A Super Bowl ad for Ring security cameras boasting how the company can scan neighborhoods for missing dogs has prompted some customers to remove or even destroy their cameras.
Online, videos of people removing or destroying their Ring cameras have gone viral. One video posted by Seattle-based artist Maggie Butler shows her pulling off her porch-facing camera and flipping it the middle finger.
Butler explained that she originally bought the camera to protect against package thefts, but decided the pet-tracking system raised too many concerns about government access to data.
“They aren’t just tracking lost dogs, they’re tracking you and your neighbors,” Butler said in the video that has more than 3.2 million views.
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.
Check out frigate.
Reolink is decent
Very happy with my Reolink cameras and NVR. Works better than the rings ever did.
What does PoE have to do with it?
He’s talking about a cheap NVR with poe built in. The only thing on the network is the NVR.
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.
Tbh I think the people at the top still haven’t caught up with the rapid changing sentiments among the population. My zero-tech-savy retired mother in-law was talking to me about Palantir the other day.
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
Presumably because most end users are in deep with the “if you do nothing wrong, you have nothing to worry about” crowd … and besides it can find a lost dog /s.
They brought these sorts of intrusive cameras in the first place so privacy was not top of mind, or even in 2nd or 3rd place.
I would also put a good bit of the blame on executives and marketing people being way out of touch with the average person.
Because in 3 weeks most people will forget about it. It’s brazen. They’ll still be the biggest doorbell company in America
They product does exactly what their customers want. Just the latter had not realised the implications for their own privacy, before the commercial, apparently.
My guess is that since Ring has a history of well-known collaborations with police and ICE, they wanted to re-frame their evil surveillance network as a way to save a puppy. Instead, lots of uninformed normies suddenly realized what those cameras are capable of, and had a huge negative reaction given the state of things.
People are really fucking stupid to buy their products in the forst place. So that’s what they were thinking and they were right.
These people are so fucking out of touch that it’s ridiculous
My only regret is that I can’t smash one because was never stupid enough to trust these things to begin with.
My friend, have you heard of Flock cameras?
Yes and I hate them cause it’s a pain in the ass having to route all my drives around them. Some routes take me 3x as long as they should cause of that stupid privacy-invading bullshit.
Well, I wouldn’t suggest doing crimes to physically break them, but you can break their little AI brains with a bit of adversarial noise and someone with a printer that can print on some sort of clear backing.
Benn Jordan https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pp9MwZkHiMQ
I clicked the link just to get a brief look at this video and ended up watching the whole thing and subscribing to Benn Jordan. Thank you for sharing!
I did the same thing. The one about ‘gifts for people who don’t trust the government’ is what got me when someone posted it here or in c/privacy. I’m glad I could pass it along!
I like his viewpoint, he always has interesting projects and his music background adds a nice little touch to the production values of his content.
e: Also, if you’re into math and physics check out 3Blue1Brown (Neural Networks math: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aircAruvnKk) and Art of the Problem (Explaining how energy can turn into rocks, physics explainer: https://youtu.be/f8O3XMrC8hg)
Don’t buy one just so you can smash it! I know it’s satisfying to hear the plastic crack and see its tiny lens pop free like a smooshed eyeball. Yeah. That I guess would be good. But don’t.
Why anyone ever thinks empowering psychopathic companies is ever a good idea is beyond me. They ALWAYS fuck us over. Every damn time.
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
Do you still have chinese citizenship? A few immigrant friends have gotten the paperwork ready, either to return to their home country or immigrate elsewhere, just incase ICE picks them up, they can agree to self-deport instead of ending up in a salvadorian concentration camp indefinitely.
IDK how the chinese US citizenship thing works, maybe China’d accept getting literally deported as proof you’re not a US citizen.
According to google (I am not a lawyer) I don’t have it anymore the moment I got US citizenship since they don’t do dual citizenship and honestly I don’t really want to live in mainland China.
If I had to leave the US, I rather go to Canada, Australia, or perhaps EU for asylum…
Or perhaps Taiwan, or maybe Singapore.
I know from your post history, you seem to like PRC, but please understand that I have a personal grudge against the CCP, I was the second child (precisely a second son so there was no exemption whatsoever) in my family born during the One Child Policy, I really hate the fact that they tried to terminate me when I was still a fetus, then afterwards deny my existence by refusing to issue my legal documents until they made my parents pay a huge fine… which feels like extortion IMO.
