According to Flock’s announcement, its Ring partnership allows local law enforcement members to use Flock software “to send a direct post in the Ring Neighbors app with details about the investigation and request voluntary assistance.” Requests must include “specific location and timeframe of the incident, a unique investigation code, and details about what is being investigated,” and users can look at the requests anonymously, Flock said.
“Any footage a Ring customer chooses to submit will be securely packaged by Flock and shared directly with the requesting local public safety agency through the FlockOS or Flock Nova platform,” the announcement reads.
In principle, allowing police to place requests for security camera data is not necessarily a bad thing. There can be legitimate use cases for such functionality. But this needs to be done without sketchy companies like Amazon or Flock being involved and broad legal safeguards for this process (e.g. requests can only be placed for serious crimes).
yeah I feel this way about a lot of things. I think on some level there does need to be people protecting public safety, stopping people from murdering each other (which they very much occasionally do) etc. Do the cops actually do that, do it well, and restrict people’s freedoms only in the minimal and exact ways they need to to do that? …eeeeeehhhh.
I think it’s our responsibility as voters and members of the community to have police forces that are respected, well paid and also who have allegiance to the people at large.
Getting there, that’s the real challenge.
I lived in an apartment once a few years ago and my neighbor pointed one of these things right at my front door. I complained to the landlord but they said it was completely allowed. I was pissed because you could see well into my apartment when I opened my door and there was nothing I could do about it. I wasn’t doing anything illegal, I just feel like it’s completely reasonable to not want someone else pointing a camera right at your front door only a few feet away.
I don’t think it would have been illegal to point a bunch of reasonably powerful IR LEDs in that camera’s direction either.
Nothing a little spray paint can’t fix…
Illegal where I live.
If you’re not doing anything wrong, why are you worried? /s
It is actually quite easy to do nothing wrong. Just don’t be:
- not white
- not heteronormative
- not neurodivergent
- a defender of democracy and human rights
- not a fascist’s bootlicker
sad \s
About to? They have been for some years.
Here (Denmark) we can’t even have them if they show just a bit of pavement or road or anything outside the grounds for the house.
I guess we are the 2 extremes in that regard. 😜
BRB, moving to Denmark.
I can absolutely understand if Americans want to move here. Compared to the rest of the world, it sometimes seems like we are living in some fairy tale bubble, where our problems are manageable, or the rest of the world is some parallel universe where some things simply went wrong.
With the only known Exceptions to me being Norway and Switzerland.
Same in Germany. The same applies to nonfunctional camera dummy bodies because you can swap them to be an actual camera without anyone noticing anytime. And I am really glad that it is regulated like this.
The same applies to nonfunctional camera dummy bodies
Interesting, I know we had a case a couple of years back, where a non functional camera was deemed illegal, because as you say people can’t tell the difference.
This camera was set up however for the specific purpose of making it look like a public space was surveilled, but I guess it would work as precedence for the same as you describe.
Considering the immense corruption inherent to modern commercial institutions, it’s probably for the best.
Yes, of the 2 extremes I prefer what we have.
This is my surprised face.
Orwell turns in his grave
… and spray paint
