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.
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
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.
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.
Cancel prime too
My only regret is that I can’t smash one because was never stupid enough to trust these things to begin with.
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.
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
Why anyone ever thinks empowering psychopathic companies is ever a good idea is beyond me. They ALWAYS fuck us over. Every damn time.
duct tape
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
I’m sure many did, sadly.
Reolink doorbell cameras don’t need to be connected to the cloud. They can record to an SD card or upload to an FTP server. You can connect to them with RTSP and run your own NVR if you want too.
+1 for Reolink. I have those and UniFi cameras tied to my UniFi system.
I have a few Amcrest cameras and they’re pretty decent as well. Outdoor rated, PoE, 4k, UV LEDs, they have PTZ variants too and offer standard RTSP streams without any kind of vendor software hassle.
Running a local NVR with some image segmentation and classification models is goodbut also consider adding a bit of Kismet and SDR trickery. Having a bit more awareness is always useful and the radio spectrum is increasingly full of useful information that can be relevant to home security.
Most people are also radio beacons of some form or another due to their tech/car/flipper zero and being able to detect things like modern cars, people wearing bluetooth earbuds, wifi deauthentication attacks or new radio sources which could indicate some kind of hostile surveillance or tracking… those are all useful and relatively simple things to monitor. With a bit more money you could make some good estimates about the location and relative motion of these sources.
You could also add some cheap SDRs and listen to your local county’s dispatch trunking system. This is perfectly legal, it’s all broadcast in the clear. CB users and scanner owners used to do this but it became harder once they switched to trunking systems because you required some kind of processor to navigate the trunking protocol. Now you can do the same thing with 2 cheap RTL-SDRs and some open source software: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9KJrtIO8_4 Language models reading transcripts of these could alert you to any major events near you, like a traffic accident (or active shooting, USA! USA! USA!).
Obviously this is a bit more involved than ‘Press buy button on Amazon, login to camera, glue to wall.’, but the end product that you can create is better than anything that you can buy as a commercial product.
Hmm yes, I understand some of these acronyms. /s
SD - Secure Digital (memory card you’d use for most things)
FTP - File Transfer Protocol (a way to upload files to a server)
RTSP - Real Time Streaming Protocol (a way to stream video)
NVR - Network Video Recorder (a device that records video)
I love lemmy. On the other site, you’d have 100 snarky and/or insulting replies. Here, there’s a single reply that is straightforward and helpful.
I dunno, thanks for being a bright spot in otherwise somewhat bleak world.
I have multiple Reolink cameras and highly recommend them.
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…
Maybe we all need to start wearing clothes with bright infrared leds lining them?
Exactly. I never used Gemini or gave sensitive information/photos to major AI companies, but my family has, including photos of me.
I’ve never had a Facebook account. I’ve always hated when people posted pictures I was in and said who I was.
Meta algorithms have ghost profiles, including dead people or babies not yet born
Break it. Do crime. Do it.
break it and be recorded on their camera breaking it. that will end well.
Tell me without telling me that you’ve never needed the police to do anything useful.
You can’t put a mask on and cover your distinguishing features? Weak
IR LEDs don’t work on these like with some CCTV cameras, right?
At close range they’ll blind them, but the tech is getting better these days.
What knocks out the camera is the auto exposure, they used to just take the whole sensors input, average it and set the brightness against that value. A lot of the newer surveillance cameras will just ignore the overall and compensate pixel per pixel.
Project farm looked at a bunch
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.
It was a NEST camera from Google, which is only a meaningful distinction because it means they ALL do this shit.
The only ones that don’t are ones that only send data to your data storage.
And even then, big question mark, as most Chinese produced camera modules have black box firmware. If it’s on the Internet it’s not yours.
My cameras have local network access only. Most people who are tech savvy enough to set up their own storage are also able to block Internet access for security cameras.
But another big concern for externally mounted cameras with microsd cards is the confiscation of those cards. They are are very easy to remove, often without tools and I don’t believe for a minute that the fact that a warrant is required would make police actually get one before taking the card.
Which cameras do you use?
TP-Link (which are cheap but so unreliable I had to add smart switches to reset them when they stop working), Foscam and Dahua. Dahua is by far the best. All of them record to a local server running Home Assistant and Frigate.
I really need to set up frigate. Been procrastinating for months 😐
TP-Link
I hope its not one of the 32 TP-Link cameras that have unpatched auth flaws allowing malicious actors to reset the admin credentials in them.. This is a local exploit, so you’re probably okay, but these exploits could be used in concert with others to compromise your security/privacy.
