Isn't that already enough for a heads up display? Direction relative to where I am point and shoot? I don't think the layout of the house matters that much since the person using the 'wifi' router strapped to their back/head can already see what's in front of them?

Couldn't someone standing outside figure out where interior routers are by triangulation, simply by walking around the house?

Not just social media postings but past real estate listings can probably provide floor plans.

And if you don't have those, a lot of buildings have common patterns. Its very much in the realm of possibility to train a model using exterior and interior information so that you could have AI generate a floor plan using only exterior data.

Combine that with a small drone that could fly around a building and take different wifi signal readings to triangulate access point positions.

Once you have all that don't you have everything you need to detect movement in the building based on signal disruptions?

Yes, seems like a bit of work but it absolutely seems like the type of effort some governments would put effort into.

So combine it with a plan made from a social media posting.

The police has access to the planimetry of your home. Secondly, if they get close enough they can measure the distance between the agent and the router, and then deduce all the relative distances from the router to the people inside.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=901lYbPmqu4

Yikes. Talk about imperial boomerang.

"Just trust us, the people on that boat were definitely smuggling drugs."

The police have a very safe job, generally. They've done studies and construction workers have a much higher rate of injury and death than the police in the US. People have this idea that being a police officer is really unsafe and that they're throwing themselves in the line of danger just by doing their jobs, but most people are law-abiding and civil. There are people who are not, but that's not a good reason for the police to pretend like nobody is.

I got hit by a car in a hit and run, and despite there being dozens of cameras, and me getting the footage of the car hitting me and driving off (not clear shot on license plate), the police immediately called it a cold case and refused to even try to get footage from any other cameras nearby - so I'll hold my breath that they use this for anything to prevent crime.

A country like the US has around 0.47 deaths in the line of duty per million per year whereas a country like Germany where people can't buy gun just like that is at 0.37 and a country like the UK where normal cops do not have guns is at 0.05

Which is easier, Wifi 7 in all homes or gun restrictions ?

Personally, I think it's the other way around.

Sci-fi writers understood both what technology could create in the future (and what would be desirable), and also understood how people abuse power and the tools available to them to stay in power (or gain more).

In other words: they predicted the future, more than they inspired it. IMO, that also makes their writing that much more interesting.

Read more Solarpunk? From a writers standpoint though, I suspect its easier to weave a dramatic plot through a dystopic background than a more optimistic one

A lot of aspirational tech was consumed by builders. I dare you to find a nerd who has watched Star Trek and hasn't once thought "wouldn't it be cool if I could interact with the computer with my voice", or "using touchscreens for everything looks so futuristic"?

And yet here we are complaining that our phones are over-listening to us and our cars no longer have knobs.

Many people (including in this website) are hard at work creating the torment nexus.

Whats important to understand about the indeterminacy of peoples minds is that if we could read each others thoughts, we would be vulnerable.

Now with the written word and how seemingly determinant people are in large numbers we are again super vulnerable.

If I can see them, they can see me. No need to walk onto anyone's property, the whole point (for me at least) is to map things that surveil public spaces

It's more casual than surveying e.g. addresses that may be hard to see if the building is recessed, but you'd still want to capture it because someone will want to route there sooner or later. Not so for cameras that only capture own property

StreetComplete has a "things" overlay that makes it very quick to add these at the position of a front door

You don't need to walk up: 1. You can do wardriving and identify them by MAC address. 2. You can use object recognition on google street view photos or your own photos while you're wardriving.

Walk up to door with stack of papers with a stock photo of a puppy on it that says lost puppy. Check if there's a camera. If the owner comes outside, ask them if they have seen this puppy.

apparently Ring LLC has their own OUI [0]. I wonder if you could wardrive around and identify cameras by their MAC address

[0] https://maclookup.app/vendors/ring-llc

Maybe less common in America, but in Europe it's not uncommon to have multiple people going around town delivering various things to your mailbox: a postman for letters, some poor student delivering grocery store brochures once a week, somebody delivering the local newspaper at the break of dawn, somebody else delivering the local church newspaper once a month, etc. And all of them are going door to door. If just one of them is an openstreetmap fan you quickly have all doorbell cameras in their delivery district mapped

I disagree. Fear is the tool authoritarians use to control people. First they make you fear the other, then they make you fear their force.

When your fear the other the consent is internal.

