Amazon Is Telling Police Departments What To Say About Its Ring Surveillance Cameras (theguardian.com) 79
Amazon isn't just partnering with hundreds of America's police departments. They're also "directing the departments' press releases, social media posts and comments on public posts," according to the Guardian:
Ring says the program gives police more resources to solve crimes, while critics fear the company is quietly building up a for-profit private surveillance network. Ring's power over police departments' communications with the citizens they serve is just the latest question about the company's operations. Andrew Ferguson, a law professor and the author of The Rise of Big Data Policing said there has been a rise of tech company influence on police work over the past decade, but shaping marketing language within police departments represents a new level of "distortion of public safety rule".
"Police should not have dual loyalty to a private company and the public -- their loyalty should be to the public," he said. "Any sort of blurring of that line causes us to question that loyalty...."
Advocates fear that the cameras will allow police access to surveillance footage while bypassing the public process to approve more traditional security cameras. They have pointed out that contracts between police and Ring often face little public scrutiny and experts have raised concerns over requests from Ring to get access to police department's computer-aided dispatch feeds. Advocates have also questioned how comfortable users feel in denying law enforcement requests.
When one Kansas police department announced their partnership with Ring, Amazon "sent the department a press release template and noted the final communique would have to be approved by Ring before release," according to the article. And for one police department in Georgia, Amazon's Ring "heavily edited the press release about the program," removing a sentence about their $15,920 donation of video doorbells and the fact that Amazon would even help install them in homes. "Ring also changed wording from the police department that said the department 'will be able to access videos submitted by subscribers of Ring' to say the department will 'join existing crime and safety conversations with local residents'."
CNET also reports that Amazon "spent more than a year offering discounts and applying peer pressure with constant reminders and emails to convince officers to sign up.... When police didn't respond, Ring would follow up by noting neighboring law enforcement agencies that have joined, pushing for the Chula Vista police to join them."
"Police should not have dual loyalty to a private company and the public -- their loyalty should be to the public," he said. "Any sort of blurring of that line causes us to question that loyalty...."
Advocates fear that the cameras will allow police access to surveillance footage while bypassing the public process to approve more traditional security cameras. They have pointed out that contracts between police and Ring often face little public scrutiny and experts have raised concerns over requests from Ring to get access to police department's computer-aided dispatch feeds. Advocates have also questioned how comfortable users feel in denying law enforcement requests.
When one Kansas police department announced their partnership with Ring, Amazon "sent the department a press release template and noted the final communique would have to be approved by Ring before release," according to the article. And for one police department in Georgia, Amazon's Ring "heavily edited the press release about the program," removing a sentence about their $15,920 donation of video doorbells and the fact that Amazon would even help install them in homes. "Ring also changed wording from the police department that said the department 'will be able to access videos submitted by subscribers of Ring' to say the department will 'join existing crime and safety conversations with local residents'."
CNET also reports that Amazon "spent more than a year offering discounts and applying peer pressure with constant reminders and emails to convince officers to sign up.... When police didn't respond, Ring would follow up by noting neighboring law enforcement agencies that have joined, pushing for the Chula Vista police to join them."
Re: PERFECTLY OK!!! (Score:1)
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Policework should not be privatized by companies who were neither voted on nor can be held accountable for the inevitable screwups.
Don't forget the EFF article (Score:2)
No further proof needed (Score:5, Insightful)
If anyone still doubts that we are moving faster and faster toward an outright, irrevocable, democracy-slaying corporatocracy, this story should put all those doubts to rest. Anyone who says this is benign or harmless or not-as-bad-as-it-seems either lives in fantasyland, is a shill, or is outright stupid.
In the past, when countries or regions were in the grip of some flavour of totalitarianism, at least they were balanced by areas where relative freedom predominated. Corporatocracy is a brand of fascism that promises to be a worldwide phenomenon.
I'm not convinced (Score:3)
If anyone still doubts that we are moving faster and faster toward an outright, irrevocable, democracy-slaying corporatocracy...