And the NEST camera apparently has some sort of free tier that saves a short amount (the last few hours) of video by default, so NEST users shouldn’t be surprised at all that their video feed is sent to the cloud as its one of the features of the subscription-less model.
The problem isn’t that it’s being sent to the cloud, the problem is that it’s not being encrypted and Amazon is doing whatever they fuck they want with it, including giving it to law enforcement without a warrant.
encryption wouldn’t solve the problem, just raise more questions. how is it encrypted, with what algorithm? was the alg implemented securely? who has the decryption keys? how were the keys generated? were they generated from a good enough entropy source? these are non-trivial questions that have to be asked in an encrypted system where encryption is not just a gimmick or a marketing buzzword.
having encryption and “secure!” plastered all over the box and the phone app does not mean anything, especially when you need protection against the manufacturer.
When people in a Lemmy technology community say “encryption” it should be obvious we’re referring to effective encryption, not a marketing claim on a product box.
yes, that would be ideal, but at any point in time we will have newcomers, for them it won’t be obvious
Your prior comment was for newcomers?
"How is it encrypted, with what algorithm? was the alg implemented securely? who has the decryption keys? how were the keys generated? were they generated from a good enough entropy source? "
This was obviously written for people with quite a bit of knowledge. Most newcomers would have absolutely no idea what any of it means.
Just to note here, they are referring to nest which is google.
A big exception to the rule are the HomeKit secure video cameras that work in Apple’s ecosystem. If your HomeKit compatible camera is going straight into HKSV, and isn’t paired with manufacturer’s own cloud video service, then it’s all E2EE and it can’t be accessed by Apple, even with a warrant.
Problem is, camera offerings are limited, and scrolling clips in HomeKit is paaaainful. Also, if you’re not in Apple’s ecosystem, you can’t use it.
Can’t you get a surveillance camera from anywhere and use that?
They’re pointing out that HomeKit cameras are specifically end to end encrypted and claimed inaccessible. Apple has really been pushing online privacy as a feature
You can get a camera from anywhere and either use it locally only or implement your own encryption before saving to a cloud resource if you can get one with any expectation of privacy. But you have to do all the work and it is never end to end encrypted
Depends on your precise definition of the camera “end” I suppose, but an IP camera absolutely can be and should be end to end encrypted. Even if the camera itself does not support native encryption, at worst the aggregation point/server should. Really, surveillance cameras should be on their own dedicated private IP network anyway, ideally with physical isolation on any wired connections. Besides a physical, on-site attack (which is what the cameras are for!) there really should not be any plausible method of an outside attacker breaching into the non-encrypted part of the network at all.
And that’s the worst case, real-world scenario. Quite a few cameras do in fact support on-device encryption now so “never” is still definitely incorrect. You do have to do the work though. That’s how good security works, it doesn’t come in a box as much as many wish it would and even if it does it’s never one-size-fits-all.
My wife and I recently moved to a home with ring cameras preinstalled, but no subscription of course. We can only access a live feed via the cloud service. I told my wife, I don’t think it matters whether we have a subscription or not… if they want to use the footage from our home cameras for any reason at all, it’s in their power to do so. They can save it, scan it, watch it, … they don’t even need to save the video, they can save results from a scan to get out the important details more efficiently.
My wife didn’t want to hear it. She said we aren’t paying them, so there’s nothing they can do. Then this news story dropped about Google Nest. I showed my wife. We no longer have the ring cameras.
Theoretically they wouldn’t have internet access if a previous occupant set them up unless one of your neighbors has an unsecured AP. Or maybe I’m misunderstanding you and you’re saying you set them up on your wireless network after you moved in. Still a good move to get rid of them but I wouldn’t be as concerned about them if the only AP they were set up to use was no longer present.
Nope. Ring cameras are part of Amazon Sidewalk which is effectively an automatic, invisible, and not end-user-controllable wireless mesh network “meant to keep devices working during wifi outages” or in other words to ensure the data makes it back to the cloud at any cost.
Their are more and more device manufacturers starting to use techniques like this to ensure connection regardless of owner intent.
I can’t say that’s surprising but I have only heard of smart TVs having been confirmed to do that
Interesting, I didn’t think about that nor did I know about the mesh network someone else mentioned in a reply to you. In my case, I’m renting the home. The landlord pays for a very small internet package that is reserved for the cameras. He stopped paying for the subscription at some point but he still pays for the Internet it connects to, which is how we were able to access live footage in the past.
When I said “we no longer have the ring camera.” More accurately I could have said “we stopped charging it.” The landlord would probably have a minor aneurism if we tried explaining why we want to replace the camera he mounted a case for into the stucko by the front door.
