This gets us to the central problem of today’s surveillance state. No one running the cameras wants to be observed. One reason that city officials object to releasing Flock data, for example, must that they themselves are among the recorded. The cameras are on them too; they too can be tracked. Everything means everything for these everywhere cameras.
I have an internal conflict with this and I don’t know where my line is. 100% police should have to get a warrant to use this shit. Fuck any company who want to use this for Ai and tracking shit so they can sell me more shit or the private company handing over the info over to law enforcement in a weird way to get around warrant requirments, or any other fucking weird shit.
But I also think you have no expectations of privacy in public. If you go outside and touch grass or whatever you can’t demand or stop others from doing their own thing and if that happens to be filming in a public space, well tough shit guess you go somewhere else. I kinda like the idea of cameras everywhere accessible to the public for the public good, I like pulling up traffic cameras and others local places cameras to see if cool things are going on.
So I’m conflicted, cameras everywhere can be cool and make things better for society as a whole but can very easily be used for evil things, maybe it’s better to just say fuck any good and it’s not worth the risk.
Also I have cameras at my house but I have them on a dedicated server( no ring bullshit). I was broken into and the experience convinced me to get them. Knowing when someone is on my property before they even get close to the house to ring the doorbell or other things is nice.
Not having a right to privacy doesn’t mean we should record everyone’s every move if they aren’t locked in their windowless basement. Which they would have to be since its legally OK to have cameras pointing at your neighbors bedroom window or backyard, or to fly a recording drone over their house.
Additionally I think we should have a right to privacy in public. Why does your right to have your own surveillance fiefdom in your building extend to the street where I’m just trying to go for a jog? It interferes with my peace of mind, and it makes neighbors appear more like police than people I should be able to rely on.
I’m also exceptionally skeptical cameras have any impact on crime. I know police rarely investigate or solve property crime, and unless they prevent the crime from happening outright (doubt), or the camera owner has a full time live human monitoring to respond to an immediate action (businesses), it serves no purpose but to give the owner a false sense of security and to peep on your neighbors.
Getting broken into can be a very traumatic and violating experience, and in a better world we would try to help both the person who is driven to robbery and the person who’s space was violated. In the one we live in, people slap cameras and floodlights everywhere, mental health care is nonexistent, and we punish such that the cycle of poverty and crime continues. Thus nothing is solved and the world gets worse.
Police cameras and municipal cameras are even worse in these ways, now it isn’t the guy next door, its the state and all the money and power it holds doing a peep into your bedroom and a follow down the street. They don’t trust you, they don’t want you here, and you had better watch yourself. That message isn’t for everyone of course, but if you’re already marginalized in a community, it sure reads like the message is for you.
If we do install cameras, like red light cameras or speed cameras which have proven to do something, we need to be extraordinarily careful about where we place them and how we use them. And they should only be there until the underlying problem is solved, not placed as a solution themselves.
I have the same feelings. I’m leaning towards preferring no cameras though. Data is cheap to store and never* gets deleted. Bad actors can comb through that information after the fact and use it for whatever purposes they want, even if it was initially taken/given with good intentions. Walking by a Ring camera now gets a mandatory consent-free facial scanning attempt. These cameras were not initially sold with this being a feature set. Who knows what bullshit they will be used for down the line
Also this just drops it’s rather cool. https://youtu.be/uB0gr7Fh6lY
That’s how it is done.
If it is a public camera, it has to be a public record.
And if not, then anyone having access to the feed, has to have their whole life (both work and personal) be available as a public record.If not, then you now have cases where most people can’t afford to defend themselves from malicious cop allegations.
To prevent this, anyone arrested, pre-trial has to have access to all searches done by cops, related to the allegation and ability to pull-up 100% of their own footage anytime near the event in question.If any part of the footage is deleted, due to “technical issues” like, “the footage was deleted” or “some of the cameras were not working”, then the arrest is illegal and the police department is responsible for compensation.
Something like 90% of houses in this area have some kind of camera on it. I hate being filmed by these shitheads 24/7.
I was having catalytic converters stolen, and packages stolen, and even bridge toll trackers stolen. Then I added a bunch of lights and cameras. Now it doesn’t happen anymore. What am I supposed to do?