It was my understanding that the police have to request permission from the owner to view videos, and that this request has to be specific for the time period of interest. IOW, the request isn't a generic "let us access all your videos all the time".
This seems similar to how they get videos from [outside] store security cameras and ATMs in an area where a crime occurred: they simply ask, and the store owners/banks just give them the video.
How is this any different, and how does this slay democracy?
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In my city, you are asked (but not required) to register with the Police if you have a video system and what public areas it might cover. Then, if they have a reason, they know who to ask.
Personally, I don't see a problem with this.
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So if your home, or a neighbor across the street, that gets robbed, no?
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I fell safer with the police looking at it rather than a private for profit corporation. With the police there would be rules and laws and regulation can readily be applied ie for example any police officer takes it look, it must be recorded and why given and that information provided to the individual targeted. With a corporation no rules at all and they can edit it to their hearts content, when you where there, when you where not, who visited when, all to be used to further the economic interests of the c
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I fell safer with the police looking at it rather than a private for profit corporation.
Gawd - stop! My sides! I haven't laughed this hard in ages!
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I'd be far more worried about my neighbours having such a system. In the UK it's a violation of data protection and privacy laws to have a recording device that records anything other than your own property. Recording the street or other people's homes is not allowed, i.e. most Ring doorbells are illegal here.
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We have some stupid laws too, but on privacy I think Europe is far ahead in general. The UK is lagging if anything, e.g. Germany is way more advanced.
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I personally think it's a lot better than the crap we see on the news where someone used their cell phone to record another cell phone playing back security camera footage.
You're still turning over the footage voluntarily. Except this way the police actually get it all in one place, full resolution, and aren't dicking around with thousands of thumb drives.
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You mean until the servers get hacked and the footage gets to be freed.
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Until they show up with a warrant for the video to ID anti-government protesters or supporters of the other party.
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The whole point is to forbid warrantless access, to stop everything from "LOVEINT" to spying on corporate or political or other enemies.
As with the stuff deep in the billion dollar NSA buildings, there needs to be uncorruptible access logs for later review.
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Even if they do need a warrant, there's always a Judge happy to use their rubber stamp and the government has been known to create secret courts to do the rubber stamping.
And the reason is: (Score:3, Informative)
According to their terms of service, Amazon/Ring and its licensees have "an unlimited, irrevocable, fully paid, and royalty-free, perpetual, worldwide right to re-use, distribute store, delete, translate, copy, modify, display, sell, create derivative works," in relation to the footage taken from your front door.
So if Amazon/Ring gives permission, that's fine, even if homeowner says no.
This is why Amazon/Ring are hitting the PR bigtime to insinuate otherwise, because future customers might possibly get unco
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Democracy is slain when people are being watched all the time. Check out the progress China has made towards this. Combine the PRC's "Social Credit System" with cameras everywhere and no sane Chinese person will ever say anything critical.
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This seems similar to how they get videos from [outside] store security cameras and ATMs in an area where a crime occurred: they simply ask, and the store owners/banks just give them the video. How is this any different, and how does this slay democracy?
As I was thinking about how best to answer this I came across this related story [slashdot.org]. In that summary it says "In November 2018, Ring filed two patent applications that describe technology with the ability to identify "suspicious people" and create a "database of suspicious persons...""
To me, Ring is different from getting videos from commercial surveillance cameras and ATM's in that a) all of the videos are potentially available easily in one place, and b) the sheer density of what can legitimately called a su
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Further proof IS needed, though .... (Score:3)
There might be plenty of reason to argue that we're buried in "corporatism" and some changes are sorely needed. But this whole Amazon/Ring situation just isn't one of those things I find hugely disturbing.
I mean, let's look at the facts here.
- Ring is just a piece of hardware that people VOLUNTARILY put on their home, primarily for such things as making sure they know when the FedEx or UPS guy tries to drop off a package, or serving as a "high tech" version of a door peep-hole. The camera is only looking a
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1) Most people just thing "saaaafety! BRAAAAWK! AWK!". They don't realize the dangers of feeding video to a 3rd party's (i.e. Scumazon's) servers.
