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Crime Privacy

Police Say Amazon's Ring Isn't Much of a Crime Fighter (nbcnews.com) 78

Ring's promotional video includes the police chief of the small Florida suburb of Winter Park saying "we understand the value of those cameras in helping us solve crimes." But over the last 22 months, their partnership with Ring hasn't actually led to a single arrest, reports NBC News.

The only crime it solved was a 13-year-old boy who opened two delivered packages, decided he didn't like what was inside, and rode away on his bike. "Eventually the boy was sent to a state diversion program for first-time offenders in lieu of being formally charged in court."

Ring promises to "make neighborhoods safer" by deterring and helping to solve crimes, citing its own research that says an installation of its doorbell cameras reduces burglaries by more than 50 percent. But an NBC News Investigation has found -- after interviews with 40 law enforcement agencies in eight states that have partnered with Ring for at least three months -- that there is little concrete evidence to support the claim. Three agencies said the ease with which the public can share Ring videos means officers spend time reviewing clips of non-criminal issues such as racoons and petty disagreements between neighbors. Others noted that the flood of footage generated by Ring cameras rarely led to positive identifications of suspects, let alone arrests.

Thirteen of the 40 jurisdictions reached, including Winter Park, said they had made zero arrests as a result of Ring footage. Thirteen were able to confirm arrests made after reviewing Ring footage, while two offered estimates. The rest, including large cities like Phoenix, Miami, and Kansas City, Missouri, said that they don't know how many arrests had been made as a result of their relationship with Ring -- and therefore could not evaluate its effectiveness -- even though they had been working with the company for well over a year... None of the departments said they collect data to measure the impact of their Ring partnership in terms of reducing or deterring crimes, nor did they consistently record when Ring footage was helpful in identifying or arresting a suspect...

"There's a deafening lack of evidence that any city has been made safer," Liz O'Sullivan, the technology director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, a nonprofit that fights excessive local and state-level surveillance, told NBC News. The lack of evidence that Ring reduces crime adds to a list of concerns that have plagued the company in recent months, ranging from bad security practices to privacy questions surrounding the company's plans to incorporate facial recognition, among other biometric characteristics.

NBC News also spoke to Ben Stickle, a professor of criminal justice at Middle Tennessee State University (and a former police officer) who published an academic study analyzing the effectiveness of Ring cameras as a deterrent. "If you expect the camera to deter people, you're assuming that they see it and that they care. Those are two big assumptions."

Ring's claim that its doorbell cameras reduce crime seem to be based on a 2015 report by a police captain in Los Angeles' wealthy Wilshire Park neighborhood of a 55% drop in burglaries after Ring cameras were installed on 10% of the doors. But in an overlooked follow-up, MIT's Technology Review reported that in 2017, Wilshire Park "suffered more burglaries than in any of the previous seven years."
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Police Say Amazon's Ring Isn't Much of a Crime Fighter

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  • about these devices. You can put cameras on your property. Every retail outlet, bank and red light are equipped with cameras. But I can't install one on my front door?
    • by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Sunday February 16, 2020 @05:02AM (#59732556)

      Also, "number of arrests" is a very poor metric for success at fighting crime.

      As the crime rate falls, the number of arrests should also go down, preferably to zero.

      A better metric is the number of packages reported stolen.

      • I don't have a Ring because I want to increase the number of arrests (whatever that means). I have it to monitor my property. And I don't recall Ring saying anything about it increasing arrests? Maybe I missed that?
      • by arglebargle_xiv ( 2212710 ) on Sunday February 16, 2020 @06:30AM (#59732624)

        There's decades of experience with this in the UK, one of the most surveilled societies on the planet. Cameras don't prevent crime, they just relocate it. In other words crime figures remain constant before and after cameras, the lawbreakers just work around the presence of cameras.

        On the other hand, as the article points out, it's great for allowing neighbours to snitch on each other, and fuel petty disputes. Relax and enjoy in the lack of privacy of your own home.

        • There's decades of experience with this in the UK, one of the most surveilled societies on the planet. Cameras don't prevent crime, they just relocate it. In other words crime figures remain constant before and after cameras, the lawbreakers just work around the presence of cameras.

