I hope what really gets people to pay attention is how the FBI said they searched that news ladies' moms' ring camera footage even though she didn't have an active subscription.

If your stupid gadget needs a separate proprietary app that demands internet access, anticipate that all data is shared for all kinds of shady business.

the problem with these fucking things is that you can't really opt out. even if you don't buy your own, some neighbours will happily buy and install the big brother to watch you from their porch and there is very little you can do about it.

same as you can't really escape the google, even if you don't use single one of their service, there is always the other part to any communication you are having...

It is baffling that people hadn't clued in about this sooner

"They aren't just tracking lost dogs, they're tracking you and your neighbors,"

Uh, yeah. You didn't get the news about them sharing with ICE?

My personal choice for security stuff is ubiquiti, but I'm sure someone here can find a super cheap doorbell camera that saves to an SD card and accomplishes the same thing.

I'm really glad people didn't just fall over for this ad, and connected the dots on what Amazon is doing

They've backed off this and ended the partnership, claim Flock never got any footage, which I think is a total lie.

They'll re-partner when the heat is off, or just do it silently, Amazon shouldn't be trusted. Explain why to your friends and neighbors.

I honestly didn't know what they were thinking with that commercial. Why would you proudly advertise that you've built a massive surveillance network, during one of the most-watched yearly televised events too for that matter? Did they seriously believe that there wouldn't be a major backlash? I mean I appreciate the blunt honesty in that commercial so I'll give them credit for that.

just get a Chinese one like tapo so that the Chinese government can spy on you instead

I chose Reolink. AFAICT it's not leaking anything outside my network and it's fairly inexpensive. Not as cheap as the subsidized Ring brand but hey, at least I own them.

Imagine spending millions of dollars on an ad that costs your company millions more in lost sales

My only regret is that I can't smash one because was never stupid enough to trust these things to begin with.

the other day I heard someone make the point that Amazon is just a more successful Palinteer

I put Google cameras on my house years ago out of convenience and this is it, I'm spending the money on a PoE system where my footage stays on my own hardware.

my next door neighbor has a camera that seems to look like a ring... I mean I'm not gonna approach their door for no reason to check if it is a ring, but like... if it is a ring... then oh well, NSA is right by my door.

And I'm in a deep blue city btw... neighbor is a renter and is Black, so.... yeah... minority working class inadvertantly have a spy camera on their door

Front door is like right next to each other... like the camera can see me walking in the the path into my own house, it makes a sound when it detects movement and I heard the sound thing trigger even when walking only on my side of the yard

...And my family are immigrants...

so yay, our movements are probably in an ICE database

For anyone who has a Ring camera, wants to get rid of it, but still wants a doorbell camera for security/convenience reasons, I'll point out that Ecobee has a fairly good rating on Mozilla's Privacy Not Included page where they review products for their privacy.

E2EE transmission of video from the camera to your phone when streaming, on-device processing of video feeds, auto-deletes any cloud footage when people uninstall the app (so non-technical users who think uninstalling an app deletes their data will actually get that benefit), only saves clips when actual motion is detected, first line of their privacy policy is "Your personal information and data belong to you", and their subscription is 100% optional.

Only real privacy concern is that if you choose to integrate yours with Alexa, it might get some data from that, but that's optional. The main downside is just that they only have a wired option for outdoor setups, but they do have an indoor one that doesn't require any kind of hookup directly into wires in your wall.

As always though, if you have the technical ability to set something up yourself that runs only on your local network, do it.

ten years too late