I get the privacy implications, but this article adds unnecessary fearmongering with sensationalist racism (apparently author is unfamiliar with non-white neighborhoods b/c just as whites, non whites will also report suspicious activity).

From what I’ve witnessed, these services have indeed aided residents to cooperate against “dirtbag” criminals as well as supply imagery to police as evidence and has led to arrests and convictions (in my neighborhood, at least). It gives all types of residents some comfort that the perps will get caught rather than the police saying “sorry, we don’t have evidence, and don’t have time to follow up on non violent crime”.

Residents are going to deploy this. That’s a given. At this time owners control access. If there comes a time when one loses control over this content unilaterally, then it will be a problem.

This is honestly one of the issues I have with journalism today. As a non-white person I do not need a white savior. I just want to be treated equally, I do not need to be coddled or "protected". I have thick skin; I am not a child. Sorry for the rant mc32. Services like this have helped to curb delivery thefts, scam visits, etc near me. And I agree with you if the resident is stripped of their control I can see it becoming a huge problem.

Not sure I get the part about filming "public spaces". Wasn't this always legal? Isn't that part of what "public" means?

You have to ask yourself, why is a retail company (which started as an online bookstore) in the least bit interested in the police business?

This is a disturbing trend. It seems that, as tech companies get larger, they are giving themselves over to the surveillance state with ever more enthusiasm.

I would think it's to improve reliability of their deliveries. I see why you would be concerned, but retail stores have had security guards for my whole lifetime...

Yep. Both Fed-Ex and Amazon have an interest in preventing theft as well as fraud (false claims of non-delivery), and they see a business opportunity in addition to shrinkage minimization with the perk of customer psychological comfort to boot.

Give me a break. This is not about shoplifting in retail stores! Amazon is now helping cops surveille people in their own homes via Alexa and Ring.

Theft = vernacular porch piracy. Prevention = happy shoppers. Happy shoppers = more sales. More sales = happy company.

You're naive if you think this about package theft. Show me one place where that is even mentioned on Ring's website or docs.

Not sure about their marketing, but I know how and why people use it in their apartments and homes.

If curious get on one of the mentioned neighborhood apps, see how people use these devices: package theft, suspicious people/cars, vagrants/unstable folks, public disturbance (skaboarders scratching cars, etc.,) early hours canvassing by thieves, etc...

Shoppers do not care about package theft or any other loss- making properties of a business.

Show me one place where package theft is even mentioned on Ring's website or in their doc. Is isn't.

It naive to think that Amazon is worried about package theft and that's why they bought Ring. Too many other tech companies have signed up for the surveillance economy for that to be true.

What's the real reason?

Loss aversion is a real thing - people can and do decide to go brick and mortar because of being afraid of package theft. It isn't realistically a big issue but people care about it a lot.

As for why I would guess wanting better rates from turning bits to cash.

  Shoppers do not care about package theft

Collectively, shoppers pay for all package theft.

That is true. But we also pay for pensions, profits, advertising, union-busting, pollution, and countless other things we may not want to pay for.

Ultimately, the consumer only cares about what product he is getting and what price he has to pay. How the company juggles its losses or where they come from is of no interest to the product purchaser.

Easy.. package theft alone probably costs Amazon millions every year. If more customers have a doorbell camera that captures motion activity, more thieves can be caught, and the less theft will happen. It's actually a very good pairing.

That's a facile answer and doesn't explain why so many other big tech companies are signing up for the survelliance economy.

Package theft is a drop in the bucket for Amazon and can't amount to more than the equivalent losses from shoplifting if they ran retail stores.

I was only answering for the Amazon case... the rest comes down to two things, in terms of home security, it's mostly driven by the consumer demand. As to general surveillance at larger levels part of it is maximizing the fractions of a penny. I mean, if you can sell a piece of data for a fraction of a cent, but have 50 billion fractions to sell, that's a pretty big hunk of change.

There are also those genuinely concerned over $STATE$ security and working towards that as a goal.

I'm not condoning or supporting or rejecting for that matter any of the above. But it really doesn't take too much to see several reasons why this stuff happens.

As to the losses in relation to retail stores... retail stores generally have higher margins, and they still hire security staff and put up cameras.

Package theft affects their margins. They will have a strong financial motive to minimize it. No conspiracy theory required.

It's also a moral outrage, when a subset of the population blatantly preys on others, and perpetrating the vast majority of thefts while constituting a tiny proportion of the population. There needs to be a strong response to these types of people for the safety of everyone else.

Some of the most sophisticated crime labs in the US are owned by large retail entities. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/04/csi-w...

As long as people don't point their cameras at public spaces, i.e. the streets, I don't see a problem with this. I wouldn't personally trust a company to handle my video feed, but that's just me.

What's wrong with pointing a camera at a public space?