I feel like my existence in China is “illegal”, I feel rejected. I don’t wanna be there.
I have an existential crisis over it… I’m not even supposed to be alive in this world, I’m an anomoly.
According to google (I am not a lawyer) I don’t have it anymore the moment I got US citizenship
Yes, but if the US says you never actually had citizenship, maybe China will accept that.
If I had to leave the US, I rather go to Canada, Australia, or perhaps EU for asylum
I’ve heard they’ve made it harder to get asylum, and there’s often poor outcomes for asylum seekers, after Arab Spring. If you have a US passport and money to start a business or any extended family, you can stay for quite awhile. This applies to most of Asia too where US passport gets you 90 days on arrival, or 90 day evisa for vietnam. US passports are pretty powerful.
Or perhaps Taiwan, or maybe Singapore.
Never been to either, can’t tell you about it.
I have an existential crisis over it… I’m not even supposed to be alive in this world, I’m an anomoly.
Eh, it’s a different place now. My family who worked there in the 90s and 2000s had completely alien experiences to when I went there in last year. All I’m saying is it’d be wise to be aware of what options you have.
Eh, it’s a different place now. My family who worked there in the 90s and 2000s had completely alien experiences to when I went there in last year. All I’m saying is it’d be wise to be aware of what options you have.
Mental health acceptance is stilk a huge issue. My mom told me about a story where allegedly someone in either her village or a neighboring village (can’t even understand what exactly she said because I’m not as fluent in Cantonese as English) had a family that has a son that “doesn’t act normal” and instead of trying to help, they perceived him as a threat and just locked him inside the house, barely treated him like a human being and only fed him out of pity… like an animal on a barn…
And also my mom just told me a story on WeChat about in Guangdong, an autistic person that got accepted into a University but then they found out about his autism so they expelled him for that after he already got accepted. So yeah… that would’ve caused outrage in the west. There is not really an ADA equivalent in China.
My mother kinda lowkey hates me for having depression… can’t imagine what’s its like in China, everyone would just call me “lazy” or “useless eater” or some shit… China is very conservative, its MAGAland but with Chinese Characteristics.
Also, if I posted any of my posts that I posted here about my mother’s behaviors on the Chinese internet… oh jeez they’re gonna just attack me for being “unfilial”, at least westerners sort of sympathize. In China, parents are always right, the kids are always wrong.
My ideal country would be one with a lot of Asians (or more specifically, ethnic Han Chinese) but that are westernized. Cuz then I have safety of not having to deal with racism, but also not having to deal with conservative culture bullshit.
Like just build one massive island then gather all the Westernized ethnic Han Chinese there, build our own country, without authoritarian bullshit, then I’d be safe.
His icon suggests Taiwanese.
Because they’re wiretaps. Insane that it took this long for people to understand this.
“Amazon says the system is secured against hackers” …You dumb evil pieces of shit, your employees and malicious government and law enforcement entities are a far greater risk than hackers. “We’re spying on everything you do and giving Trump’s constitution-ignoring lackeys access, but at least hackers aren’t, probably”
Because they all connect to the Kremlin via a single washing machine CPU.
Why would you wire your house up to this shit anyway.
Personally are you like the idea of having security cameras on my house because they increase security in the same way that a prominent burglar alarm deters theft.
I can even see why these things been internet connected is appealing, it means the cameras can be accessed remotely when you’re out and about and people can’t just break in and then take the recording device.
I went with industry standard localized cameras that I could rider python on two of my servers at home for. Id love to try to hack up a ring , see if I could extract out what makes it “evil” and leave the rest, to even a relay to another server or something.
Things I think about.
does anyone have a link to the original superbowl ad?
Found it: https://youtu.be/hiaIHLwJvPQ?t=1449
Data privacy starts at home. From the onset, I was suspicious of my data in the ring camera or ring cloud; my old mechanical bell rules.
how the company can scan neighborhoods for missing dogs
Hilarious. Thanks for making me laugh.
Why hasn’t everyone done this to their any cloud services door bell?
People are sheep
Why not?
