I have a “Ring” doorbell camera…

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Libertas
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I have a “Ring” doorbell camera…

Post by Libertas »

I don’t pay for the service that records so I can’t go back in time and look at stuff but lots of folks do and lots of folks have these now and I am noticing the increase in the number of property crimes and attempted property crimes in my area that come through this app.

As the republican party, conservatives, including those on this board go out of their way to create violence and chaos, there will be more and more property crimes by the homeless and disenfranchised, this is expected and understandable.

The number of homeless will increase dramatically if right wingers are allowed to take over again.

I hate being the victim of any kind of crime, but when it comes to a homeless person trying to get their next fix or meal, I try and understand how we got where we are.
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ZoWie
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Re: I have a “Ring” doorbell camera…

Post by ZoWie »

Property crimes are through the roof everywhere. The huge increase compared to a couple of years ago is largely due to the pandemic, inflation, inequality, and housing shortages. The right, however, with its media access and its bottomless financial support, has managed to convince much of the center that it's really due to shameless Democratic morality.

One more reason to go after right wing monopolization of our mainstream information sources.
Last edited by ZoWie on Sat Jun 25, 2022 4:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.
"We must remember that we cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation." --Liz Cheney, Republican, 7/21/22
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Libertas
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Re: I have a “Ring” doorbell camera…

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ZoWie wrote: Sat Jun 25, 2022 3:58 pm Property crimes are through the roof everywhere. The increase compared to a couple of years ago is largely due to the pandemic, inflation, inequality, and housing shortages. The right, however, with its media access and its bottomless financial support, has managed to convince much of the center that it's really due to shameless Democratic morality.

One more reason to go after right wing monopolization of our mainstream information sources.
And everything you mentioned was made way worse by having a prick in the WH who ON PURPOSE ignored the virus.
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Re: I have a “Ring” doorbell camera…

Post by ZoWie »

He didn't ignore covid for any sinister conspiracy reason. He's just stupid, and has a severe personality disorder besides. Notice that more recently he's had to relent on vaccination, so now his people are even ignoring Fearless Leader on this issue. I'm afraid that all the security cameras in the world won't prevent stupidity.
"We must remember that we cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation." --Liz Cheney, Republican, 7/21/22
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Re: I have a “Ring” doorbell camera…

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ZoWie wrote: Sat Jun 25, 2022 4:04 pm He didn't ignore covid for any sinister conspiracy reason. He's just stupid, and has a severe personality disorder besides. Notice that more recently he's had to relent on vaccination, so now his people are even ignoring Fearless Leader on this issue. I'm afraid that all the security cameras in the world won't prevent stupidity.
Not entirely accurate.
Most troubling of all, perhaps, was a sentiment the expert said a member of Kushner's team expressed: that because the virus had hit blue states hardest, a national plan was unnecessary and would not make sense politically. "The political folks believed that because it was going to be relegated to Democratic states, that they could blame those governors, and that would be an effective political strategy," said the expert.
https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/d ... cna1235707
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Re: I have a “Ring” doorbell camera…

Post by ZoWie »

There might be something to that. I doubt that drumpf thinks on this Machiavellian level, as he has the mind of a fifth grader, but his backers certainly do.

The ultimate irony remains that, had drumpf not been president and had access to rich people's medical care, he'd have died in one of the earlier waves.
"We must remember that we cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation." --Liz Cheney, Republican, 7/21/22
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ProfX
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Re: I have a “Ring” doorbell camera…

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Mine not to critique consumer choices.

Mine, however, to make folks aware of realities connected to them. Is technology good or bad? Depends on how it is used. So ...

Amazon’s Ring is the largest civilian surveillance network the US has ever seen
One in 10 US police departments can now access videos from millions of privately owned home security cameras without a warrant

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... network-us

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.

[snip][end]

Do as you wish. This is technology I refuse to use. Can't help but note that it reminds me of what Michel Foucault warned about the future of the Panopticon.
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Re: I have a “Ring” doorbell camera…

Post by ZoWie »

I don't use the Ring cameras, nor would I.

Unless something's changed, all but the most expensive setups have serious security implications, not just police spying but all manner of hacking vulnerabilities.

I might install cameras, but they'll be hard wired and built from different equipment, over which I would have total control.
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Re: I have a “Ring” doorbell camera…

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LAPD Requested Ring Footage of Black Lives Matter Protests
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/02/l ... r-protests

Along with other civil liberties organizations and activists, EFF has long warned that Amazon Ring and other networked home surveillance devices could be used to monitor political activity and protests. Now we have documented proof that our fears were founded.

