Ring sting

[Gob]

In a 2020 letter to management, Max Eliaser, an Amazon software engineer, said Ring is “simply not compatible with a free society”. We should take his claim seriously.

Ring video doorbells, Amazon’s signature home security product, pose a serious threat to a free and democratic society. Not only is Ring’s surveillance network spreading rapidly, it is extending the reach of law enforcement into private property and expanding the surveillance of everyday life. What’s more, once Ring users agree to release video content to law enforcement, there is no way to revoke access and few limitations on how that content can be used, stored, and with whom it can be shared.

Ring is effectively building the largest corporate-owned, civilian-installed surveillance network that the US has ever seen. An estimated 400,000 Ring devices were sold in December 2019 alone, and that was before the across-the-board boom in online retail sales during the pandemic. Amazon is cagey about how many Ring cameras are active at any one point in time, but estimates drawn from Amazon’s sales data place yearly sales in the hundreds of millions. The always-on video surveillance network extends even further when you consider the millions of users on Ring’s affiliated crime reporting app, Neighbors, which allows people to upload content from Ring and non-Ring devices.

Then there’s this: since Amazon bought Ring in 2018, it has brokered more than 1,800 partnerships with local law enforcement agencies, who can request recorded video content from Ring users without a warrant. That is, in as little as three years, Ring connected around one in 10 police departments across the US with the ability to access recorded content from millions of privately owned home security cameras. These partnerships are growing at an alarming rate.

Data I’ve collected from Ring’s quarterly reported numbers shows that in the past year through the end of April 2021, law enforcement have placed more than 22,000 individual requests to access content captured and recorded on Ring cameras. Ring’s cloud-based infrastructure (supported by Amazon Web Services) makes it convenient for law enforcement agencies to place mass requests for access to recordings without a warrant. Because Ring cameras are owned by civilians, law enforcement are given a backdoor entry into private video recordings of people in residential and public space that would otherwise be protected under the fourth amendment. By partnering with Amazon, law enforcement circumvents these constitutional and statutory protections, as noted by the attorney Yesenia Flores. In doing so, Ring blurs the line between police work and civilian surveillance and turns your neighbor’s home security system into an informant. Except, unlike an informant, it’s always watching.

Ring’s pervasive network of cameras expands the dragnet of everyday pre-emptive surveillance – a dragnet that surveils anyone who passes into its gaze, whether a suspect in a crime or not. Although the dragnet indiscriminately captures everyone, including children, there are obvious racial, gendered and class-based inequities when it comes to who is targeted and labelled as “out of place” in residential space. Rahim Kurwa, a professor of criminology, law and justice at the University of Illinois at Chicago, argues that neighborhood surveillance platforms such as Neighbors perpetuate a much longer history of the policing of race in residential space.

The concerns of activists and scholars have been compounded by developments in facial recognition technology and other forms of machine learning that could be conceivably applied to Ring recorded content and live feeds. Facial recognition technology has been denounced by AI researchers and civil rights groups for its racial and gendered biases. Although Ring doesn’t currently use facial recognition in its cameras, Amazon has sold this technology to police in the past. Following pressure from AI researchers and civil rights groups, Amazon placed a one-year pause on police use of its controversial facial recognition technology, but this moratorium will expire in June.

While pressure from civil rights groups and lawmakers to end Ring’s partnerships with police has been building, we need to demand more transparency and accountability from Amazon and law enforcement about what data is being collected, with whom it’s being shared, and how it’s being used.

Lauren Bridges is a PhD candidate at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania

[ex-khobar Andy]

I've thought about getting one of these because occasionally it's useful especially these days of Amazon deliveries and doorstep parcel thieves. I did not know that law enforcement can get into it without permission of the owner. Same with a dash cam - might be useful one day if I am ever in an accident and the other guy went through a red light.

I'm sure it's buried in the agreements we all sign without looking at them. Just the other day I logged into my e mails and it told me that Apple had changed their terms of service and I had to agree to them. I followed the link and there were XXXX pages of stuff to review. I wasn't going to read all that shit so I just signed. I'm sure I am not unique and I am sure that most of is that I won't try to steal Apple's intellectual property and I won't use their platform for my child porn business. But really I have no clue what rights I have signed away over the years.

[liberty]

What is racist or sexist about facial recognition? One can manipulate video, but it is still a lot more reliable than eyewitnesses. In my opinion, many a not guilty person has gone to prison because a witness made a mistake and then was too proud to admit it. I think more video and facial recognition is a good idea.

[Scooter]

Google is your friend.

Facial-recognition systems misidentified people of color more often than white people, a landmark federal study released Thursday shows, casting new doubts on a rapidly expanding investigative technique widely used by law enforcement across the United States.

Asian and African American people were up to 100 times more likely to be misidentified than white men, depending on the particular algorithm and type of search. Native Americans had the highest false-positive rate of all ethnicities, according to the study, which found that systems varied widely in their accuracy.

The faces of African American women were falsely identified more often in the kinds of searches used by police investigators where an image is compared to thousands or millions of others in hopes of identifying a suspect.

Algorithms developed in the United States also showed high error rates for “one-to-one” searches of Asians, African Americans, Native Americans and Pacific Islanders. Such searches are critical to functions including cellphone sign-ons and airport boarding schemes, and errors could make it easier for impostors to gain access to those systems.

