People buy ring cameras for "law and order" related to their own properties, if anything this is the natural progression of this type of product. What is your argument to say someone who wants to opt-in to this kind of thing and why they shouldnt?

So when I read the article, I know there are a lot of people who trust the police in their community. They are fine with "mass surveillance" (though they would never see it like that) to help keep crime down.

Much of that may be racist in nature to keep minorities out of neighborhoods, but much of it is also people trying to keep their amazon deliveries from being stolen.

It's not hard to see that far into the future where police departments offer an app that will tell you who is at the front door before you open it -- and something like that will probably triple the sales of home security cameras.

Do they? I think cameras are like police, they are only for after something happens. Their presence can be a deterrent.

This does not have to be a natural progression. That’s only true if we collectively decide we’re better off having centralized government surveillance.

Following any incident the police could do their jobs and respect the constitution by actually talking to people and requesting they assist rather than implementing mass-surveillance to avoid doing work.

Did you read the article?

> Lumumba said the city would only be able to access the devices when crimes occur in those areas.

You shouldn't be surprised to discover that the definition of "when" and "area" can be very flexible to maximize data collection. Car break in happened 6 months ago - good enough justify a crime having occurred. The break-in was 20 miles away? Well, that's driving distance, so it qualifies as the same "area".

Look at your local PD's crime map and you will discover that this is a recipe for perpetual mass surveillance. Good luck keeping this footage from the NSA and FBI. I'm counting down the days to the first person who'll be busted and their Ring will be the first hostile "witness"

No issue then since the government and police especially have a good track record of following policies and rules that’s aren’t the law. /s

Only be able to access it when a crime occurs how? They’ll get a warrant or an officer says a crime occurred and asks for access?

But Ring cameras aren't usually pointed at their own properties. They're mostly pointed at public property (the street) and their neighbors across the street. Your right to feel safe stops at my right to have privacy from you.

You have no expectation of privacy in a public space. Its the reason I can record you all day if I want.

People don't understand this (clearly). Most of us just choose not to record others because we don't give a shit about you, or have any sort of vested interest in you.

Think of the children. Hackers may hack these cameras and start following children home. Edit: I was being sarcastic and bringing up what everyone does when they don’t have a valid reason to oppose something put out the old think of the children bit.

How would you propose Ring stops it? Change the T&Cs to disallow sharing your video with the police while still allowing sharing with your friends? What if a private company says it's your friend and collects it on behalf of the police? What if a group of vigilant neighbors want to pool all their videos together so their own volunteers or staff can monitor them? It's kind of hard to allow something for normal people while disallowing it for the police.

Ring afaik doesn’t allow anyone live-stream access other than the owners and those directly added to the app. Now we’re talking about the ability to give the police department a livestream, something neighbors can’t currently do. They don’t have to build it.

> and those directly added to the app

The article says this is just owners allowing access to the company that manages it for the police. How can Ring stop that?

I don’t know how else to explain to you that this is different functionality. When someone is added to the app they have complete control over your Ring, this is not the same thing.

Can you quote where it says this is a different functionality? The statement from Amazon says it's none of their business.