Is Amazon Responding to Employee Concerns About 'Ring' Privacy? (inc.com) 32
"The deployment of connected home security cameras that allow footage to be queried centrally are simply not compatible with a free society," wrote Amazon software developer Max Eliaser (as part of last week's Medium post from "Amazon Employees For Climate Justice.")
"The privacy issues are not fixable with regulation and there is no balance that can be struck. Ring should be shut down immediately and not brought back."
Inc. columnist Chris Matyszczyk describes what happened next: Amazon released a new control center for Ring. It instituted a few more privacy-conscious settings. One of its new features involves the ability to "opt out of receiving video request notifications when local police seek information related to an investigation."
That, to some eyes, may be a start -- or even a swift reaction to Eliaser's comments. Many might want to believe that an employee's strong words could bring some positive reaction.
Sadly, this new control center only gives customers the option to opt out, rather than have the default set the other way around. It does, though, at least inform customers which police departments have joined the Ring Neighbors app and therefore are more likely to make requests.
Ring did insist that "this is just the beginning. Future versions of Control Center will provide users the ability to view and control even more privacy and security features."
The new control center also lets Ring's users see if two-factor authentication is enabled, add and remove Shared Users, and view and remove all devices and third-party services authorized to log into their account.
Amazon's blog post about the changes adds that not only security but also privacy "have always been our top priority."
"The privacy issues are not fixable with regulation and there is no balance that can be struck. Ring should be shut down immediately and not brought back."
Inc. columnist Chris Matyszczyk describes what happened next: Amazon released a new control center for Ring. It instituted a few more privacy-conscious settings. One of its new features involves the ability to "opt out of receiving video request notifications when local police seek information related to an investigation."
That, to some eyes, may be a start -- or even a swift reaction to Eliaser's comments. Many might want to believe that an employee's strong words could bring some positive reaction.
Sadly, this new control center only gives customers the option to opt out, rather than have the default set the other way around. It does, though, at least inform customers which police departments have joined the Ring Neighbors app and therefore are more likely to make requests.
Ring did insist that "this is just the beginning. Future versions of Control Center will provide users the ability to view and control even more privacy and security features."
The new control center also lets Ring's users see if two-factor authentication is enabled, add and remove Shared Users, and view and remove all devices and third-party services authorized to log into their account.
Amazon's blog post about the changes adds that not only security but also privacy "have always been our top priority."
Privacy control center? (Score:5, Insightful)
That would interfere with the real activity. (Score:5, Insightful)
Encrypting at the source would deprive Amazon of the ability to view said video, which they are undoubtedly using to train up one or more AIs. It would also deny those AIs opportunities to direct market at you based on your surveillance video.
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Amazon as simply easing off the privacy invasion to allow greater adoption before ramping up the privacy invasion again. Don't be fooled, all those devices can be updated and no matter what they claim at the beginning, they will become more and more invasive until regulation, LAWS, block it. It is psychopathic greed and it knows no limitation beyond, the profits being greater than the fines, holding it's executives as being above the law.
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Fake choices (Score:2)
If law enforcement want the footage, they can get it directly from Ring because Ring has rights to the footage, not just the camera owner.
It can be fixed (Score:5, Insightful)
It can be fixed, but it won't be. Move it out of the cloud and it'll be fine. Local control, local configuration, local storage. Nobody else needs to know you have it unless they see it in person.
Re:It can be fixed (Score:4, Insightful)
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OK-ish, but only if the camera can be set to store it somewhere else (such as a PC or NAS in your own LAN. Otherwise, you''re introducing unnecessary dependencies on Internet service and somebody else's computer.
Agreed (Score:3)
>"The deployment of connected home security cameras that allow footage to be queried centrally are simply not compatible with a free society," wrote Amazon software developer Max Eliaser. "The privacy issues are not fixable with regulation and there is no balance that can be struck. Ring should be shut down immediately and not brought back."
