Posted on 02/18/2020 9:05:10 AM PST by ransomnote
Margaret Cudia thought her Ring doorbell camera was "the best thing since sliced bread." She loved watching the world pass by through her suburban New Jersey neighborhood, guarding vigilantly for suspicious strangers and porch pirates from the comfort of her phone.
She hadn't expected the camera also might capture awkward moments closer to home, like the time it caught her daughter grabbing a beer and talking about how controlling her mother was. "I never told her about that one," she said with a laugh.
Amazon's Ring, Google's Nest and other Internet-connected cameras - some selling for as little as $59 - have given Americans the tools they need to become a personal security force, and millions of people now seeing what's happening around their home every second - what Ring calls the "new neighborhood watch." (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)
But the allure of monitoring people silently from afar has also proved more tempting than many expected. Customers who bought the cameras in hopes of not becoming victims joke that instead they've become voyeurs.
The Washington Post surveyed more than 50 owners of in-home and outdoor camera systems across the United States about how the recording devices had reshaped their daily lives. Most of those who responded to online solicitations about their camera use said they had bought the cameras to check on package deliveries and their pets, and many talked glowingly about what they got in return: security, entertainment, peace of mind. Some said they worried about hackers, snoops or spies.
But in the unscientific survey, most people also replied that they were fine with intimate new levels of surveillance - as long as they were the ones who got to watch.
They analyzed their neighbors. They monitored their kids and house guests.
MORE AT LINK
(Excerpt) Read more at greenwichtime.com ...
We do here...text with our neighbors about stuff all the time. One is a cop...and this is a tight packed suburb.
But, I think in many ways you are correct...especially with Dems.
A fewer-than-60 sample, out of how many tens or hundreds of thousands of users? Definitive data! < /sarc >
Actually, I use Amazon Locker locations to pick up my packages. As such, no need for Ring doorbell.
We seldom locked our doors over a 20-year span while our kids were growing up; the Chief of Police lived across the street and his kids spent time at our house.
A quick search found these at google for Ring cameras.
Remember that Ring and others record 24/hrs. They save the motion detected but you know they save it all if they want to. Best to get a camera that records to a home device or a encrypted FTP site you control.
https://www.google.com/search?q=ring+camera+videos&source=lnms&tbm=vid&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjUhvjt19vnAhWHJTQIHWbDArIQ_AUoAXoECA0QAw&biw=1488&bih=857
“Ring and Nest helped normalize American surveillance and turned us into a nation of voyeurs”
Before we just had nice retirees and housewives that made up the backbone of the neighborhood watch.
I have no real issue with these devices, however. People are getting lots of home deliveries, and it’s good to have an eye on your porch.
Ah, ok.
I was wondering what made those different than my networked webcams.
Ring and Co. save it on a server at a corporate headquarters, and can be seen by anyone!
It has its’ pros, if you have a lot of packages delivered to your house via Amazon.com, it’s nice to know when the package arrives. And I actually do think it will deter crime because now criminals know they are watched.
Amazon has my text address, and they take a picture, time dated of any packages left on my front porch or in the car port. Then the delivery person rings the bell and leaves.
We had a high IQ driver, maybe 72, for one of the major package delivery companies. She would leave our packages and others at a neighbors’ on a hidden side. Then, she would say it was delivered. This was sop if the package was heavy.
A neighbor across the street cracked the code, and warned all of us that if we were expecting packages to be delivered by this carrier, and were notified and there was no delivered packages at our homes. He knew where our packages probably were.
So I was missing 2 heavy packages and an expensive one with medical gear. The neighbor across the street, and I went into the neighbor’s side behind his car port, and there was a stack of packages. He had 2, and I had the 2 heavy ones and the expensive one..
I backed up my pickup in the absent neighbor’s driveway. The watchful neighbor and I loaded the packages of other neighbors, 10+, for the other neighbor’s up and down our cul de sac. We delivered the ones left in the absent neighbor’s side area. All of them were big and heavy.
Apparently, the missing neighbor, where the packages been left had some special arrangements with the high IQ delivery person. She left everyone’s package on the side of his carport/ house. Later, he and one of his kids would deliver the packages to real customers.
Two of my providers didn’t want to hear about what happened as they had a signature that the packages were delivered. The 3rd one got involved. The local office of the delivery service didn’t to hear about it until one of the neighbors went into the office with a lawyer friend.
See, I’m the opposite. Back when I lived alone the first thing I did when I moved to a new place was close the blinds. I never opened them until I moved. My wife has all sorts of scenarios worked out for the lives of our immediate neighbors. Me, I wouldn’t even recognize them if I saw them in the street.
I am watching everyone right now. Many have no pants on....
I don’t live in the best neighborhood. I have cameras up. For security and safety and evidence.
My cameras are connected via cables.
The police have asked for our bids on a couple of occasions - one of them was a double murder case.
We caught a porch pirate stealing a package off of our front porch. We went to court and had him prosecuted.
The data will be subpoenaed by an attorney. You’ll have to give it to them. The same goes for fitbit, exercise trackers, alexas, cortanas, siris, and whatever electronic device records anything.
It’s bad enough that you can’t take a stroll down a quiet rural street without being recorded by 50 different cameras. But to invite this tech into your home is the absolute pinnacle of stupidity.
I got a Nest when I purchased my current home and absolutely love it. At, or away from home, I monitor activity at the house. When the doorbell rings, I take a real look out there at who is at the door.
I love it!
“What has caused this increase in criminal behavior?”
Authoritarian societies are typically low trust and high crime societies. When the societal response to hard work and legitimate accumulation of wealth is to devise ways to steal it, to encourage the theft of private property, and to lionize the thieves (be they criminals or government agents) then criminal behavior increases.
Most urban police departments these days are not trustworthy. If you live in Baltimore or Albuquerque you’re better off not calling the police if you have a problem.
Interesting is the fact that these cities do not trust citizens to carry guns. The lack of trust ends up creating a self-feeding monster where there are simply fewer and fewer good guys.
But look at high trust areas where armed citizens openly carry and their police don’t think twice about it and you see less crime and less need for surveillance.
I go shopping with a .45 on my hip and no one cares. I can also leave my purse on the seat of my car with the keys in the ignition and know that all of it will be there when I return.
I live in Wyoming.
If I travel to Salt Lake City I can’t wear my gun, can’t leave my purse unattended, can’t leave my car unlocked, and can’t leave my kids alone. Denver is even worse. Much worse.
It all comes down to trust and whether or not we encourage it.
Michael Bloomberg, for instance, does not trust average citizens to be armed and instead thinks only the elites should be armed while the serfs are unarmed. And then he wonders why New York is such a cesspool of crime compared to Cody, Wyoming.
Trust.
UPS Store for my packages.
So how much are you paying a month for that service?
Technology is the modern-day fence. Good fences make good neighbors. The best deterrent to doing crimes is an increased probability that you are being watched.
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