Ring Refuses To Say How Many Users Had Video Footage Obtained By Police (techcrunch.com) 49
Ring gets a lot of criticism, not just for its massive surveillance network of home video doorbells and its problematic privacy and security practices, but also for giving that doorbell footage to law enforcement. While Ring is making moves towards transparency, the company refuses to disclose how many users had their data given to police. From a report: The video doorbell maker, acquired by Amazon in 2018, has partnerships with at least 1,800 U.S. police departments (and growing) that can request camera footage from Ring doorbells. Prior to a change this week, any police department that Ring partnered with could privately request doorbell camera footage from Ring customers for an active investigation. Ring will now let its police partners publicly request video footage from users through its Neighbors app. The change ostensibly gives Ring users more control when police can access their doorbell footage, but ignores privacy concerns that police can access users' footage without a warrant. [...] Ring received over 1,800 legal demands during 2020, more than double from the year earlier, according to a transparency report that Ring published quietly in January. Ring does not disclose sales figures but says it has "millions" of customers. But the report leaves out context that most transparency reports include: how many users or accounts had footage given to police when Ring was served with a legal demand? When reached, Ring declined to say how many users had footage obtained by police.
Re:What is problem with police having video anyway (Score:5, Insightful)
If you trust the police more than Amazon, you haven't been paying attention.
The police have a much higher body count of innocent civilians murdered, beaten, framed and stalked.
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If you trust the police more than Amazon, you haven't been paying attention.
I don't know about that, I would throw that statement right back at you but reversed... if you trust Amazon more than the police, YOU have not ben paying attention!
Amazon has more of a global reach and potential impact on your life than the police do, and the police are at least somewhat constrained by laws whereas you are only one bored Amazon sysadmin away from having a very bad day.
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Please try not to be a jackass. My local cop is armed and dangerous, and he works in my neighbourhood. The same guys I saw laugh at a woman who had been threatened by a convicted rapist literally hold my life in their hands. I was going to say you can't possibly be so stupid you believe, in the spite of mountains of evidence to the contrary, that the police are "at least somewhat constrained by laws". But then I had to conclude that yes, you actually are.
Amazon has zero impact on my life, except insofar
Re:What is problem with police having video anyway (Score:5, Insightful)
Amazon has more of a global reach and potential impact on your life than the police do
Absolutely untrue. Pray tell, who with Amazon has the legal authority to kick my door in and kill me? I might be one bored Amazon admin away from a bad day, but I'm only one bored cop away from being dead.
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Pray tell, who with Amazon has the legal authority to kick my door in and kill me? I might be one bored Amazon admin away from a bad day, but I'm only one bored cop away from being dead.
Pray tell, what do you really think the societal response to murder-by-boredom is going to be?
Sadly, cops will quickly find out there's a hell of a lot more "bored" civilians who likely won't be that civil after something like that shit happens. Society will riot, loot, burn, beat, and kill, for a hell of a lot less.
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These are the problems I've heard about (Score:1, Insightful)
The cameras lead to more arrests for petty theft, which is causing more racism and putting more people into the prison system which causes them problems for life.
People are also making racist comments on the videos of package theft.
Re:These are the problems I've heard about (Score:5, Insightful)
If people don't want to be arrested for petty theft and go into the prison system and have problems for life, they have a couple of obvious choices:
- Don't commit petty theft.
- Move to Los Angeles, whose District Attorney doesn't believe in prosecuting petty theft.
Rasicm is increased by arbitrary rule enforcement (Score:2)
The cameras lead to more arrests for petty theft, which is causing more racism
You are probably trolling and don't really believe that, but just in case I thought I should say I find your notion incredibly backwards. Arresting fewer people for petty theft causes more racism because people resent others who break the rules and get away with it...
Strongly enforcing laws against petty crimes makes you trust everyone, of every race, more not less.
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The cameras lead to more arrests for petty theft, which is causing more racism and putting more people into the prison system which causes them problems for life.
Normally, I ignore ACs, but I will bite. How exactly does somebody stealing from me cause more racism? And if somebody DOES steal from me, why should they NOT be put in jail if it is a $1K+ item or if that person has done this multiple times?
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5 white people steal packages and 5 black people do the same.
Some of your racist friends share the 5 black videos on Facebook etc and all the people see it and get more racist, including you. Nobody shares the 5 white people videos.
We know already Americans can't spot fake news. [cnn.com] But you expect them to have the nuance required to understand their Facebook feeds might be biased?
Re: These are the problems I've heard about (Score:2)
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BUT, normally, when somebody is stolen from, and they have videos, I suspect that they will show ALL OF THEM.
To think that somebody would only show one or the other, well, that is racist.
Re:What is problem with police having video anyway (Score:4, Insightful)
But those cameras do not belong to the police, and they do not belong to you. Presumably, they do not belong to Ring either, unless someone has radically redefined property rights while I wasn't looking.
You want the government to take someone else's private property without asking or paying for it? I dunno, sounds kinda commie to me man. I thought you were one of those free market, property rights above all else types? Turns out you are just fine with a little communism when it suits you. And more than a little authoritarianism.
But I get it, I really do. I mean, you obviously trust our current government, and all future versions of it, implicitly and know, for sure, that no government employee would ever abuse their powers for evil. That's refreshingly trusting of you.