According to emails obtained by EFF, the LAPD sent requests to Amazon Ring users specifically targeting footage of Black-led protests against police violence that occurred in cities across the country last summer. While it is clear that police departments and federal law enforcement across the country used many different technologies to spy on protests, including aerial surveillance and semi-private camera networks, this is the first documented evidence that a police department specifically requested footage from networked home surveillance devices related to last summer’s political activity.

[snip][end]

The problem isn't police "spying" as if they are snooping without permission. The problem is the Neighbors app and Ring is, by design, designed by Amazon to share video data with law enforcement in an open partnership, and as I just posted, they have SAID they use it to, for example, monitor protests here in the U.S. They don't need drones, public cameras, or other surveillance systems; consumers using this have handed them a surveillance system to piggyback on.

One more thing: Amazon says Ring doesn't have facial recognition yet. However, there DOES appear to be some biometric tracking ALREADY built in, and given that Amazon is one of the leading tech companies working on this tech, it's hard to believe it won't be coming to Ring soon. And given the issues of that tech detailed in another thread ...
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Re: I have a “Ring” doorbell camera…

Post by ZoWie »

LAPD used to have a video unit, and anything that got a permit to march probably also got in front of that unit's lenses. You knew your action mattered when the cop would stick the damn thing in your face from across the street.

It was just assumed that they had a face database and steadily improving means of using it.

Now with cameras all up and down the street, I just figure that we're one nation under surveillance, with face recognition for all.
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Re: I have a “Ring” doorbell camera…

Post by Number6 »

A Rind doorbell camera give people a false sense of security. The chances it will prevent a crime or assault is very, very small. All it can do is record whatever is happening where it's pointed at. The condo complex I live in some people have a Ring doorbell camera and all it can show is the area in front of their door, some of the mail boxes, and the front door across from them, about 20 feet of area. We have 10 "security" tied to a 1 terabyte DVR in our carport area at the rear of our building because we've had a number of bicycles stolen. We've been able to download the recordings when thefts occur and give them to the police and they've, in a couple of instances, have arrested the thieves or identified who they are.

If having a Ring camera makes you feel safe, then that's okay.
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Libertas
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Re: I have a “Ring” doorbell camera…

Post by Libertas »

We needed a new doorbell, so we got this at Costco for not a lot of money.

Had to by the camera and a ringer in the house.

And with Covid it made sense to be able to see who is at the door.
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Re: I have a “Ring” doorbell camera…

Post by Toonces »

I've had a Ring for a while now. It's still in the box.

I also have a camera system, not connected to the internet. So far, videos have helped a neighbor with some vandalism and wildlife, lots of wildlife.

As Michael Moore covered, we don't lock our doors during the day if we're home.

We're in a small, rural village. Not even an inconvenience store.
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Re: I have a “Ring” doorbell camera…

Post by ZoWie »

Does the cheapest Ring camera still send your wi-fi password in the clear?
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Re: I have a “Ring” doorbell camera…

Post by Libertas »

ZoWie wrote: Sun Jun 26, 2022 12:58 pm Does the cheapest Ring camera still send your wi-fi password in the clear?
IDK what this means, "in the clear?"
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Re: I have a “Ring” doorbell camera…

Post by ProfX »

Unencrypted.

Here's an article on the topic.

Ring Doorbells Had Security Bug That Exposed Wi-Fi Passwords To Hackers
Researchers found that the Wi-Fi passwords were sent over the network in plain HTTP rather than being encrypted.
https://securitytoday.com/articles/2019 ... y-bug.aspx

So far, I haven't found any articles on them having patched or fixed this problem (doesn't mean they didn't; this article was from 2019.)
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Re: I have a “Ring” doorbell camera…

Post by Libertas »

ProfX wrote: Sun Jun 26, 2022 1:57 pm Unencrypted.

Here's an article on the topic.

Ring Doorbells Had Security Bug That Exposed Wi-Fi Passwords To Hackers
Researchers found that the Wi-Fi passwords were sent over the network in plain HTTP rather than being encrypted.
https://securitytoday.com/articles/2019 ... y-bug.aspx

So far, I haven't found any articles on them having patched or fixed this problem (doesn't mean they didn't; this article was from 2019.)
That sucks. Thanks for the research.
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