[mihaaly]

Oh, Jesus!!

This f shameless pretention of doing something noble - barely helpful above normal practices btw. - while manipulating clueless users into turning on mass-surveillance is revolting and disgusting. And ordinary employees figured this out, phrased, created content, implemmented, pubished, and are maintaining this dirty practice. Many times with (very misplaced) pride. Shame on all of them actively participating in this coward scheme!

[stogot]

I have a Ring. I got the email notifying me and was about to go disable it, but it doesn’t share anything. It says it will notify you that your camera detected the dog and then YOU choose to share the video or not. So I left it enabled, as it becomes a later choice. Effectively I’m not opted into sharing was my take.

[kotaKat]

But you’re opted into the automatic detection, regardless. Ring is still processing your video still to see if there’s a match to any Search Party unless you turn the feature off.

At what point will the police request a warrant to run their own Search Party without consent?

[stogot]

So what? It already processes my video to detect people walking toward my house. Thats why I bought a smart camera not a dumb camera

A dog isn’t even on par to identifying humans. But let’s suppose if there’s a shooter on the run and my camera detects it, would I share that. Yes of course. Why wouldn’t I?

[jononor]

These kinds of systems tends to also be used by abusive policemen monitoring their exes, and police tracking members of undesirable (but legal) activist groups, etc.

[jppittma]

See, I have no problem with searches that involve warrants and probably cause. They could already violate the shit out of your privacy with a warrant. That's kind of the point of a warrant.

[nerdsniper]

Yep but Ring doesn't require warrants to hand over your video if police say "it's an emergency". https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/01/amazon-ring-stop...

[dragonwriter]

If you don't require warrants as long as the requester uses magic words, then you just don’t require warrants, period.

[jappgar]

Shame on the idiots who place a webcam on their front doorstep too.

[red-iron-pine]

plenty of good use cases for it, and the popularity of the devices speak for themselves.

just don't get ones owned by evil megacorps who have openly said they'll sell access to ICE

[morshu9001]

What is an equivalently capable alternative that puts the user more in control?

The reason Ring is popular isn't just marketing or network effect, it's that it works. Before Ring and clones, security camera / DVR combos were really hard to make effective, I tried. Maybe you'd have a totally reliable system with good video, but it'd fail to notify you when you need it to, or notify way too often. Battery power was infeasible because cameras couldn't sleep. Phone notifications were DIY. A long compounding list of things could go wrong and make you miss an important event or fail to record it entirely. I'm hoping those have caught up by now, but haven't found any.

[scjon]

Unifi is as good or better and doesn't require a subscription

[morshu9001]

I trust them, I'll check it out

[absoflutely]

Reolink also seems to work pretty well with local storage, notifications and no subscription or cloud uploads.

[nick__m]

Someone tried to enter by the window next to my front porch door, it prompted me to install a video doorbell because the dude that frightened my wife only received a ticket because there was no proof he tried (and fail) to force open a window and did not enter the house. If I had a recording he would have spent the night at the station and it would have been a criminal offense instead of a civil one.

Even if it only provides deterrence, and a slight chance of after the fact punishment, I don't feel idiotic for buying a "doorstep Webcam", the door is visible from the street so there is no expectation of privacy and I really don't care that someone else could access those recordings.

If I had indoors cameras they would be in a private network. But for a front porch camera the easiest to install IOT junk is perfectly serviceable.

[coredog64]

This. Local youths started playing ding-dong-ditch last summer. It was harmless when it was 8-9pm on a Friday or Saturday. They escalated to banging on windows, then to doing it at 1am, and finally to damaging our garage door to the point it won't open.

My wife is extremely upset about all of this, and I'm not going to be bullied out of the opinion that 24/7 cameras are actually a good thing.

[hitarpetar]

is the doorbell camera industry held up by wife guys?

[hitarpetar]

were you frightened also?

[nick__m]

No, I was pissed that the only punishment, for a know offender, was a small fine.

The police knew the guy (young adults with bright orange hoodie are quite uncommon here) and they told me that he already did this a few time before moving in my neighborhood and that they never had enough evidences to do something else than fine him.

Also I think the police are bored in my city because there were 4 patrols cars in the street when I got back home.