          However they do cause a significant increase in the sale of hoodies in the local community.

        • by mi ( 197448 )

          Cameras don't prevent crime, they just relocate it.

          I'd like to review your evidence for this claim. Please, post the link(s). Thank you!

          On the other hand, as the article points out

          The article describes a juvenile delinquent caught in the act...

        • Cameras don't prevent crime, they just relocate it.

          Do you have a citation for this claim?

          Criminologists believe that most property crime is opportunistic. If you remove the opportunity, you eliminate the crime.

        • by rtb61 ( 674572 )

          A front door camera is pointless except for deliveries, hence Amazon. Want that kind of security, you need to have cameras mounted under your eaves and the four external points. This could be monitored by a security company in the infrared and visual motion, using facial recognition technology, expanded to define the threat, person or a critter and switched off and one via phone call. Then you will have a surveillance state.

          The police could work with security companies to tie into that service, so monitori

        • Cameras don't prevent crime, they just relocate it.

          Excellent! So, if I install a Ring camera/doorbell thing criminals will go steal someone else's packages?

          That sounds like exactly what Ring's customers want. They want criminals to go elsewhere, and not steal/vandalize their stuff.

      • Number of arrests is not a good metric? What would be a good metric? According to the New York Times, more than 90,000 packages are stolen per day in New York City alone. (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/02/nyregion/online-shopping-package-theft.html) I'd suggest that the number of "porch thests" is still so large, and the number of related arrests still so low, that it's still a useful metric.

        • According to the New York Times, more than 90,000 packages are stolen per day in New York City alone.

          Why is this statistic not prompting New Yorkers to use Amazon Locker rather than have packages left by the door?

        • 90,000 per day seems incredibly high, almost too high to believe. That’s around 32 million per year or 4 stolen packages per resident every year.

          But setting all of that aside there aren’t 90,000 people stealing packages to be arrested. It’s going to be a much smaller group of people doing it, maybe as few as 3,000 individuals. Same with other crimes. Most murders are committed by a small portion of the population involved with gangs. A considerable number of rapes are by repeat offender
          • It does seem high. I quoted the New York Times. Do we need to explore their sources to provide more confidence in the number?

            Also, 3,000 people is not "a few individuals", even in a city the size of New York city. If they're committing 30 thefts a day, each, those are career criminals and precisely whom I'd expect even a slightly efective anti-crime tool to help capture.

      • I like the metric of the footage of the guy stealing the Ring camera itself.
      • by shilly ( 142940 )

        That's as sensible as saying the reported safety incidents on an industrial site is a poor metric because it should be going down over time.

        There's quite a lot of work that's gone into such concepts as "balanced scorecards" precisely because no single metric is adequate to manage a complex topic like crime or safety. You need a mixture of leading and lagging indicators, outcomes and proxy and intermediate metrics etc.

      • In addition, because media carries Ring videos of porch pirates, the awareness has grown tremendously, and police who previously did not care now do care.
      • by Hylandr ( 813770 )

        I am going with the criminals in power are becoming annoyed that they're too effective.

    • by JaredOfEuropa ( 526365 ) on Sunday February 16, 2020 @05:08AM (#59732562) Journal
      Most security cameras record to a local device, or at worst to a cloud service where probably nothing much at all happens to the footage. Not much privacy issues there. The problem with Ring is that the company running the service is actively using and sharing the collected footage, and (as TFS states) plan to add facial recognition, which will basically give them the power to track you wherever there are enough of these cameras.
      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Ring makes neighbourhoods less safe. The danger of having your neighbours able to monitor your movements and even see into your windows 24/7 far outweighs any potential benefits.

        • Bullshit.

          First, I don't know if you've ever been outside, but it's surprisingly hard to see into people's windows during the day. It's generally darker inside than outside, and glass is reflective. You're much more likely to see ground, sky, or the house across the street than into a window. At night, if you have your lights on and the shades up, yes. But most of these cameras are shit at night, and switch to infrared mode anyway. On top of that, most of these have shit resolution and fish-eye lenses, which are about the opposite of what you want if you want to spy on your neighbors.

          There are almost no circumstances where these cameras can see into a neighbor's house. None.

