Ring cancels its partnership with Flock Safety after surveillance backlash

> Following a comprehensive review, we determined the planned Flock Safety integration would require significantly more time and resources than anticipated.

That doesn’t sound like “we’re cancelling this because our customers let us know loud and clear that they were ethically against this”. If the only thing keeping them from doing this is time and money, what guarantee do we have that they won’t do it again if time and money allow?

Meaning they’ll wait until about June and then quietly roll it out

A lot of you won’t want to hear it but HomeKit + iCloud secure video is the only way to go. For one thing it’s end to end encrypted. You can also do ML stuff like face recognition which happens locally on your Apple TV. And you can set it to trigger HomeKit scenes if eg the person in the video isn’t recognized, or if it recognizes a particular person. Yeah Apple bad, blah blah. But they don’t have an incentive to sell your data.

Doesn't matter, I've come to the conclusion I'll never buy into one these networks. There's a reason "security" cameras were always on "closed circuit", there's no need give these companies money.

This is a temporary rollback while there’s a choice to speak against it.

Cloud connected doorbells must die as well as dragnet surveillance.

Frigate NVR + Amcrest cameras. 100% local, private, on-device AI object recognition and classification. Can use a Google Coral USB TPU to speed that up. Runs on hardware as modest as a Raspberry Pi.

“Canceled” for now. Maybe it was just a video, they’ll continue with the “quiet” development and slowly launch it

Which Super Bowl LX ads haven't backfired yet?

I hope everyone will remember how eagerly AMZN's subsidiary was willing to sell it's cameras to whomever was willing to pay.

Spiderman pointing at Spiderman?

> Following intense backlash to its partnership with Flock Safety, a surveillance technology company that works with law enforcement agencies, Ring has announced it is canceling the integration.

Ring (owned by Amazon, who runs a private airgapped AWS region for the CIA onsite at Langley) also works with law enforcement agencies.

Now whenever the cameras detect a lost dog, all your neighbors' phones begin playing "Angel" by Sarah McLachlan

Too little too late. I’m cancelling prime and returning my ring camera, even past the return deadline. Andy Jassy funded that Melania documentary and is generally a spineless oligarchic friend of the Trump administration. Amazon is basically anti constitutional.

An aside: The Verge’s paywall is ridiculous, especially given that they still live off slimy affiliate revenue and ads that run directly counter to their own editorializing. Their smugness and superiority given their business model makes me wish we had better alternatives.

Continue reading with a Verge subscription. Stop posting links to paywall sites.