2) Whole-house camera systems are actually better if they record locally. The footage generally gets wiped on a loop, after no more than a week. Cops also have to explicitly come and ask for the footage, they can't download it online.
3) Is it clear that Amazon doesn't save video for non-paying customers. Maybe it saves a few snippets, just doesn't allow r
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Oh, and how do you know what Amazon is really doing with that video? They are not a part of government so your FoI is squat.
Re:Further proof IS needed, though .... (Score:4, Insightful)
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I just love this public/private bastardization of things.
You get to pay tax dollars for something run by a corp. that has little public responsibility.
Look at all of the complaints regarding the Direct Express card for one example. Any other card service would have tanked ages ago.
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It's their video, they can do whatever they want.
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But but...Chihldrun!
I'm truly worried that we could eventually get to the point where people are packed in sealed concrete rooms, and the Zyklon B tablets are dropped into the water pit, and people will be justifying it "for the children".
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Yeah, they are not forced to put it on their homes. But they are still being manipulated (conned?) into doing this nonetheless.
Anything that's shady deserves to be put under a very powerful microscope, and pushed back against. What Amazon is doing is shady (to really understate this).
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Just like CCTV was. When a crime happens, the police get a good look at hours of activity in the area.
Re 'the most positive light"
Crime is going down and the police are happy
A city feels more safe and criminals know their movements will be tracked back over time in a area when doing crime.
The world gets to see who is doing crime too.
No longer are crime stats just a list of numbers over a year in new
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Basically, if these things do turn into privacy or citizen rights nightmares, they're going to be so widely deployed and integrated that fighting it back will be unlikely and extremely difficult.
We know tha
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"Corporatocracy"? Try "Authoritarian Dictatorship", or perhaps "Authoritarian Police State".
My apologies for not being as clear as I might have been. The only distinction I draw between 'corporatocracy' and 'authoritarian dictatorship' is the corporation part. Even then, perhaps the only meaningful distinction is the inversion that has taken place. Historically, dictatorships were held with the support and cooperation of corporations, but they weren't initiated and implemented by corporations as seems to be the current trend.
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Inverted totalitarianism is the name Sheldon Wolin gave it back in '03. See my sig, in clickable form, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] It's a good description of today's America and highlights the differences from classical totalitarianism.
Ring's 720p camera (Score:2)
In most cases the 720p wide-scan camera in a standard Ring isn't really good enough to be useful. Unlike "CSI" these camera don't have some imaginary magical zoom feature that will show a license plate with a little post-processing. It's better than the 240p that an old NTSC interlaced camera could do, but still not enough. Until crooks have a QR code tattooed on their forehead, and wear optically transparent baseball caps, this is whole lot of security theatre. For less than half the money for one of these
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Really just elimination of suspects is useful.
My niece recently had a friend over; that night two of our cars were broken into. her parents blamed him. Video just good enough to show it wasn't him would have saved a fuckton of drama.
Also, current ring is 1080, HDR/nightvision capable.
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" It's better than the 240p that an old NTSC interlaced camera could do"
Ah yes, I remember those days; jerky, noisy video tapes, B&W video, shit optics. Sometimes, the jackass who put the system together would have 4 of those cameras wired up to the the same VCR in a quad-split screen to save money, so you lost even more resolution. If you were lucky, you might be able to tell if the blob was really robbing the cash register instead of exposing it's erect penis in front of it.
To serve and protect... (Score:2)
Dupe of a dupe of a dupe (Score:2, Informative)
This is at least the third or fourth time we have heard this story here on /.
People are free to opt in to make their neighborhood safer. Whether or not you like it, this is someone's private property and neighborhood they are trying to make safer. If they feel turning over video evidence is a good thing, that's their prerogative.
Nobody is using or wasting tax payer dollars on a surveillance system and Ring is certainly not going to be the last one.
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Am I also free not to be shown by these cams and vids? My personal liberty as guaranteed by The Constitution is far more important than some alleged security. What you do on your private property is your business and does not extend beyond that properties boundaries.