I mean, a cop would never use their access to this camera footage to stalk someone or hurt someone they had an argument with. Cops are perfect, and the government is your best friend!
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You want the government to take someone else's private property without asking or paying for it?
The homeowner needs to approve the video to be released to the police. Fuck off spun. You are a piece of shit. Get back in the server room kid and stop playing Marxist Revolutionary on the Internet.
Approve? You mean like society approved PRISM?
Shut the fuck up and let the adults talk about the very history you refuse to learn from.
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That was not always the case and only changed due to public outcry. 1010101101001/OMBad at it again with the sock puppets... You have a tell, you know that, right? Makes it absolutely obvious it's you.
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You want the government to take someone else's private property without asking or paying for it?
Videos are not property, they records of photons that were flying around in public.
You seem to think the police come to your house and literally rip the Ring camera off your door? Oh dear.
All the rest of your statement is gibberish because of your lack of understanding of these simple facts.
For even further clarification I am talking about video of spaces that could have been recorded by anyone in a public spac
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No, videos are intellectual property, copyright by whoever takes them. What else could they possibly be? The rest of your gibbering is as idiotic as your take on who owns the video.
But I'll remember this next time you try to argue for property rights, or that the government is tyrannical. It's obvious you only give a fuck about tyranny or property when it impact your in-group. You know what that makes you? Yeah, you know.
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I actually do not care at all if police access footage from public facing video cameras... In fact I trust the police a lot more than Amazon, which is why I don't own a Ring camera
Follow the money. Or in this case, the perverse incentives. Most polices in the US are incentivized to perform on five metrics:
1. reduction in number of serious crimes reported, compared to previous time period
2. clearance rate
3. response time
4. number of arrests, citations, stop-and-frisk searches
5. fines gathered
Note that "*correctly* identifying criminals" isn't on that list. It's one possible factor that might lead to improvements in metric (1), but only indirectly.
Given these incentives, what police ac
Privacy Shmivacy (Score:4, Insightful)
Why don't I have cloud based cameras when they are so much cheaper and less hassle than my gaggle of Raspberry Pi?
This.
Right.
Here.
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Imagine the data with drone deliveries (Score:3)
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If amazon has been this problematic with sharing video with police with ring, imagine what they'll do with the video feeds from delivery drones.
Who do you think is helping approve that flying box of surveillance...
Inverse? (Score:2)
Can they tell us how much footage total there is and how much footage hasn't been obtained by police?
Why would they? (Score:2)
Why would they give out that info?
The reason may be different than you think (Score:5, Interesting)
Based on several conversations I've had with the local police, the reason why Ring won't reveal the numbers is probably because they're so low.
One officer I spoke to was particularly critical: he considers the "partnership" between Amazon and the police to be nothing more than an advertising gimmick to sell Ring cameras. According to him:
(1) The police have to request access from Ring for every criminal incident. There is no blanket access. The police provide Ring with the time and location of the crime.
(2) Ring does not supply the police with the names or the addresses of any camera owners in that area. All they will do is confirm if there are Ring cameras nearby, and then Ring contacts the owners to request their permission to forward any relevant video clips to the police.
(3) Any Ring owners contacted must grant permission for this access, and guess what? Very few Ring owners respond to the requests. And if they do respond, the video obtained is generally worthless.
The officer told me that he obtains video footage the old fashioned way: he looks at the homes nearby, sees if any of them have cameras, and knocks on doors to ask the owners for help. That way he's not limited to any single manufacturer or brand, nor does he have to go through Amazon to do it.
In his opinion, the Amazon / police "partnership" is a carefully cultivated advertising strategy to make potential Ring buyers believe that their cameras will be effective and valuable crime-fighting tools, when in fact the exact opposite is true. And when you consider the quality and type of video that Ring cameras typically provide, I think he's right.
Ring makes decent video doorbells. They do not make good security cameras.
Re:The reason may be different than you think (Score:4, Interesting)
Those reasons (1-3) are precisely the controls that should be the case, albeit not something many people would want to assume is actually in place.
Without transparency though, it really is hard to trust anything.
Transparency. Of and For the Children. (Score:2)
While Ring is making moves towards transparency, the company refuses to disclose how many users had their data given to police.
Amazon is big and powerful enough that THEY will define transparency now. Not you.
And consumers are ignorant sheep that they will literally defend it in the end.
Too many morons always thinking of the children. Maybe you should fucking ask the children about that. They're the ones who are going to live with these idiotic decisions to "protect" them.
Ring gets a lot of criticism (Score:1)
Eh, why should they care? The money makes up for it, by a pretty good margin. Cost/benefit ratio is the only thing that matters
So hard (Score:2)
I have ... (Score:2)
Your kids will not thank you and that's OK. (Score:2)
The answer is all the Rings? (Score:2)
So? (Score:2)
"...any police department that Ring partnered with could privately request doorbell camera footage FROM RING CUSTOMERS."
As long as it's up to the customer whether to give the video to the police, that's none of anyone else's business, just like it would be if I gave them a polaroid print, or told them what I saw on Tuesday.
That's as it should be, as opposed to literally millions of cameras operated by the police, like in that police state formerly known as "UK," or the one that was falsely accused of invent