Yes, this is my take as well, and I think it's the correct one from both a technical and legal POV. It's one thing for the government to try to compel an organization or person to create a feature they want from scratch. They have made noises in that direction in the past (like the FBI vs Apple trying to invoke the All Writs Act) but it's been on very shaky ground, on both 1st and 13th Amendment grounds as well as others. But the government can be a lot more aggressive and courts a lot more permissive when it comes to merely making use of functionality that already exists. Even putting aside all the massive numbers of perverse incentives, but the thing is of course those shouldn't be put aside, we've seen this movie before over and over and over again. Once a feature exists that can generate a lot of direct revenue for a company and the only thing that keeps them from turning the knob up is "we're totally not evil cross our hearts!". Like holy shit, in 2025 who really goes "oh well it's opt-in!"
I think this particular one is pretty important to know about because a lot of people deploy Ring stuff almost by default, and some HNers (including me as it happens) have some level of influence or even control over it. I always meant to put some effort into updating my self-hosted security system efforts but this is a major kick in the butt. Have to know this exists and be able to offer solid credible alternatives.
Edit: to add a direct pertinent example, WE LITERALLY JUST HAD 5 DAYS AGO ON HN A 500+ COMMENT HUGE THREAD ON "Oakland cops gave ICE license plate data; SFPD also illegally shared with feds" [0]. And there are people really claiming "nothing to see here, move along, local and feds would totally never conspire to abuse anything in violation of the law let alone not in violation of the law"!?
I am less worried about local law enforcement. They will have little ability to strong arm Amazon and have oversight and regulation, as well as judicial review, even if it’s not always effective it’s always there.
DHS has become lawless, and they are eager to strong arm and over reach after having dismantled their own oversight and ignoring their own regulations. They are working hard to move fast and break the law faster than the law can keep up and the Supreme Court has made it very difficult to seek remedy. Because they are not doing criminal justice but instead civil administrative enforcement the web of oversight and review and stronger civil rights for criminal justice don’t apply. They have become the largest police force, militarized, and with enormous budget, latitude, and blank check support from the highest levels of political government.
They absolutely can strong arm Amazon into doing what they want, and absolutely will use Ring camera against their owners and neighbors.
In six months we created a secret police rivaling the KGB, gestapo, State Security Police, and SSD.
Ring already had this happen a dozen times with their own employees. Turns out giving random people access to other people's personal cameras is bad. Who would've thought?
Anyway, don't send potentially sensitive footage to a third party server.
In their minds, everyone is either a criminal or about to be the victim of a criminal. Developing this world view is a hazard of the job, and is completely understandable based on what they have to deal with every day. The problem is the lack of accountability from larger society, and their push back against that accountability under some mistaken narrative that it's everyone else with the warped world view.
You have to be totally naive to buy a Ring camera in the first place. Of course it will be used in ways you can't control, it uploads everything to "the cloud".
Dogwood bushes and Rose of Sharon grow rather quickly and make a nice "green screen". They lose some of their coverage in the winter, though, so you way want to mix in a row of evergreens for good measure.
Chamaecyparis lawsoniana 'Columnaris'. Grows quite fast, at the rate of 8 in to 1 ft per year and stays green in the winter. We have a regulation regarding fence height. Whoever wants a higher fence uses this tree, it can grow up to 40 feet.
I can't get past this comment without noting how invasive and aggressive spreading rose of sharon is, I'm constantly pulling out new growth due to my neighbor's plant. What a headache.
Indeed. In Germany, it's generally legal to see in people's windows, legal for them to do whatever they want in their windows (you can't file a complaint someone is naked in their apartment with the curtains open - they will just tell you not to look if you don't want to see it) and illegal to record in other people's windows.
Illegal recording is a pretty good rule actually. Almost every party I've been to has a rule against filming dance floors, although in German law it's only illegal to publish a recording "of" a person. The flip side to illegal recording is that it's effectively legal to do silly things without worrying it'll haunt you forever, and that's pretty cool. Note the relatively relaxed attitude to things like public nudity (which is only legal in certain places as I understand it, but still). Almost every Berlin party I've ever been to has a rule against filming.
I do not think it's a good rule because it means you can't set up any sort of security camera that can see off your property. No dashcams to accurately point the blame for the accident. And unless you have a very high mounting point you can't even point them at your own property because they'll catch other things.
Shutters don't work unless you have a very high vantage point. Consider the most forgiving camera I have--pointing west from not very far from the east edge of my property, it's angled such that the top of the frame is horizontal and the edge of the frame is parallel to the house. The maximum range I would realistically want to see a face is about halfway across my property from the location of the camera. Put a shutter to cut off the neighbor and I also cut off the head of someone approaching my front door. To make it work the camera would need to be at least 12' in the air--which would mean fastening it to air.
Fancier cameras can have filters on the motion sensor (which I wish I had--mine wasted too much recording time on the wind moving a tree), but you can't exclude the area.
Everything you can see through a window *from public property*. Or from other people's private property with their permission. If they have to enter your property to see it they need a warrant.
"thankfully" you can record your neighbors without their permission or knowing? You kinda sound like a creep, hopefully you're already known to the cops as a pervert.
But everyone else does, so what's the point? My privacy is always compromised because tech junkies (as opposed to techies) insist on indulging in stupid things like 21 and me, Gmail, or Ring and I get swept along with it.
The company sequences human DNA. The number in the name of the corp is the number of chromosomes in human DNA. I hope you and I both have more than 21 chromosomes…
You have to be total naive if you still believe that this is a “safe” feature to enable.