I couldn't agree more. And the biggest problem is that it takes away EVERYONE ELSE'S privacy, not just the person agreeing to whatever terms and putting in the system. Yeah, yeah, people can't "expect privacy in a public place" like on the street. But technology is rapidly challenging the concept of being left alone in such places. Can you expect that a drone not follow you around everywhere you go outside, taking cloud video of what you do and where you go? And then the police or courts can just access that stuff with a very low bar? And the company storing it can do just about anything with it? How long is it stored? Who will ever have access to it? How is it being tagged and used? Can you believe any claims a company makes about their "services"? Sounds crazy- but that is what this is evolving into- 24x7 monitoring everywhere and infinite "look-back" with scary levels of tagging and indexing.
It isn't that I don't trust Amazon, it is that I don't trust *ANY* third party having that kind of power. People need to wake up and start thinking about this stuff- I can understand wanting to enhance security, but people need to store it themselves, and without third-parties having access to it.
Do we want to live in a world where we feel like we are (and actually are) being watched and monitored everywhere we go? Freedom/privacy and safety/convenience are usually diametrically opposed. At what point did people decide that freedom/privacy are so unimportant?
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connected home security cameras
But what about other security cameras? What about cameras run by businesses? Outlaw those too. What about municipalities and the police? Outlaw those as well. What about cameras installed by federal three letter agencies? Jump up and down. Throw all the hissy-fits you want. They don't care.
We have a few in my neighborhood. I've seen some output from them and I can sort of guess where they are. Approximately. But I can't pick the cameras themselves out. And they are not about to take them down (which actual
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>"But what about other security cameras?"
What about them?
>"What about cameras run by businesses?"
Traditional on-site storage only? Or "cloud based" with outside entities in control?
>"Outlaw those too. "
I never said anything about "outlawing" anything.
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Ring should be shut down immediately and not brought back.
I never said anything about "outlawing" anything.
It's a product that people want. I don't see how you'd shut them down any other way.
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As such, Rich's comments cannot be reasonably interpreted
Rich who? There's a David, Max and Mark.
What you are doing here is why we can't have informative discussions on Slashdot.
No. That would be the ad hominem attacks.
Someone is full blast anti Ring (Score:1)
Re:Someone is full blast anti Ring (Score:5, Insightful)
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I just noticed that CNet has an articlebest home security cameras [cnet.com], I wonder if any of those support local recording? Or are they falling for the cloud security cameras trend?
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Sorry to follow-up right away: The arlo doorbells support local storage. [arlo.com]
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Where did the police budget go in that city?
People save their wage, pension to get a package sent to them.
Criminals steal the package and get away with the crime.
City police do nothing, say nothing... might take a report... city crime stats get "hidden"... no new police work to stop the crime.
The working poor, poor, wealthy are just to accept crime down their streets as the city police are too busy, lazy, corrupt, incompetent to stop crimes
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Can only be fixed with general laws (Score:2)
There are too many ways to monitor / track / spy on people. Attempts to control / regulate individual technologies just end up playing whack-a-mole, as new technologies pop up.
Attempting to resist as individuals is also doomed - you can choose not to buy various technologies, but as more and more devices phone home, you will find yourself more and more isolated from the modern world.
Hows that going to work? (Score:3)
I'm not at all sure how a setting in an app is going to prevent the police from walking up to my door, knocking, and politely telling me that they're investigating an incident in my street, and they see that I have a CCTV camera and could they inspect it's recordings for any evidence. (There wasn't - the event was out of frame, but even I didn't know that without actually looking at the footage.)
Of course, my CCTV wasn't connected to the Internet. After all, why would I do that?
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I dont see anything wrong with police asking explicitly for your help in solving a specific crime using footage from your camera... you would be welcome to refuse (unless they got a warrant). that's the way these things are supposed to work.
I'm also ok with visual verification on a security system. your alarm goes off and the monitoring service gets temporary live access to your cameras to confirm a real issue before dispatching. You chose that and opted into it.
giving them automatic access to all your vi
Bravo! (Score:2)
The system with the greatest security is air-gapped from the outside world. Inconvenient? Absolutely, but it works. Inquire any security minded business or government and they will agree. Any issues can be monitored by the user and submitted to the proper authorities, without exposing everything to unauthorized personnel.
Remem