
Ring Gave Police Stats About Users Who Said No to Law Enforcement Requests - eth0up
https://gizmodo.com/ring-gave-police-stats-about-users-who-said-no-to-law-e-1837713840
======
imgabe
> The request data acquired by Gizmodo, which covers a five-month period in
> 2018, showed that Ring customers in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, had largely
> ignored police requests for footage. Between May and September of 2018, the
> Fort Lauderdale Police Department issued 22 requests via Ring’s law
> enforcement portal. Those requests resulted in 319 emails being sent to
> residents asking them to hand over footage, a statistic that the company now
> says it keeps confidential.

I wonder how much of this is just because who's going to believe some random
email that "law enforcement" wants to see my security camera footage? We live
in an age where the "IRS" calls every day to inform me that they're going to
come arrest me, and I'm supposed to hand over surveillance footage to some
random email?

About a year ago someone was murdered near my office. Our office is in a
townhouse in a mostly residential neighborhood. Detectives came by in person
to ask if we had any surveillance cameras that might have footage they can
look at to see if it might have the killer on it. They didn't just send an
email.

~~~
xfitm3
I want law enforcement requests to be difficult, and impossible to automate.
Imposing barriers to retrieve footage is a factor which I think helps prevent
overreach. Although it's probably too late..

~~~
koolba
I want both digital and meatspace.

The requests should be done in person in a way that naturally limits it to
when it would be required rather than just curiosity or convenience.

But the requests themselves, the requesters, the durations, and the judges
that signed off on them should be digitally available.

~~~
inetknght
If the police want footage, then the police should go knocking on doors to
_ask_ for footage. And the police should expect to be told to come back with a
warrant.

~~~
otterley
Why should those of us who want to efficiently investigate crime in our
neighborhoods, and who want criminals caught and prosecuted quickly, restrain
ourselves from cooperating with the police we pay to do just those things?
It's not like they're asking us for footage of activity inside our homes.

~~~
Spooky23
Because the police are allowed to lie to you.

Are they looking for a particular person, or when a blue sedan that may look
like yours drove by? Who knows — you should always exercise discretion.

~~~
geggam
>Because the police are allowed to lie to you.

This IMO needs to change, if they can legally lie to you they can lie in
court. They do both.

~~~
losteric
No, police are not allowed to lie in court... and there are limits to how far
they can stretch the truth in interviews/investigations.

~~~
geggam
Legally they arent allowed to lie, but they do. Anyone who has been in court
has seen it. You have to have proof they are lying to get them to stop.

~~~
otterley
That's true of any witness, though. Perjury is a crime, but you have to prove
it.

In the trial context, good defense attorneys will be able to introduce
contradictory evidence, or will challenge the credibility of a witness by
finding facts that make them look bad -- even police officers. With police
officers it's a bit harder, though, because the public largely believes
(wrongly, I'm afraid) that police are more trustworthy than the general
public.

~~~
geggam
Cops arent just any witness. If they are caught perjuring all the cases they
testified against are eligible to be retried.

I have heard this discussed in court as a reason to not find the officer
guilty. Records get sealed of course and you cant discuss it.

[https://www.innocenceproject.org/prevalence-police-
lying/](https://www.innocenceproject.org/prevalence-police-lying/)

------
maximente
of course they did! Ring's PR strategy heavily involves law enforcement: they
feed LE juicy surveillance in order to get softball quotes that play on
people's insecurity about how infrequent crime actually is, thus increasing
their incentive to buy Ring stuff, increasing Ring's market share,
surveillance collection potential, and making law enforcement more and more
supportive.

getting a permanently funded government agency as an advocate for your thing
is a great startup play: you'll easily crush competitors and roll your way
into an enshrined monopoly because "we cannot possibly lose this valuable tool
against criminals everywhere"

~~~
scarface74
Isn’t that the same scare tactics that gun manufacturers use? They act as if
anyone is dumb if they don’t carry around an automatic weapon to protect
themselves against the lawless hordes roaming the streets of suburban America.

~~~
jboggan
A firearm, like a fire extinguisher, is one of those items which is completely
pointless to have until it's the only thing in the world that matters.

In my experience it wasn't a horde - just one man - but I needed it all the
same.

~~~
lilyball
The best way to increase your odds of getting shot is to own a gun. Owning
guns is dangerous. Occasionally for some people it will turn out to be a
positive, but in general, owning a gun is a negative.

~~~
pacala
Do you have data? This is an interesting case-study where political expediency
may brush over confounding variables:

* Own a gun and kill oneself with it. The primary risk factor being depression, not the gun.

* Own a gun and be part of a criminal organization. The primary risk factor being rival criminal organizations, not the gun.

~~~
chowells
Depression is rarely the cause of suicide. Suicide is usually the result of
one overwhelming moment + means. Having a gun in the household makes suicide
significantly more likely. Without easy means, most people get through the
tough time and go on with their lives.

~~~
kortilla
But most suicides are not accidentally caused by the presence of a gun.

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nullc
I boggle at why security cameras would be sending the video offsite to a third
party.

Storing it locally is absurdly more efficient and ... actually compatible with
having security unlike blindly sending the footage to a third party.

Why have we normalized this absurd behavior?

~~~
pdonis
_> I boggle at why security cameras would be sending the video offsite to a
third party._

Ring isn't a "third party", they're the party from which users (of which I am
one) buy the cameras and the services that go with them.

One of the services is being able to see live views from your cameras, or
watch stored videos, from anywhere through the app. This is very useful if
you're away from home. Storing videos locally wouldn't support that.

~~~
nullc
> Storing videos locally wouldn't support that.

Sure it does.

The Internet is a global wide area network that connects computer systems
across the world.

