https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/06/ftc-amazon-ring-workers-illegally-spied-on-users-of-home-security-cameras/
Amazon agrees to Ring and Alexa settlements but didn't admit violating any laws.
Oh look, that thing they said definitely wasn't happening was happening...
I'm shocked, shocked I tell you!
I don't understand how anyone still trusts any off-the-shelf smart device. Even the companies that explicitly promise not to do something have been found doing it.
It's so crazy to me that people will install spying devices in their homes that X number of random faraway people can access and they will PAY to do it. Even if everything is 100% honorable and well-run initially, most everything changes given enough time.
I don’t understand how anyone still trusts any off-the-shelf smart device. Even the companies that explicitly promise not to do something have been found doing it.
They 'trust' it for the same stupid reasons anyone trusts bad ideas, uncritically. They don't think it'll happen to 'them'. Same reason people drunk drive. Same reason people smoke. Same reason people have unprotected sex. Same reason they do anything. It only ever exists as an abstract notion until the crosshairs visibly point in their own direction, and they suffer consequences as a result.
I thought I took privacy seriously as a person that's fairly conscious of it, until I turned my own, 'advanced', layman OSINT skills upon myself, and was shocked at what I was able to uncover. In detail; incidentally. And I was never prompted to do that, until I lost a job opportunity which involved an extremely 'extensive' background check, that included a 'highly' speculative interpretation of a few key events of my life, which were completely inconsequential.
And most people will continue to behave the same way, until something similar forces them to revise their prior thoughts on it. It's like thinking you're going to defeat prostitution through moral lectures; and you won't. Not until people experience loss or pain. Pain's always a more instructive teacher for people, because pain always raises the question of 'why' it's there. It forces you to think about how you ended up where you are. Unfortunately, most people are just blissfully ignorant.
Mentioned this in another Lemmy community, but a self hosted (preferably FOSS) home security video solution would probably have prevented something like this. Main problem is those solutions aren’t as simple as Ring’s plug and play cameras.
I'm running esp32 cameras on zoneminder. They don't make esp32 compatible cameras without the ir filter but I found one seller that sells them with only a little blop of superglue holding it together. The ir filter is also at the back where it can be carved out with a knife instead of at the front of the lense where it's 100% impossible to remove. They probably get paid money by smart camera manufactures to not sell ir filter removable cameras.
The night vision isn't very good because the maximum exposure the camera can do isnt very high but it's still a hell of a lot better than the conventional options of either 1)an affordable smartphone app based camera that spies on you or 2) a "proper" rtsp camera that can cost over $700 just for a non wireless non night vision one. I bought a ir led light bar to immuninate the fuck out of it which works well enough.
Until they start doing a more effective job at cracking down on sellers selling ov2460 cameras that have an easily removable ir filter, this is the best option for now.
In one case, an employee "viewed thousands of video recordings belonging to female users of Ring cameras that surveilled intimate spaces in their homes such as their bathrooms or bedrooms," the FTC said.
Of all the places, why the fuck would you install one of these in your bathroom? I just don't get some people
People think 1984 is about totalitarian government. It’s really about totalitarian capitalism.
Oh thank you thank you thank you! Every time I post something like that on Reddit, I get a swarm of libs and right-wingers trying to get semantic on me to prove that capitalism isn't just feudalism in disguise. Like, "But under Capitalism you can just change your employer! You couldn't do that under feudalism!" and I am like - oh, so you're saying it IS just like Feudalism, except we haven't reached the "Every town is a Company Town" stage yet. Got it.
Arguing with low-intellect, 'meme'-intellectuals is never fun. But capitalism doesn't 'create' the 'inherent' social friction and inequalities between people. Because almost 'nowhere' in human affairs, do you find people evenly represented. Even before you had capitalism, you still had the arrangements of 'commerce'. Which were every bit as greedy and atavistic as the worst excesses of capitalism you find. And even before you had concepts like 'property', you had concepts like 'territory'. I don't like being a 'rung' on the ladder as much as anyone else, but I don't think it's a completely fair criticism of 'capitalism'.