[ehsankia]

Indeed. People fear monger about the police's ability to request footage from a neighborhood (key point being request, the owner of the Ring still gets to look at the footage and decide to release it or not). Yet no one speaks about all the previously unsolvable burglaries and crimes that can now be prevented or solved thanks to this.

A lot of these articles make it sound like Ring gives unilateral full access to the police, which is just plain and simple FUD.

[citilife]

> A lot of these articles make it sound like Ring gives unilateral full access to the police, which is just plain and simple FUD.

Actually, we know that a large portion of data obtained by the NSA can be shared with law enforcement[1]. We also know the NSA isn't exactly upfront about how much they collect and that they can basically collect what they wish without reprocusions[2]. We also know that Ring has given access to police and partnered with 630+ departments[3] directly.

Not even close to "plain and simple FUD", as most things it's a bit more nuanced.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/12/us/politics/nsa-gets-more...

[2] https://www.pbs.org/video/frontline-united-states-secrets-pa...

[3] https://www.cnet.com/news/ring-gave-police-a-street-level-vi...

[ehsankia]

The first two have much more to do with NSA just having too much unilateral access (re: Snowden leaks) than anything Ring specific. I guess it can be argued that any company that collects any data whatsoever is making NSA more data rich, but what's the alternative, but again the root issue there lies with the US government itself.

As for the third one, I'm not sure what your point is. The specific article only speaks of a heatmap of doorbells. The article also states the the precise location of the doorbell isn't even given, let alone footage.

I don't think anyone considers that data to be anywhere equal to giving access to video feed. You can simply drive down the road and see which houses have a Ring doorbell, or probably even detect them sniffing packets.

[antris]

> I guess it can be argued that any company that collects any data whatsoever is making NSA more data rich, but what's the alternative, but again the root issue there lies with the US government itself.

Buying less "on the cloud by default" devices and using encryption.

[ehsankia]

Your first point is fair, though, again, you can't completely ignore the utility these services bring. And while it is possible to have Cloud-less alternatives, not everyone is a Hackernews type person that can setup local opensource alternative on a linux box in their spare time.

Your latter point doesn't really make sense. I'm fairly sure all of these devices use encryption to the cloud, it's just that the NSA has access to the unencrypted data on the cloud itself, theoretically. Unless you mean storing your own encrypted data on the cloud, which again goes back to the point above.

[autoexec]

> Indeed. People fear monger about the police's ability to request footage from a neighborhood (key point being request, the owner of the Ring still gets to look at the footage and decide to release it or not).

If you refuse to give police the video they can just request from amazon directly. You don't get to control what happens to that video once it touches amazon's servers. Once the police have it they can keep it forever, share it with others (like ICE or the FBI), and once again you have no control. Amazon tracks people who refuse to hand over video to the police directly and they share stats about them with police.

[megascone]

> Amazon tracks people who refuse to hand over video to the police directly and they share stats about them with police.

What are you talking about?

[autoexec]

https://gizmodo.com/ring-gave-police-stats-about-users-who-s...

As discussed here not that long ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21346307

[ehsankia]

Sounds a little misleading. I'm not sure that most people would feel violated due to being included in a "2% of users pressed Do Not Share button" statistics. It's not like Ring is giving actual user data or any way for the police to pin point said users.

[autoexec]

Police get actual user data when users agree to submit video to them, they know that requests are sent to every user within a certain range of the location they choose, and they often know exactly who has the cameras installed in that area (because the cameras were sold/installed by them or purchased using taxpayer-funded discount programs or just by driving past and looking at the doors). If you refuse to share the data but most of your neighbors do it would not be hard for them to narrow down which houses didn't.

[ehsankia]

So you're saying that the cops are spending all their time driving down every street in the neighborhood, memorizing the position of Ring cameras, then correlating those with videos they received and eliminating until they pin point the one house that refused to share the video, all for what? I can understand general paranoia about the police but that's some next level tin-foil hat stuff.

[Spooky23]

The "request" is a convenience. Just like any other cloud provider, it's just a subpoena away.

It's incredibly dumb to host 24x7 video surveillance of your home and your comings and goings outside of your home.

[pdonis]

> It's incredibly dumb to host 24x7 video surveillance of your home and your comings and goings outside of your home.

"Incredibly dumb" is way out of line. Many people (including me) find having such video available to be extremely useful. Yes, there is a tradeoff involved if you are buying the video capability from a third party instead of rolling your own, but many people find it a tradeoff worth making.

[Spooky23]

There are solutions that provide a seamless experience for accessing footage without storing data outside of the home.

When you host information with a third party, your only protection is your contract.

[pdonis]

> There are solutions that provide a seamless experience for accessing footage without storing data outside of the home.

Can you give some specific examples?

Also, storing data outside of the home (or at least backup copies of it) might be a good idea in case something happens to your home.

[jonathankoren]

Self hosting isn't dumb. It is literally what was done for decades. The fact is that most crimes are smash and grab, and they literally do no have the time to wander around your house looking for a DVR. It's fine.

[awalton]

You misread; gp said it was dumb to host this content outside of your home. Self-hosting this content is completely reasonable, as noted.

[heavyset_go]

> People fear monger about the police's ability to request footage from a neighborhood (key point being request, the owner of the Ring still gets to look at the footage and decide to release it or not).

The police can ask nicely for it by requesting it, or demand the video with a warrant or subpoena.

Getting a warrant or subpoena for your video data is infinitely easier than it would be without Ring as an intermediary, because Ring already told the police the data does, indeed, exist and that you have it. It's also infinitely easier because a judge is more likely to sign off on a warrant for video from a specific person and camera, than they are for a warrant that casts a wider net.

If they go to Ring with a warrant for video the company says you have, you don't even have to be notified when its taken.