[chrisfosterelli]

Yeah, it looks like:

1. Users opt to share video clips

2. Police can't view unshared videos without requesting

3. The whole thing is opt-in

I don't see an issue here. It's a technical framework around something that already exists: police going door-to-door and asking for video clips. Why not make this more efficient?

I can see the potential for abuse, as it is all centralized. But I think "portal for mass surveillance" is a bit of an exaggeration.

[toomuchtodo]

> I can see the potential for abuse

But that is the problem. The potential exists, and without proper governance and oversight, you don't have the ability as a citizen to walk back abuse when it begins to occur. You only have the options of submitting to continued abuse, moving to a more sane locale, or the uphill political battle of defending your rights.

Authoritarianism is a slow boil, and doesn't happen overnight (usually; occasionally it does!).

[kentm]

I agree with your point. To elaborate my position, once one builds an opt-in surveillance network, it only requires a shift in public policy to remove the opt-in nature. You would have to have strong confidence in the safeguards against such a thing -- mainly the court system siding with privacy, which is not a sure thing historically speaking.

I would cooperate with the police to help solve an actual crime, but I certainly would not opt in to this. I would even go one step further and say that I likely wouldn't buy this product at all.

I would prefer home automation systems that have basically no cloud infrastructure. It is unfortunate that, if such a thing even exists, it is poorly marketed.

[dsfyu404ed]

>moving to a more sane locale,

The last frogs out of the pot before it boils always find whatever pot they migrate to to be far too cold for their taste and insist upon turning up the burner.

Relocating only buys time. At some point you have to make a stand if the problem is to be solved. The culture that tolerates authoritarianism and paternalistic government needs to actively be stopped if we want to see it relegated to history textbooks. You can't just keep moving away from it.

[fixermark]

However, are we throwing the baby of crowd-sourced neighborhood policing opted into by residents (essentially, a digitally-assisted neighborhood watch) with the bathwater of potential for abuse?

What are the actual abuse scenarios that we would fear could occur?

These technologies aren't either-or; they're a tradeoff of possible benefits and drawbacks. What concrete drawbacks should we be concerned with here?

[toomuchtodo]

> What are the actual abuse scenarios that we would fear could occur?

Abuse by police for non-official business (stalking). Targeting of individual citizens and their daily activities because they attempt to hold public officials accountable. Constant surveillance of the wrong individuals. All off the top of my head from events that have occurred ("ripped from the headlines"). I could go on, but only because I take time to hold my public officials and government accountable as a hobby.

It is deeply unsettling, based on history (not just global, local US history alone), when technology professionals retort to issues like this with, "What's the big deal?"

[fixermark]

Is that tradeoff worth seeing many, many fewer Amazon packages stolen wholesale from front porches?

... if you ask around, you may find the average neighborhood resident's answer is "yes." Especially if one finds the average neighborhood citizen isn't living under a corrupt police hierarchy, but instead an underfunded / understaffed one.

[toomuchtodo]

If you're willing to trade your privacy and security for reduced Amazon package theft, I'm unable to reason with you as my neighbor.

[fixermark]

Sounds like you live in one of the neighborhoods that doesn't have a rampant theft problem, but okay. ;)

FWIW, the bias I approach this from is that we can't order packages delivered to my relatives because petty theft is so rampant in their area that packages will, on average, go missing. And the police are too underfunded to do anything about the new trend of theft right now. This technology would be life-changing in terms of convenience to them; it's a non-trivial expenditure of resources to schlep out to an Amazon pickup center of the post office to get anything large.

[alphabettsy]

The only abuse scenario I’ve seen on the app so far myself is people of color continually having their images shared as suspicious while walking down the sidewalk. Maybe that says more about my area than anything, but that’s a potential problem.

That, and a lady posted a photo of a vehicle and license plate that she followed several days after a recent minor crime was associated with a vehcile of the same make and color. Not sure if it ended up being the vehicle, but this should’ve only been shared with law enforcement since it could’ve been anyone’s car that happened to be similar.

[fixermark]

Risk of increasing efficiency of racism is definitely a concern. On the plus side, an audit trail dataset of "suspicious person" neighborhood reports coupled with some racial-identification of the subjects in the images would be a concrete dataset to demonstrate structural racism to the (still-existant) nonbelievers in the phenomenon.

[epicide]

The technologies aren't either/or, but the implementation, control, and regulations are.

I'm all for neighborhoods policing themselves, but this isn't even close to that.

I would be fine with there being additional tools that assist the individual consumer with reporting crimes or providing video evidence to police. Amazon/Ring/whoever doesn't need to be involved with what is a local/neighborhood issue.

[fixermark]

> Amazon/Ring/whoever doesn't need to be involved with what is a local/neighborhood issue

In what way? Who on Earth is going to set up and maintain those tools, pay for the hardware, provide service channels for the hardware, etc.?

Technological sophistication is by no means uniformly distributed.

[epicide]

I don't take issue with them making the hardware and selling a product. I have an issue with them being so heavily involved with the police side of things.

There's a big difference between a feature that allows consumers to report a video and a feature that allows police to demand a video.

[fixermark]

But they are both features that have to be implemented, and they'll be implemented sooner if done by the same org.

If we have no problem with the police having the tool at all, why would it be bad for Amazon to implement it?

(Unless the issue is you don't think the police should have the tool at all, in which case the question is "Who should? Can private citizens be trusted with this information aggregation? Can private citizens' designated / elected representatives? Or should we just make sharing of private video feeds for surveillance purposes illegal, uh... somehow?").

[fixermark]

(Also, FWIW, "request to voluntarily divulge video" is not the same as "demand").

[cycop]

This comes to mind: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/calgary-police-office...