with anything?
Apartment describes a type of dwelling, not a type of ownership.
Condominium and co-op are types of ownership
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Almost all electronic locks contain an old school relay and will pop open if a strong magnet is put in the right spot, no logging. _All_ the chinesium ones will.
Test it.
Sure you're not a crook, but do you think they don't know?
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The only way to interfere with the interior of a mechanism surrounded by a highly permeable material using magnetic fields would be from the side where the door meets the door jam, which means the door would have to be open already for you to do anything like that.
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Odds of a landlord springing for the quarter inch iron plates? ZERO.
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It's 2 to 4 times thicker than the sheet in a typical door frame.
main door only? with an 24/7 doorman security? (Score:2)
main door only? with an 24/7 doorman security?
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This article is about a 700 unit building where the landlord is installing one camera in the entrance.
Anything beyond that simple fact is a fever-dream of a self-professed "privacy advocate" that couldn't wait for an actual violation of their privacy to spin their dystopian fantasies here on Slashdot...
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Dark and lonely on the summer night. ...
...
Kill my landlord, kill my landlord.
Watchdog barking - Do he bite?
Kill my landlord, kill my landlord.
Slip in his window,
Break his neck!
Then his house
I start to wreck!
Got no reason --
What the heck!
Kill my landlord, kill my landlord.
C-I-L-L
My land - lord
By: Tyrone Greene
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I agree with your last sentence, unfortunately.
However they don't really need to register anybody, just collect the data and have the super tag the photos.
But note that the summary says that this is being done in buildings containing rent-regulated apartments, where the obvious goal is to identify those tenants who don't come and go regularly so the landlord can evict them.
It's not being done for security; you don't need facial recognition to provide recorded video to the police after a crime has been commi
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