On the Ring Neighbors app, you see all sorts of videos where the posters are making criminal accusations all the time. (usually it's a guy selling electricity door to door, but his skin tone is wrong, so they assume he's there to rob the house)
<p><pre><code> In the video, the woman’s face is clearly visible and there
is no obvious criminal activity taking place. The Facebook
post shows her passing between two cars. She pulls the door
handle of one of the cars, but it is locked.
</code></pre>
Yeah that's pretty clearly attempting to steal vehicles / contents of vehicles, that's 100% what that looks like.
Can we talk about the fact that in the US you are granted no right to privacy in public spaces? I don’t think this is universally good. Companies have used this fact to build databases of license plate locations and much more. Our anger shouldn’t primarily be directed at Amazon, but rather at the acceptance of public surveillance.<p>Hopefully, events like this help bring more light to this kind of blanket acceptance.
from linked tweet:<p>> is it legal for ring/amazon to use faces of people, suspected BY THEIR CUSTOMERS to have done crimes, in an advertisement? especially given they haven't consented or been convicted or anything. seems uhhh not right<p>This really comes down to the consequences.<p>"A calculated risk betting that the people shown allegedly committing crimes won't risk identifying themselves to sue"<p>or a paid actor.<p>generally a win for everyone
>Amazon purchased Ring in 2018. The company sells surveillance camera systems, and recently filed two patent applications for facial recognition technology in its cameras that would automatically alert law enforcement to "suspicious" people.<p>next version will feature a drone quietly deployed to follow the "suspicious" person and to tazer the person upon the "suspiciousness" crossing the pre-determined threshold (established by the neighborhood).
The app itself is entertaining, but a lot of false alarms. My favorite so far was a county worker who tripped my camera with his...i want to say water collection tool...from off camera before hanging a doorknob sign warning of mosquitoes. I took a screen capture while at work and zoomed in on his shirt to see the familiar county symbol.<p>Most of the crimes are petty...the older generation doesn't always lock their cars..., although one guy shot up a barbershop a mile or two away, killing several barbers. Good to know. Also, I know why that police chopper is circling or what caused that fire in the distance. My neighbors are pretty good at being on the DL, but this is a lot faster. Not as good as a scanner, but my local PD refuses to be on the internet scanner apps anyway.<p>Not to say that even the police reports get it right. Shoplifting and armed robbery aren't the same.
I smell a lawsuit coming. How can Amazon think it's ok to use people's faces in an advertisement when those people haven't been convicted of a crime?<p>The case of Ring is particularly disturbing. When its inventor appeared on Shark Tank, he said he wanted to create a way to hear his doorbell from the garage. Since Amazon bought the company for $1B, it's pivoted to a surveillance tool that's being offered to police as a way to freely record and review neighborhood camera views.<p>It's sad to see that unicorn companies today believe that surveillance capitalism is the way forward. Personally, I long for a return to old-fashioned values in business, namely making a product or service that people care about and want to pay for rather than pandering to fear and courting easy money from our soon-to-be robot overlords.
Posted this yesterday with same source, same headline: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20117905" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20117905</a>
Somehow this reminds me of the "Running Man" movie.
There was a comercial playing that said something like: "Citizen, denounce your neighbor, and get some extra dollars"...<p>There should have been more positive visions of the future. These idiot companies took the shit from the 80s as script it seems.