https://buttondown.com/creativegood/archive/its-time-to-get-rid-of-networked-cameras/
Amazon did us all a service recently by airing a Super Bowl commercial showing how Ring doorbell cameras spy on everyone walking past. (I discussed this on Techtonic this week with Chris Gilliard, aka hypervisible: episode page / podcast. Recommended listening.)
In the instant that that image aired, millions of Americans finally understood what I – and other tech critics – have been trying to warn about for years: networked cameras are spying on you. The blue circles show the reach of Ring cameras, and – crucially – indicate that they're all part of one network, controlled by Amazon, which can share or sell data to any number of third parties.
Previously: Ring Cancels Flock Deal After Dystopian Super Bowl Ad Prompts Mass Outrage
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"This is definitely not about dogs," senator says, urging a pause on Ring face scans:
Amazon and Flock Safety have ended a partnership that would've given law enforcement access to a vast web of Ring cameras.
The decision came after Amazon faced substantial backlash for airing a Super Bowl ad that was meant to be warm and fuzzy, but instead came across as disturbing and dystopian.
The ad begins with a young girl surprised to receive a puppy as a gift. It then warns that 10 million dogs go missing annually. Showing a series of lost dog posters, the ad introduces a new "Search Party" feature for Ring cameras that promises to revolutionize how neighbors come together to locate missing pets.
At that point, the ad takes a "creepy" turn, Sen. Ed Markey (D.-Mass.) told Amazon CEO Andy Jassy in a letter urging changes to enhance privacy at the company.
Illustrating how a single Ring post could use AI to instantly activate searchlights across an entire neighborhood, the ad shocked critics like Markey, who warned that the same technology could easily be used to "surveil and identify humans."
Markey suggested that in blasting out this one frame of the ad to Super Bowl viewers, Amazon "inadvertently revealed the serious privacy and civil liberties risks attendant to these types of Artificial Intelligence-enabled image recognition technologies."
In his letter, Markey also shared new insights from his prior correspondence with Amazon that he said exposed a wide range of privacy concerns. Ring cameras can "collect biometric information on anyone in their video range," he said, "without the individual's consent and often without their knowledge." Among privacy risks, Markey warned that Ring owners can retain swaths of biometric data, including face scans, indefinitely. And anyone wanting face scans removed from Ring cameras has no easy solution and is forced to go door to door to request deletions, Markey said.
On social media, other critics decried Amazon's ad as "awfully dystopian," declaring it was "disgusting to use dogs to normalize taking away our freedom to walk around in public spaces." Some feared the technology would be more likely to benefit police and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers than families looking for lost dogs.
Amazon's partnership with Flock, announced last October as coming soon, only inflamed those fears. So did the company's recent rollout of a feature using facial recognition technology called "Familiar Faces"—which Markey considers so invasive, he has demanded that the feature be paused.
"What this ad doesn't show: Ring also rolled out facial recognition for humans," Markey posted on X. "I wrote to them months ago about this. Their answer? They won't ask for your consent. This definitely isn't about dogs—it's about mass surveillance."
[...] But while Ring may have hurt its brand, WebProNews, which reports on business strategy in the tech industry, suggested that "the fallout may prove more consequential for Flock Safety than for Ring." For Flock, the Ring partnership represented a meaningful expansion of their business and "data collection capabilities," WebProNews reported. And because this all happened around one of the most-watched TV events of the year, other tech companies may be more hesitant to partner with Flock after Amazon dropped the integration and privacy advocates witnessed the seeming power of their collective outrage.
[...] Ring's statements so far do not "acknowledge the real issue," Scott-Railton said, which is privacy risks. For Ring, it seemed like a missed opportunity to discuss or introduce privacy features to reassure concerned users, he suggested, noting the backlash showed "Americans want more control of their privacy right now" and "are savvy enough to see through sappy dog pics."
"Stop trying to build a surveillance dystopia consumers didn't ask for" and "focus on shipping good, private products," Scott-Railton said.
He also suggested that lawmakers should take note of the grassroots support that could possibly help pass laws to push back on mass surveillance. That could help block not just a potential future partnership with Flock, but possibly also stop Ring from becoming the next Flock.
