alt Hacker NewsYou absolutely can complain about Flock and other such cameras over Ring.
Ring cameras are privately owned, installed on private property, by the choice of the property owner. Data sharing is under the customer's control unless a judicial warrant is involved.
Flock cameras are a completely different situation. They're installed on public property, data sharing controls are an utter shitshow, and they give police the ability to do unconstitutional dragnet-style fishing for crime and even pre-crime, i.e. "suspicious patterns of behavior".
Equating the two is a complete misunderstanding of what's happening, but companies like Flock rely on that kind of ignorance to push their product.
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> Data sharing is under the customer's control unless a judicial warrant is involved.
The police routinely has access to Ring footage. The people who installed them give that access. Occasionally Amazon did it too even without user consent.
I’m equating the 2 because those people contribute to the internalizing of the surveillance status. When people walk down the street they are filmed by dozens of cameras and they are starting to expect this everywhere. Flock is “another one”. Flock would have had an uphill battle in a society where private surveillance is unacceptable.
When it becomes totally normal for others to use their own private (not so private n the cloud) surveillance footage of public spaces against you, Flock stops raising people’s internal alarm bells.
Why do you think Flock is big exactly in the society that was told private surveillance of public space is perfectly fine and even expected?
> Ring cameras are privately owned, installed on private property, by the choice of the property owner.
... recording the street, meaning https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/guidance-on-the-u... applies in the UK:
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If your CCTV system captures images of people outside the boundary of your private domestic property – for example, from neighbours’ homes or gardens, shared spaces, or from public areas – then the GDPR and the DPA will apply to you. You will need to ensure your use of CCTV complies with these laws. If you do not comply with your data protection obligations you may be subject to appropriate regulatory action by the ICO, as well as potential legal action by affected individuals.
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However, as with anything in the UK, it's virtually impossible to enforce it on sh*thead neighbours recording you with their Chinese cloud enabled devices 24/7.
Its insincere to act like the control of data through ring doorbells and similar products are in anyway customer controlled. Even if we ignore when the agreed protocols have been actively ignored ( i.e., employees being able to access unauthorized: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-51048406), the amount of control over the data the customer has is very little but most are simply unaware of this. Uninformed consent is not a thing.
Also pertinent imo: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-49191005
Surveillance infrastructure is surveillance infrastructure, who is supposed to "own" it is irrelevant. Unless consumers own the hardware, the service, and where the data is stored, they do not own any of it.