FBI, ICE find state driver’s license photos are a gold mine for facial-recognition searches

Women were more likely to be falsely identified than men, and the elderly and children were more likely to be misidentified than those in other age groups, the study found. Middle-aged white men generally benefited from the highest accuracy rates.

link

[Long Run]

I buy as little from Amazon as reasonably possible, preferring to go direct to the retailer. If I were in the home security market, I would pick another vendor. I doubt Bezos misses my business, but it's the thought that counts.

[Joe Guy]

I have a Ring camera. There is a feature that allows you to share any individual video that you choose with other Ring users in your neighborhood and/or the police if you want to do that. The only videos I've seen are of mountain lions and people stealing packages or snooping around houses. It allows comments and I've seen some where they've say the police have caught the bad guy. I don't have a camera in my meth lab so I'm sure I've got nothing to worry about.

[dales]

I rely on an old-fashioned peep hole.

[MajGenl.Meade]

People who need peep hole
are the yuckiest people in the world

[Big RR]

Based on this :

https://support.ring.com/hc/en-us/artic ... Guidelines

It appears that Ring will not share tapes and other content information without a valid search warrant or the owner's permission or other process (and as the owner of the information you would be able to object and be heard on any such process; similar contracts (I don't know what Ring does,requires the information custodian to notify you that the information is being sought to file in court to prevent the release). Further, one can choose to opt out out the data retention by Ring which then places you in control of your information (I'm pretty sure there are ways to record and archive it yourself if you choose to). However, remember that any time you choose to place your personal information in the custody of another, you always lose some control over it.

[Scooter]

The thing is, though, that what is being recorded is largely not on the property of the person who installed it. If what is being recorded is happening inside my house because someone across the street has one of these contraptions installed, it seems inadequate that the permission of person who installed it is being obtained.

[Joe Guy]

The thing is, though, that what is being recorded is largely not on the property of the person who installed it. If what is being recorded is happening inside my house because someone across the street has one of these contraptions installed, it seems inadequate that the permission of person who installed it is being obtained.

I don't understand what you're saying. For example, my camera records only people or animals that come on to my property. Are you talking about a situation in which a person hooks up a camera and aims it at a neighbor's window?

[Scooter]

I'm talking about a situation where the camera takes in everything within view, including the sidewalk and street in front of the house where it is installed, and the houses opposite. If the camera is pointing towards my house from across the street, then everything I do both outside and inside my house is potentially in view and subject to being recorded. How does getting the consent from the owner of the camera address the invasion of my privacy?

[Joe Guy]

I only know about Ring cameras. I can do a "Live" manual recording but the way it normally records is that it goes on whenever a motion is detected in the area covered. If I had it aimed at the street, it would go on and off all day, and since I set mine to get alerts, I'd be constantly barraged by them.

I don't know the law in Canada but if you're out in public here in the US in front of your house, people can video record you, so we always behave ourselves.

It would take a better camera than my Ring camera to see far enough and clearly through one of my neighbors' windows, but I suppose a person could set a camera up and aim it at a window or somebody's backyard. In that case, it would probably be considered illegal, wouldn't it?

[Big RR]

You do raise a good point, but just as anyone can observe what you are doing outside, generally anyone can record it. However, it's not all that easy to record what goes on inside your house as the glass will produce glare (and if the windows are open the screens will obscure vision) and anyone taking "extraordinary" measures to do so (like using IR sensors to detect heat behind the wall or using high powered lenses aimed through a window) is likely breaking the law. Even if law enforcement could obtain such tapes (and courts may well deny it if such extraordinary measures were used), it is not a given that it could be used in court.

But as for the Ring cameras, it is my understanding that they are not constantly on, but only for a short time when the bell is pushed or the door is approached, and then only for a short time.

[Big RR]

Joe --looks like our posts crossed.

[Burning Petard]

One more example of the wonderfull Bill of Rights and the US Constitution. All these rights listed are only limitations on government. Most of the stuff discussed here is covered by some local regulations and mostly private contract. The Federal Government cannot do the sort of searches that usually happen in American Airports. You agree to permit such searches by buying the ticket. That is why friends and family ar no longer allowed to go with you to the gate and sit with you as you wait for the flight.

Sadly it also means that the general public is not permitted to see the wonderful artwork displayed in the Philadelphia International terminal, probably all purchased with tax money.

snailgate

[ex-khobar Andy]

In the Guardian piece it's worth reading the BTL comments.

One of the commenters mentioned a Eufy doorbell which has no monthly fees. If I understand correctly the record is maintained on your wifi and is not accessible to others unless of course you give it to them. Sounds like a better solution. Of course if the axe murderer comes to your front door, offs you and then demolishes your 'puter with said axe, there may be no recoverable record. (Here in Kentucky we have ax murderers.)

[Joe Guy]

Although the dragnet indiscriminately captures everyone, including children, there are obvious racial, gendered and class-based inequities when it comes to who is targeted and labelled as “out of place” in residential space.

Can someone explain that to me? How does my security camera determine "obvious racial, gendered and class-based inequities"? I don't recall the instructions that came with my Ring camera saying anything about how to program it to not record white people, since they're never out of place when they are on my property or to target any particular race or gender. Maybe I missed that.

[Scooter]

Non-white, and especially Black people, seen doing absolutely nothing except minding their own business in a predominantly white or well-to-do neighborhood nevertheless seem to always attract the suspicion of police. That is just the way things are. This just creates another tool for making that happen.

[Big RR]

How does it do that? Are the police getting a live feed of all the camera so they can scan them for unwanted people? I don't think this happens in the US, but does it in Canada?