Replace the cameras with dummy cameras, because like you said “It doesn’t happen anymore.”
It’s everywhere, I take public transit and there’s always some dummy filming his girlfriend or tourists staring in wonder at a train coming out of a tunnel and filming that too. I try to move away as quickly as possible. Now even at the public library entrance there is a camera. Guess I can’t go naked anymore!
I’m one of those. Honestly it’s great to have. Not sure about situations where a house is closer to the road, but mine doesn’t record people on the sidewalk. You have to walk halfway up my driveway or more before it picks up on something to record. Helps me keep an eye on the stray cats that have a heated home on my porch, though.
You’re part of the problem. Get rid of it.
Best option is to recommend people self host their camera feeds. People aren’t going to give cameras up, myself included, but keeping it all out of the ring/nest/netvue or any other cloud system is the way to go.
People can record in public, and that includes the area around their houses. Having 100s of thousands or millions of cameras sharing feeds with law enforcement for warrantless surveillance or corporate data hounds for more people tracking is the issue.
Yes. I would have no issue with all my neighbors having local systems like I’m switching to. But putting a cloud camera out on the sidewalk, where it’s not pointing at your entrance, but just filming passersby (my new neighbor)… eek. I am thinking of leaving him a note, just politely asking why he feels the need to record me walking my dog every day. At least put up a privacy notice we can all read and sign before crossing the public easement that people are totally allowed to walk. Let me know how me and my dog’s facial structures are going to be used to train mysterious backroom Planitir AIs. Like good neighbors do.
Don’t take it personally. You think your neighbor wants to record you and your dog specifically? I mean, it’s possible, but it’s likely they just want to be able to see who comes to their door, or have a general idea of what’s going on around their house. I have my locally hosted reolink doorbell set to trigger on zones if things enter my driveway or approach my door, because that’s what I care about. I get a bunch of crap with kids playing in the street running onto my property, people’s dogs straying off the sidewalk, and the occasional vehicle turning around. But I also figured out what kids were doing dong dashing, and have record of what deliveries were suplexed WWE style onto my doormat so I can more easily handle stuff damaged in shipping.
If you hear some crazy shit outside you probably get up and look out the window, don’t you? Well, a camera means you can go back and see what happened all the time. It’s a no brainer why people want them now that they’re cheap and accessible.
Most people don’t have any idea how bad cloud cameras are for overall society, and they’ll probably roll their eyes and think you’re crazy if you try to dive into that conversation with them out the gate.
They’re legally within their rights to do what they’re doing, so you can dislike it all you want but there’s not much you can do about it without some pretty diplomatic conversations. And a passive aggressive note left about them watching you and your dog isn’t going to help your case, at ALL. First you’ll have to become friends with them so they trust you, then find a way to educate them and change their minds.
No thank you, it’s very useful and not shared. I have the right to video my own property.
Yup. 1 day I just counted all the cameras on my way to get breakfast it was 57. And I’m sure I’ve missed many.
“This is sensitive data that could do a lot of damage if it fell into the wrong hands”, said the people paying a for-profit company to collect the data
said the owners of the bad hands 😂
“You mean we have to let the public use the services they’re paying for? Wtf!”
“Give me the man and I will find the crime.”
My friend and I look for these occasionally. They’re often deployed with default passwords and never updated. Many seem to be set up to case businesses and houses and appear to be obscured from view. It’s super great /s
What’s the default password? And how do you connect to it?
Any clever “google Dork” ways in finding these “flock” devices through eg Shodan?
Deflockme
And for anyone reading this, please contribute to the map when you find a camera irl that’s not included
i think theres a website for finding and reporting them.
there it is.
NY city is the most camera surveillance place on earth. Didn’t make it much safer.
Is it NYC now? I remember it being London a while back, but considering the money, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was NYC now.
This. Citation needed
Would’ve expected Singapore to be up there
Yeah I remember UK was way ahead of the game on this and it was a big topic in the 2000s but maybe they got overtaken.
I worry we give too much attention to one company over several that are problematic. Not that the attention is invalid, more that we need to keep every invasive technology in each other’s awareness.
It’s at least setting legal precedent which makes it easier to fight against these.
i don’t really believe in those anymore.
That’s a very Soviet shrug
🥦