Perhaps you got confused and thought that the internet only connected you to
Amazon? :)

Smarm aside, I really wonder how you ended up thinking this?

You're not the only person I've encountered that seemed to think cameras had
to upload 'to the cloud' to be useful. E.g. after posting cute animal footage
from my cameras (
[https://people.xiph.org/~greg/troups.webm](https://people.xiph.org/~greg/troups.webm)
) I got a number of comment from people along the lines of being surprised
that I'd hand footage of my home over to amazon which made no sense until I
found out about how ring worked.

This is quite surprising to me, because the bandwidth involved and the
requirement for working internet connectivity makes remote storage seem really
costly and unattractive to me and I was surprised to learn that's what
products like ring were doing.

~~~
pdonis
_> the bandwidth involved and the requirement for working internet
connectivity makes remote storage seem really costly and unattractive to me_

If the camera doesn't have internet connectivity, I can't see what it's seeing
when I'm away from home. That's a requirement, as I have already said.

~~~
nullc
I can see my cameras just fine when I'm away from home.

But they _also_ keep recording while my internet connectivity goes out.

My cameras in aggregate also produce a lot more data than my internet
connection could support-- about 180mbit/s during the day-- but that presets
no problem for remote viewing because I only few a couple cameras at a time
remotely. (I also can view the much lower bitrate substreams, while the full
resolution is recorded locally.)

~~~
jMyles
Can I ask what solution you use? ZoneMinder or something else?

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diego
The title makes it sound more nefarious than it is. The stats are simply "the
percentage of users who agreed to share videos with you is X."

~~~
landcoctos
Hopefully 100%.

edit: Read as who agreed _not_ to share.

In that case, hopefully 0% agreed to share.

~~~
Goronmon
It says users can review footage before sharing, so I could see situations
where users reviewed footage and had no problem sharing the result. Doesn't
seem like a big deal as long as its voluntary.

~~~
jermaustin1
I don't know how I feel about this.

If someone who lives across the street from a Ring door bell, hasn't given
permission to be filmed by Ring/their neighbor/etc, shouldn't they have a
"reasonable expectation of privacy" on their own property?

~~~
flyingfences
No. You cannot reasonably expect privacy in plain view of a public roadway.

~~~
homonculus1
The law has not defined it as such. In reality, we absolutely expect our
neighbors not to film our front doors 24/7 and give police access to the feed.
The law is outdated and ought to be updated to protect against new abuses.

~~~
flyingfences
Neither reality nor morality is defined by the law.

Observation of public space is not "abuse" in any way.

~~~
homonculus1
Clearly some forms of observation are abuse, while others aren't. If I
repeatedly hide inside the bushes right outside your land and look into your
house, I'm merely observing. I'm still a stalker.

If I set up a camera to do the same, why is that better? People are constantly
recording their neighbors' comings and goings, their visitors and
associations, and sending that data to a bureaucratic megacorp that actively
cozies up to law enforcement. "Observation of public space" is reductive,
that's a cyberpunk nightmare. It's poisonous to free society.

------
annoyingnoob
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all
and in the darkness bind them

~~~
_bxg1
Didn't realize Peter Thiel was involved in Ring

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alphabettsy
Anyone have a good recommendation for similar products (near feature parity),
with better privacy?

~~~
moate
What are the key features you're looking for here? I mean security camera have
been around forever. If you want something that backs up to the cloud instead
of a local drive, there's tons of those as well.

AFAIK The NetGear Arlo system is pretty good and doesn't sell your data to the
cops.

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rc_kas
I'm in the market for a doorbell Camera. What options besides ring are out
there?

~~~
abstractbarista
I use the Uniden DB1 doorbell camera. It is powered by existing wiring to your
doorbell. It connects to your WiFi and has a web admin interface. Also some IR
lights for night vision.

It has a shitty app but instead I just pull the HD RTSP stream over the
network into my DVR. Also integrated with Home Assistant for notifications and
remote viewing.

A good option for the technically-minded who want no sketchy remote access.

[https://www.amazon.com/Uniden-U-Bell-Doorbell-faceplates-
DB1...](https://www.amazon.com/Uniden-U-Bell-Doorbell-faceplates-
DB1/dp/B075V9ZKTY)

They are resold under many names:
[https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B07888LWLM/ref=cm_cr_arp_mb_b...](https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B07888LWLM/ref=cm_cr_arp_mb_bdcrb_top?ie=UTF8)

------
shadowgovt
In the common discourse around privacy and statistics, there are some gaps
between people's expectations in different problem domains that come up. For
example, it's perfectly reasonable to believe that a request not to have your
information shared doesn't imply your information is not included in
anonymized, aggregated statistics (much like not listing your address anywhere
public doesn't imply you don't increment the population count of the city you
live in, or the need for the police to have a reason to stop a vehicle doesn't
imply cars driving around on public streets don't trigger traffic counters).
But it's also perfectly reasonable to believe such a do-not-share request
_does_ imply do-not-aggregate.

I think we still lack a common set of definitions and expectations in the
public discourse to wrestle down what people really want out of privacy
controls vs. what is practical to provide.

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JohnFen
Of course they did. Ring is a dangerous trojan horse.

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kraig
I really wish Ubiquiti would put out a doorbell camera so I could dump these
guys

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legitster
This is like getting web analytics on how many users are blocking analytics.

~~~
rantwasp
yes, it's exactly like that and the police are now writing javascript to get
the analytics /s

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geggam
I have a ring doorbell.. it shows only they front driveway area of the house.

This latest round of govt skirting around the 4th has me looking to replace it
with a closed circuit system I control.

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campfireveteran
"Big Brother is watching" but people forgot the crucial rest "... listening,
measuring and recording, and people paid money for and installed him
voluntarily."