          Second, neighbors with too much time on their hands have always monitored people's movement. My grandmother had a pair of binoculars and a notebook on her front porch within reach of her rocking chair. She could tell you when every suspicious sound happened at night. When the troublemakers got home, etc. All these cameras do is automate this process.

          Neither of those things make neighborhoods less safe.

          My camera caught FedEx dropping off a $2000 laptop on the porch without a signature, allowing a family member to rush over and collect it. If a package thief had got that, you can bet your ass that they'd be back hanging around on a semi-regular basis to see if they could get more goodies like that. That's making the neighborhood safer.

          Most people with cameras don't pay attention to them unless something odd happens. With mine that's definitely true. People walking dogs get picked up when their dogs wander into the front yard. I couldn't tell you who they are, or even what kind of dogs they were walking, because I don't bother looking closely. Occasionally the kids next door wander into my back yard near the deck to get a stray ball or something. Happens sometimes, I don't care, and I'm not really interested. When the other neighbor takes a shortcut through my yard with a wheelbarrow gardening to avoid the steepest part of the hill, whatever. I know it happens from the tracks in the grass, the camera doesn't add much.

          But it's really nice to know how often random strangers pull up into the driveway and hop out and knock on my door when I'm not home. Especially if they're repeat visitors. And it's really nice to know that the secluded lower sliding glass door under the deck has some eyes on it all the time, because while residential burglaries are rare around here, when they happen, that's the point of entry 75% of the time. The cost of the cameras is less than the cost of a new sliding glass door, and less than an insurance deductible.

          I wish I didn't need to have cameras. It's not anything I ever wanted. But property crime is a thing around here, and the hassle of installing and maintaining a couple of cameras is far, far less than dealing with pretty much any sort of property crime, especially if it involves an insurance claim.

        • The joke is on them, I keep my blinds closed. That said, if you can facially recognize someone from a random ring camera and then triangulate from their location which drop phone they are carrying to a secret resistance movement meeting...you should be concerned. This is possible right now, not in some future time... also this tinfoil really chafes.
    • You don't understand it, alright.

      Let me explain:
      I'm German.
      . . .
      Need I say more?

      • by BAReFO0t ( 6240524 ) on Sunday February 16, 2020 @06:58AM (#59732658)

        1. The problem with cameras VS security personnel can be condensed to one word: Permanence.
        Nobody would have a problem with normal security personnel. But human society only works, if you are allowed to change. E.g. learn from your mistakes and better yourself. Or getting out of a hole and stop having to be a thief to survive.
        The legal system is designed to forgive. At least it should.
        But that can't happen, if there are permanent records of you floating around the Internet, to be used by assholes with pitchforks for decades after, to drag you back, ... or to just ruin your life, no matter how upstanding.

        2. There are *always* totalitarian assholes trying to subdue people by "finding" things on them.
        These cameras are the rope you give them to hang you with.
        Yes, you as an owner too!

        It combines both. In the worst way.

        Essentially, on top and separate of (deluding yourself into believing you are) protecting your home, you're also additionally the same as a snitch for the Gestapo. A permanent one, that never forgets.

        And we merely suggest actually keeping your home safe, and *not doing the latter*.

        And yes, it will end up in the hands of assholes. Or even in public. Don't be naive.

        By the way: In the small village my grandparents lived at (and the whole area), after the war, the snitches were strung up on the church towers.

        • Essentially, on top and separate of (deluding yourself into believing you are) protecting your home, you're also additionally the same as a snitch for the Gestapo. A permanent one, that never forgets.

          Nobody, not even Donald Trump, is setting up a system for dragging your precious porch pirates out of concert halls and college classrooms to burn them in concentration camps.

          • Nobody, not even Donald Trump, is setting up a system for dragging your precious porch pirates out of concert halls and college classrooms to burn them in concentration camps.

            Not yet - but give it time.

          • One of the first comments talked about a reduction in arrests being a better metric. What better way to have fewer arrests than to get rid of criminals committing the crimes? Fewer criminals = fewer arrests.

            And before you say it, yes, I am aware it has been shown the death penalty doesn't deter criminals. The reason is clear: we're not dragging porch pirates out of concert halls and college classrooms.