I've heard this argument a few times - the whole "constant surveillance" worry, which I certainly understand. But Ring doesn't work that way. You're typically not going to be recorded on these cameras unless you walk up to a front door on private property. These cameras are designed with a fairly wide field of view, and recording is triggered by the built-in motion detector, which has an adjustable range.
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We are talking about private property, I am free to do on my private property what I want and everything "in plain sight" is fair game. You could build a wall and a moat if you don't like it or move away into the city where criminal activity is de facto legal.
Don't like it, don't do illegal stuff in plain sight, hence why I moved from the city to the suburbs because my neighbors were doing illegal stuff in plain sight and police didn't want to do anything about it.
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Yes, but you're also giving Amazon an unlimited license to do what ever they want with their video that you put on your property.
Today illegal stuff, tomorrow perhaps something like what is happening in Hong Kong or even just marching in support of the other political party. Amazon decides whether the police get a copy even if you don't want them to have a copy.
You are correct in having the freedom to put Amazon's camera on your property though, just don't make the mistake of thinking the video belongs to y
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If a visa overstayer is in your streets, ICE has the duty to pick them up. Either that or they could have a deportation order and be the fifth one that gets arrested for raping a women in the last month. I thought women's rights were more important than men's, off course unless that man is an illegal immigrant, then they are higher on the intersectional ladder than women off course.
I'm sure you like rapists, hence why you don't like cops.
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Cops are often enough the rapists and the predators ... witness their rate of domestic abuse. I don't trust the oldsters who made the laws enough to give their hired goons (cops, ICE, etc) the ability to enforce those laws in an airtight manner.
Legality =/= morality. Remember, at one time, the law said that people could be owned, and that such property that escaped had to be turned in to the nearest constabulary.
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The people can see into that "yard" too...
Want privacy? Go full fence and sally port.
Re "automated license plate recognition and facial recognition"
Thats the idea. When a crime is reported the criminal has their face tracked back to their transport.
A public/private partnership with police. Just like police like to have with CCTV all over the USA.
Re "visa overstayer"
Illegal immigrants will be detected as their passport images g
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Let's say there was a murder on a public street. With these cameras widely deployed, the police would theoretically be able to determine the identities of the majority of the people in the area, with the level of incrimination increasing as the distance from the crime de
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So you're ok with corporations running our police departments now, or didn't you even finish the summary?
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What To Say About Its Ring Surveillance Cameras (Score:1)
"Ring ~= donut === inherently good"
First they came for the ... burglars? (Score:1, Troll)
People with cameras watching their home entrances. If this keeps up, burglars and package thieves won't have any privacy at all.
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Detect the illegal immigrant and let someone who can work in the USA do that plumbing work.
Re 'trivial"
Why should any US city allow "trivial" crime rates? Good people have to pay for the damage, loss, less customers in an area.
Re "Facial recognition"
Thats going to detect illegal immigrants
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US cities will be great places to live and invest in again.
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Or anyone else anywhere if you have your way.
Push back! (Score:2)
Yes! (Score:1)
I feel perfectly safe with my local PD being turned into puppets by a megacorp!
What could possibly go wrong?
Not public entitees receiving private support! (Score:3)
"Police should not have dual loyalty to a private company and the public -- their loyalty should be to the public," he said. "Any sort of blurring of that line causes us to question that loyalty...."
But politicians who have dual loyalty to a private company (e.g. Merck, Phillip Morris, Lockheed Martin, etc)...they're still 100% loyal to the public.
In the current day and age, Amazon's cameras being used by police is the least of my worries in the public servant and private entity landscape.
Campaign (Score:2)
OK, who is orchestrating the constant stream of these articles coming out? There has been at least one or two headlines about Amazon Ring and police departments every week for the last month. Some are sourced from duplicate news sites, but are about the same thing.
Yeah, it's troubling. But holy cow is nothing else going on? Is someone trying to cover their short on Amazon or something?
Yes, we know. (Score:1)
https://slashdot.org/index2.pl... [slashdot.org]