(Score: 5, Informative) by looorg on Sunday February 22, @11:40AM (9 children)
They think this is limited to networked cameras only? Perhaps this will act as an eyeopener regarding all their, trivial, networked appliances (from phones to toys to kitchen and household appliances with network access) they have at home or carry with them. They all snoop at you, all the time and they snitch back to their masters (and that ain't you). In some countries, or most of them it seems, their new data is theirs to do with as they please.
(Score: 4, Informative) by shrewdsheep on Sunday February 22, @11:54AM (4 children)
I find these articles from "internet prophets" quite amusing. They point out obvious facts the understanding of which was maybe truly an eureka moment for them but they fail to see the bigger picture entirely as becomes obvious from their further analysis and their own decisions (like using Windows etc.).
Looking alone at the incentives and the information asymmetry underpinning products teaches a lot about what has to be avoided and what should be chosen. Also, TANSTAAFL.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Sunday February 22, @06:35PM (3 children)
As happens periodically, it takes a Super Bowl add for a sufficient quantity of the general population to "get the clue" simultaneously to become "a thing."
Related? I have seen some headlines about Flock cameras being vandalized en-masse starting right after the Super Bowl.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2, Disagree) by DadaDoofy on Monday February 23, @01:03PM
Only about a third of the US population "watched" the Super Bowl. A significant number of those are eating, using the bathroom or socializing during the commercials, so I doubt it.
(Score: 0) by SST-206 on Monday February 23, @01:53PM (1 child)
Do you have any footage of that? :-)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Monday February 23, @02:27PM
Not a great source, but the first one I found: https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/across-the-us-people-are-dismantling [bloodinthemachine.com]
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Sunday February 22, @05:40PM
I keep posting this [youtu.be] and somehow it keeps showing up as a new revelation. I mean, you want to watch to the end of the episode to drive home why it matters, but there you go.
(Score: 2, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Sunday February 22, @06:33PM (2 children)
Ironically, I installed a PoE IP camera on my house 10 years ago, added 2 more 5 years ago, discovered their uPnP antics 4 years ago - buttoned that up, now they're great - they serve me. If / when I want to archive their footage (rarely), I can - 100% under my control. I have nearly zero interest in seeing live video outside of my home network, but that can be arranged with a little FOSS if I decide I want it in the future. The cameras were sold to me through Amazon, advertised as "Network video cameras" - and they are, but they are such a different thing from Ring and all the cloud based garb it really should be required that their labeling makes the distinctions clear. It doesn't.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by owl on Monday February 23, @05:06AM (1 child)
The real problem is for every one of you that can install a POE camera and the related equipment, there are hundreds of folks who are so lost technically they have no idea where to start.
Which is how the "cloud based IoT" stuff gets its traction from. Those folks have no idea what they are doing, but they can follow an Ikea like icons "install guide" that is basically: "plug this wire here and here, plug this wire here and here, load this app from the app store, enjoy....". And they get the "security video" they set out to get, and are completely unaware they just allowed an entire building of sweatshop workers in India to watch their every move in front of said camera.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday February 23, @01:55PM
I remember when I started work at a video security company... I felt a bit lost, swimming in a sea of IP addresses, for about an hour. After that it became 2nd nature and so much easier to just find the IP address you needed and use it, rather than worry about whether all the name resolver services were working or not.
DNS is nice, when it works. If home router manufacturers would just add a friendly DNS layer for their 192.168.x.x space, something that identifies a new mac address when it connects, assigns it a name like "device025" and has a friendly little web interface for anybody who cares what device25 might be it tells them what it can figure out (cloud based AI recognition service?) and gives a record of: first seen, last seen, amount of data transferred recently and all time. Whatever the focus groups say would be the friendliest. Then the user can rename the device appropriately for their use and refer to it as that in the future. Devices that stay at their default, unloved, unmodified "device025" name eventually rotate out to make way for new devices.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Touché) by driverless on Sunday February 22, @11:53AM (5 children)
Their feed goes as far as the NVR they're plugged into and stops there, with the output monitored through HA.
Of course since they're evil Chinese cameras I'm not supposed to trust them, I should have bought them from a good US company like Amazon instead...