            Start getting rid of these people. Put out their names and faces for all to see and it is reasonably ce

      • I'm German.

        No, you're rsilvergun

        But that's not important right now. Please, do carry on.

    • by dfghjk ( 711126 )

      I don't think you really want it explained to you, but here goes:

      Private citizens are spending their own private money to provide personal surveillance data that police subsequently access without checks and balances. That's the outrage. The fact that a person appears in public and can be photographed is not a basis for allowing or enabling unrestricted, unchecked surveillance powers to the police. There are checks and balances and they shouldn't be bypassed, much less at the cost of private citizens for

  • by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Sunday February 16, 2020 @05:05AM (#59732558)

    Cameras are often coupled with the promise of "somebody is watching". That is rarely the truth and many people realize this. Also, a camera is not the same as a person being present. In order for a deterrent to be present, there has to be a social interaction and that is only provided by physical presence of a person.

    What cameras are excellent for though, is tracing people, making statistical analyses and the like. So while they have very low value as a deterrent, they come with even higher threat of privacy invasion than an in-person watcher. Really the worst of both.

    • Cameras are often coupled with the promise of "somebody is watching". That is rarely the truth and many people realize this. Also, a camera is not the same as a person being present. In order for a deterrent to be present, there has to be a social interaction and that is only provided by physical presence of a person.

      What cameras are excellent for though, is tracing people, making statistical analyses and the like. So while they have very low value as a deterrent, they come with even higher threat of privacy invasion than an in-person watcher. Really the worst of both.

      Is an ADT (sign) or some other security service monitoring any more or less intrusive (or detrimental to theft) than a Ring? I seem to remember you could just buy signs from someplace on-line to make it look like you had a system installed...

      It may seem creepier to have Amazon (and it's mindless horde of drones and AI apps) pouring over your camera footage, but do you think for one second that any other monitoring service doesn't have a huge pile of videos and audio surveillance they amuse themselves with

      • by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Sunday February 16, 2020 @06:27AM (#59732616)

        I seem to remember you could just buy signs from someplace on-line

        You can buy fake security signs from Amazon.

        They also have a wide selection of fake cameras and fake TV strobes to make an empty house appear occupied.

        • by gweihir ( 88907 )

          And since the real ones have no real effect, the fake ones are as effective as the real ones! The mind boggles.

        • " fake TV strobes to make an empty house appear occupied."

            I never got the point of this as most people have a TV in their homes, and they are not much cheaper than a cheap crap Walmart TV that can serve the same purpose and more.

          • A TV simulator is cheap ($12 on Amazon) and uses very little power. It is just a small array of LEDs and a microcontroller. Point it at a curtain or upstairs window, and the pattern of lights simulates a TV flicking between scenes.

            I pay 12 cents per kwh and my TV uses 90 watts. If I use the simulator instead of a TV for 8 hours per day, it pays for itself in 5 months.

            I also avoid burnout on the TV screen.

            Lastly, many modern TVs can't be put on a timer. If the power goes off, they have to be manually tur

    • by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Sunday February 16, 2020 @06:06AM (#59732600)

      Cameras are often coupled with the promise of "somebody is watching". That is rarely the truth and many people realize this.

      These days, nobody is watching. SomeTHING is watching though - and it's watching 24/7.

      The issue here is that Amazon sold Ring devices to people and to the authorities as a security-enhancing device. But their real agenda is collecting data for themselves. The security pitch is just something to get people to buy the device, and sell them on the idea that it's a good thing to install them on their front porch.

      Same old story really...

      • Nah, even /. reported how Amazon's videos are "evaluated" by Amazon employees for "training" and "improvement" purposes.

        Also, we need to to stop acting as if a computer or even a unversal function that uses weight matrix multiplication (falsely called "AI"), was a separate individual!
        It is not any more separate than a hammer, or any other tool.
        It is only the condensed solidified behavior and actions of the programmer who used it.

        Not "the computer did"! Not "the program did". Say only "the *programmer* did"!

      • Same old story really...

        And in the end, the people were personally responsible for the demise of their privacy, choosing convenience and free access to social media over the freedom from a surveillance state.