I wonder if removing the cameras is the best move.
It might be better to let them run but have them watching a TV streaming Disney movies.
Then drop the dime to Disney that they are copying their IP.
Copyright theft is only an issue for the poor.
Have you been in a cave where AI doesn’t exist, or…?
I’m half curious if I cut open the box… you think there’d be an easy way to replace the camera with a video stream of my choosing? Because I wouldn’t mind cutting out the camera and leaving the device plugged into my PC for a constant headless stream of video content.
Print out a image of your asshole, though I suppose it could be anyone’s, and tape it to the front of the camera, then poke a needle through the microphone.
Or you know… Just unplug it.
unplug what? his asshole?
The subscription is ostensibly to cover the cost of bandwidth. But of course they’re uploading anyway…
Initially, NBC Nightly News (Savannah Guthrie’s network) stated that Ring cameras could only record 4-6 hours before the footage would start to rewrite over itself. Yet being able to uncover what they did after the fact seems hella sketchy.
Not at all, that’s tons of time.
That was a nest and I don’t know about them, but for Ring they store snippets activated by motion or ringing the bell. Once you’re only saving snippets, 4-6 hours video could be weeks
Ring can also save snapshots, at regular intervals, but that’s a still photo taking much less storage.
I used to have a nest doorbell. You can set it to record continuously, just FYI.
E: that will also require a subscription, which includes 60 days of saved footage (and other stuff)
Yet being able to uncover what they did after the fact seems hella sketchy.
Not really if you know how this kind of computing/information technology works.
A file consists of the data itself, and a pointer to the data location on the storage device or index record. When the computer wants to retrieve the data, it looks at the index to get the data location, then goes to that location to get the data. This is how the majority of computers/devices work. When a file is “deleted” the index is usually the only thing that goes away, not the data itself. Over the course of time, the data is eventually overwritten as its in areas marked as “free space”. So other new files will occupy some or all of that space changing it to hold the new file data.
If you want to get rid of the data itself, that is usually considered “purge” where the data is intentionally overwritten with something else to make the data irretrievable.
What the Google engineers were able to do was essentially go through all the areas marked as “free space” across dozens (hundreds?) of cloud servers that hold customer Nest camera data and try to find any parts that hadn’t been overwritten yet by new data. This is probably part of why it took so long to produce the video. Its like sorting through a giant dumpster to find an accidentally discarded wedding ring.
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
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.
Not always the case. Some cameras require a proprietary app for set up but can then be set to stream to a local server. Internet access can then be completely blocked with router settings.
Still, would you really want that? A half-baked device in your network, a device you suspect would constantly betray you, if given the chance?
I personally can’t imagine getting used to that. I’d despise the device (and myself probably).
It’s pretty trivial to block devices from accessing the Internet.
For those that know what they’re doing, and those that know what they’re doing don’t buy ring to begin with.
some of those that know what they’re doing, do it through pihole. But a DNS sink is really not enough. Even blacklisting the MAC might not be enough. If it requires a key from a server it might even be necessary to hack the device if it’s not a SoC and you can’t defile or use M-x Butterflies
So, what security cameras would you use or are you just back seat driving without a good suggestion?
The latest Raspberry Pi cameras have decent sensors, variants with night vision are available. Axis makes reliable, network attached cameras.
Open-source software like Frigate or ZoneMinder exists.
I have absolutely no problem using these kinds of devices.
I have an old phone and a generic Play account that I used for setup so the companies have nothing of consequence but my public IP address. Setup takes less than 15 minutes and after that all Internet access is completely blocked just like it would be if I unplugged my cable modem. There is no way for the cameras to override my router settings.
My smart TV is much more of a concern.
It is baffling that people hadn’t clued in about this sooner
Don’t worry, the majority of Ring owners still haven’t.
People still love Chrome, even though tech reviewers told us exactly how creepy that browser is. That info has been publicly available since day one.
Same story with Facebook, but somehow that syphilis of the web is still alive. I have no idea what these people are thinking.
Either they are ignorant or choosing convenience over security.
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.
It would be good if they had a way to limit range so it couldn’t focus on anything that isn’t within 10 ft of the door.
There’s no focus on my cameras, but they’re set not to detect people unless them come into zones near the house.
Hahhaha no they don’t tell you unless they come into zones you define.
They watch whatever the hell they like
No “they” involved in my case, my cameras are not connected to the Internet. Didn’t realize the prior focus comment was for cameras in general.
Yeah, the data is too valuable not to record all day long.