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday February 22, @06:39PM (2 children)
>Of course since they're evil Chinese cameras I'm not supposed to trust them
If you have a decent router, you can keep an eye on them and flag any undesirable activity - that's how I found the uPnP "backdoor" open by default in my TrendNet and other IP cameras. I believe Pi Hole or similar would help there as well, but I already had the uPnP configured off long before I started running Pi Hole.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by driverless on Monday February 23, @12:24AM (1 child)
I've got a Firewalla (crowdfunded firewall, very nice product incidentally) that warns of suspicious flows, but in this case the NVR provides a distinct, physically isolated network to the cameras so even if they wanted to phone home, which I've never seen any indication of, they can't. Oh, and you get them from Amcrest so they're Dahuas but without the Dahua price and/or need to grey-market them.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Monday February 23, @01:34AM
Yeah, I think my ancient (and still working well) PoE IP cam is TrendNet... the two newer ones are Amcrest, and I also got a couple of tiny noname Chinese cameras, one because it came with a telephoto lens on a super-small body so I could put it in a windowsill and get a decent picture of the outside of the birdhouse in the yard. The other was purpose built with a lens for closeup work, it's mounted inside a birdhouse; unfortunately, I didn't finish the cam-house until just after nesting season, then 10 months later the birds completely ignored that house, then the year after that a bluebird couple did nest in there but before they could lay eggs a raptor (hawk or owl) got 'em - blue feathers all over the yard. We shall see what happens this year.
And, according to my tools - they're all well behaved. I suppose they could pop up at any time and send my bird pictures to someone I don't know... not really concerned. I did run a "DropCam" for a little while, it was a Ring-like annoying cloud dependent thing - that lasted about 6 months before I decided I didn't want it anymore. I left it up, pluged in but not knowing my wifi password (I seriously doubt it has enough cpu to hack its way in) - just for the night vision IR light to intimidate any potential thieves who might know how to look for that - and see this obvious cloud-connected data immediately backed up offsite camera watching... but after 10 years of not a single "security" event worth re-watching on my other cameras, I just threw the cloud dependent camera away.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Ken_g6 on Sunday February 22, @10:13PM
Please spell out your acronyms, or use <abbr> [wikipedia.org] on TFA.
I'm guessing that's a Network Video Recorder and Home Assistant?
(Score: 4, Funny) by PiMuNu on Monday February 23, @09:49AM
None of this socialist or communist spying. We want good honest capitalist spying. Rebrand them Freedom Cameras.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Undefined on Sunday February 22, @06:44PM (3 children)
My cameras (16 of 'em) are all networked. Locally. They have no connection to the WAN at all. They work great.
I see no need to change anything.
My rule is: Never use an online service that handles data. Because the modern meaning of "handles" in that context is any or all of:
• Shares data with/sells data to entities you wouldn't want to have it
• Unpredictably loses/deletes data
• Gets hacked and data is in the wind
• Data becomes randomly unavailable due to WAN or handler's IT issues
• Most tech support is shit slow and incompetent
When we're talking about security cameras, it's not just your data that's a concern. Anyone who comes to your door, invited or otherwise, deserves to have their movements and presence kept entirely secure unless they actually do you wrong. The present surveillance mentality as exemplified by Ring and similar is pretty sick IMO.
I use a dedicated preprocessor to elaborate abbreviations.
Hover to reveal elaborations.
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Sunday February 22, @09:41PM (2 children)
Yep, I don't have cameras, but I've been moving more and more of my stuff to a locally hosted setup. The hardest thing about it is working out a way of connecting to the dynamic IP at home without being susceptible to 3rd parties messing with it. I've mostly been tunneling things through Tailscale, which is probable about as resistant to interference as possible.
(Score: 2) by gnuman on Sunday February 22, @10:44PM (1 child)
3rd parties can always mess with that ... they can disconnect your internet for one. Otherwise, it's surprisingly simple.
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Sunday February 22, @10:47PM
I was thinking more in terms of making the initial connection. Obviously, cutting it off is a lot easier than changing or monitoring the specific things going over the wire.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 23, @02:49AM
Them and the rest of the surveillance state. It has been allowed to go on unchecked for too long and soon it will be unstoppable. Why did it take enforcement of immigration law for the left to suddenly "care" about privacy again?
You cretins literally put bugs in your houses and on your front doors and told anyone who had a problem with it they were paranoid. The municipal spy contracts were fine until ice could use them.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday February 23, @04:52PM
None of the problems come from having an ethernet port or wifi instead of a composite video out port, note how carefully they avoid discussing how all the problems exclusively come from corporate cloud companies who spend a lot of money on advertising.