        It's not that these camera feeds are being monitored 24/7, but like everything you put on the internet, they are accessible if someone with access chooses to do so.

      • by gweihir ( 88907 )

        Indeed. But why is the police (who should pretty much have the same data-collection agenda) admitting this does not have any real impact on crime?

        • Because, opposed to a wide spread belief, some police and departments are honest.
          • by gweihir ( 88907 )

            Ah, you mean these people are an anomaly and actually believe the propaganda story as to what the police is for. That makes sense.

  • Same story as every overbearing surveillance system.

    It's almost as if that wasn't its actual purpose ... ;)

  • It's a camera, THEY are supposed to be the crime-fighters.
    But I guess if the criminal doesn't wear a clearly lisible name-tag on the breast, they are unable to catch them.

    • Re: Small wonder (Score:2, Insightful)

      by guruevi ( 827432 )

      In most cases it's the police refusing to follow up. You can have a clear image of a person, have their name(s) and location and police still won't make the arrest.

      Why would they though, they'll be accused of racism and excessive violence with massive media attention if they arrest anyone for a simple "non-violent" burglary charge and most jurisdictions simply let the perps go faster than the cop can fill out the paperwork. And if they're illegal immigrants, they'll get a free pass altogether.

      • The jails are also overcrowded in many places in the US. A package thief is just not as important as a murderer. Police response to porch piracy depends on where you live.

  • Unless you are 13 or dumb and drunk you'll case the house first and look to see if it has a video doorbell before you rob it. If you're a bit brighter than that you'll look for video doorbells across the street etc Though I (like too many americans) don't even know any neighbors well enough that I'd thik of asking them for footage in case of a theft and would probably just leave it to the police

    So, like home security systems, the principle effect is probably less to deter crime and more to shift crime from those with video doorbells to those without. Still, it wouldn't surprise me if police who realize they have an ongoing pattern of such thefts eventually ask neighbors if they have footage and even a few arrests of criminals who regularly steal many packages could cut down on crime significantly. But that's likely to be more the result of actual old-fashioned inquiry than neighbors referring footage to the platform.

    As for the problems of 'trivial' complaints how hard is it really to ask the individual submitting the footage to check a box indicating the kind of crime they think they've captured (theft, physical assault, trespassing, or threats of violence etc..) and prioritize them the way police have been doing as long as they've existed.

    • The idea being that if a group of criminal's is stealing a bunch of packages a day (enough to warrant real manpower investment by the police) you'll either eventually notice the same face casing the houses beforehand and be able to set up a sting or they'll eventually miss some video doorbell in a hard to see location across the street. I wasn't contradicting the point that they'll surely try and avoid them.

    • Ummm Ya! Most criminals are dumb, thatâ(TM)s why they are criminals. Maybe 5% are smart, but you never hear of them as they donâ(TM)t get caught.

      • i doubt most crim's even the Dumb ones will use the front door to break in. they will use another entry that is less visible.
      • Maybe 5% are smart, but you never hear of them as they donâ(TM)t get caught.

        Because that subset of crooks are not the ones working the streets.

    • > Unless you are 13 or dumb and drunk

      Might I suggest that you are over-estimating the caution and cunning of a porch thief? Or an obnoxious neighbor? Or a punk traveling at least a few blocks from their home neighborhood, secure that the camera won't get a good enough picture to track their name through a law enforcement system that simply won't bother with small scale crimes?

    • "Unless you are 13 or dumb and drunk you'll case the house first and look to see if it has a video doorbell before you rob it. If you're a bit brighter than that you'll look for video doorbells across the street etc Though I (like too many americans) don't even know any neighbors well enough that I'd thik of asking them for footage in case of a theft and would probably just leave it to the police"

      A lot of burglaries are by meth heads or crack addicts looking for some expensive items to hock for thei

  • This is just like the non-responded to home cameras indoors... the police need to be paid by the camera company in order to care. They're not watching 24/7/365, but will gladly watch when they want to investigate you.

    Yet another case where security says they want to take everything and they'll sort it out, instead of the system of warrants that they used to respect.

