This may be of interest to US hosts, I’ve just skimmed through it but will read it properly later.
JF
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I’m not sure how to feel about this.
On one hand, this is the modern equivalent of neighborhood crime watches. Everyone knows a nosy or especially observant neighbor. When something really goes down, what they catch can be important.
Ring’s “Neighbors” mimics the neighborhood watch by alerting to suspicious or illegal activity. If I told the neighborhood watch about a suspicion or crime, and the police took notice, I’d expect them to ask for evidence.
Yes, you select your general location in the Neighbors thing and it doesn’t take a rocket surgeon to figure out where the camera is. Scrolling through the events feed, I know where half these places are without even looking at a map. My house faces a well-known building, so if I post video, locals will know where I live.
It’s not particularly active here - 6 posts in the last 3 months. Most of them are people trespassing, tagged as suspicious. (Smashed pumpkins on Halloween. One guy peeing on the side of a house. Someone casing a bike. Small town stuff.)
On the other hand, there’s always danger of a surveillance state if a government has unlimited access to track her citizens. So long as we have rule of law (which is another debate), police would need to subpoena anything I didn’t volunteer.
The concern they don’t address is whether this becomes Amazon’s IRL version of Facebook. Between Amazon’s Alexa and Fire devices (sticks/tablets), your purchase history, and these cameras, which can learn faces, they can build an insightful view into who you are as a person.
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I just read this one as well. Very frightening that a network could be so easily hacked and turned into something like this, especially with the feature to see ring locations.
Even more frightening that these devices can be installed without forcing the owner to change the passwords when they are installed. Manufacturers just want to sell products without considering potential security issues.
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