  • Some of them are even in the IT industry.
  • by Some Guy I Dont Know ( 6200212 ) on Sunday February 16, 2020 @10:47AM (#59732878)

    When I want to discredit an anti-crime claim, I too like to pick a wealthy, 90% upper-class white suburb to do it in.

    Winter Park, Florida, has a population of about 25,000 people. Median income is about $70,000. Crime rate is lower than average - and significantly lower than many of the surrounding areas. In other words, it's already a low-crime area, with an additional bias against the sort of crimes Ring would help with. What surprise is it that Ring didn't help much in a short period of time!

    The same is true of the other areas studied - predominately small, wealthy, suburbs.

    There are PLENTY of reasons that Ring sucks - the cloud storage being the most obvious. But stories like this are just straight-up bullshit, and do more to reveal the agenda of the writer than anything about the usefulness of Ring.

  • by Rick Schumann ( 4662797 ) on Sunday February 16, 2020 @10:48AM (#59732882) Journal
    My more-than-an-ounce-of-common-sense says having surveillance cameras at everybodys' front door watching everything isn't going to 'make neighborhoods safer', it's just going to foster suspicion and mistrust amongst your neighbors, and feed into the worst tendencies humans have towards each other.
    In many places these days people don't talk to or otherwise fraternize with their neighbors, they keep them at arms' length. So-called 'social media' likely makes this even worse, encouraging people to stay away from each other and pretend that things on a computer screen are somehow just as good as live interaction with people. There's little worse I can think of that says "I don't trust you, neighbor" than having cameras all over your neighborhood. So yes, I have no trouble believing that all these 'Ring' doorbell cams don't do much of anything to deter actual crime, but I'm damned sure it's driving a wedge between neighbors.
    Want to have a safer neighborhood? Get to know your neighbors, ideally being friends with them. A strong local communitys' members watch out for each other, not eye each other with suspicion.
    We are living in a day and age where everyone everywhere is about as polarized and isolated as anyone could imagine. No laws, no legislation is going to change that; what will change that however is personal interaction. Start with your own neighbors and I think you'll be surprised at what eventually happens.
    • What about the people who have neighbors with Trump lawn signs? How can anyone possibly be friends with them? They are people with perverse moral values. Like the Germans of the Third Reich, they seemingly care about nothing more than racist scapegoating.
      • by GuB-42 ( 2483988 )

        That's exactly the point of GP. You don't know that neighbor with Trump lawn signs. But because he supports Trump (like most Americans, judging by the result of the last election) he must be a Nazi.

        Complete assholes are rare. That trump loving neighbor has political ideas you disagree with, and you probably won't become close friends, but he may be a good neighbor. After all you probably share a lot of ideas, like, neither of you want your packages stolen. He may even be one of the rare kind of people who n

        • Maybe, in this totally polarized country (world?) we're living in, if your Trump-supporting neighbor knew their non-Trump-supporting neighbors better, they'd realize we're not monsters who want to destroy everything they value, and ease up a bit.
    • "Trust but verify" -- Ronald Reagan
  • And conversely, it's way too easy. That's because the real world is complex. That's what makes science that you can't do in a lab really hard.

    I bet that these thing actually *do* reduce burglaries by over 50% ... if you choose the right town and the right houses. On the other hand if you choose a town with an average or low burglary rate and stick it on a house already festooned with alarm company stickers, I wouldn't expect miracles.

    Marketing claims work pretty much like political claims. They're both l

  • I was able to identify a person that broke into my car from a ring camera video. He had already been arrested, so the video did not lead to his arrest, but it was proof that he had been involved in other crimes that day.

  • To me the story here is that the police cannot be bothered for all the lesser crimes that ring doorbell would identify. When they say the doorbells have not led to a single arrest that is due to law enforcement efforts not the doorbell. Was talking with coworkers about package thieves and there were some great ring doorbell stories. One individual bought a house from a lady about a year ago. Packages started going missing and so they installed a ring doorbell. It was the lady who sold them the house, now s
  • Police do not want to sit at a desk and review video footage.

    • by ebvwfbw ( 864834 )

      Boring stuff. If it was showing a peep show, that's different.

      Maybe they need to mix in advertisements for Duncan Donuts. If they click they can get a free donut for the next day.

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