Do you mean about the folks with Ring cameras needing to feel control over their environment, and feeling like giving access to the Police/Flock/ICE will help gain that sort of control?

A line from George Carlin comes to mind...

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-54c0IdxZWc

We need a competent counter-narrative but no one (few) figures in the federal government are offering one. The media also loves to report on crime. Etc.

I hope people will join their local community groups.

So like it just came with the houses as they were built? If that's the case I wonder what kind of deal Ring make with the builders of new neighborhoods.

>elected government

Elected in part by the useful idiots on HN and many other places. They were so ignorant of how government actually works they were happy to give it this power. They foresaw the jackboot being used to stomp petty criminals and fellow middle class types who don't "pay their fair share". But they had never cracked open a history book because if they had they would know that sort of stuff is never a top priority.

We used to know this inherently and we spent half a century passing really well thought out and actionable laws designed to thwart the darker side of capitalism while still allowing it's benefits to accrue to the masses.

Since then we've forgotten how to enforce anti monopoly and media ownership rules. Similarly we've somehow completely turned campaign financing into an open competition for bribes.

Ofc they do not. It is only about making money. As is free market. Actually they will always trade morals for profits if possible.

It's the government that wants unchecked power, no matter what. This is why people support the 2A, and why it was the 2nd most important thing to those who founded the country.

Ah, yes, because those <checks notes> communists and <checks notes again> feudal lords, theocratic regimes, monarchs and all manner of other non-capitalist societies have such a stellar track record of treating people well.

This isn't a capitalist or any other "ist" problem. It is a problem with society and social norms.

The cameras are there because people want them to be. The cameras get used because it is not politically toxic to do so. The use continues because the people objecting to the current abuse don't object on a principal level, they love the jackboot. They'd just rather see it used to levy ruinous fines upon middle class scofflaws (got I hate that word and the people who use it unironically) than whisk brown people off the street. Sure, different people would screech if the powers that be pivoted in that direction but at no point does the screeching add up to change because only the people who hate a specific abuse screech at any one time.

History also teaches us about communism but so many people refuse to accept that part of history and romance it.

So why wouldn’t any accept capitalism and ignore its flaws?

We should all learn from stalinists like you. Murdering 145 million people is quite the feat.

Yeah there are plenty of self-hosted solutions that work just as well.

The feature in the app is also worded cleverly:

“Search party lets you use your outdoor Ring cameras to help neighbors in your area”

Note: doesn’t mention pets yet. Then:

“Starting with lost pets, Search party will…”

What comes after lost pets? Very open ended

“Do it for the lost puppies!” is darkly comedic as a way to ease people into the idea.

Thanks for the heads up, just went in and disabled it on my 2 cameras. Next step will be to throw these privacy invading pieces of junk in the trash. Just need to find a comparable product.

Are there any wireless (running power to these locations is not an option) doorbell cams that record to local storage instead of the cloud? I refuse to pay a subscription for these things.

Ideally they would record to my server instead of onboard SD card so that the footage can't just walk away if someone grabs the camera.

I love how evil the concept of "opt-in-by-default" is. It's so rapey and sinister.

Oh, Jesus!!

This f shameless pretention of doing something noble - barely helpful above normal practices btw. - while manipulating clueless users into turning on mass-surveillance is revolting and disgusting. And ordinary employees figured this out, phrased, created content, implemmented, pubished, and are maintaining this dirty practice. Many times with (very misplaced) pride. Shame on all of them actively participating in this coward scheme!

“Opt-in-by-default” is a lot of words to say “opt-out”.

I think encouraging people to enable E2EE is more realistic than asking everyone to throw out the Ring cams they’ve potentially spent hundreds on, yeah.

I do the same and it works well. But do you see the Reolink app hammering domains of the form p#p#.reolink.com? I have to kill the app between uses it it drains my phone's battery because of this.

Yeah, this is my idea as well. Good to know that the Reolink app still works locally and via Wireguard, that means I'll have less UI to set up in HomeAssistant.

I'm not disputing this but I'm not sure if I understand what it is they're doing or why but am curious.

Absolutely, I will be running PoE wherever possible, definitely for the doorbell. Not just because of Amazon drivers, I've read reports of burglars using WiFi jammers to make sure wireless cameras are useless during a break-in.

Initially I believe so, but they can then be isolated via VLAN / firewall rules and cut off from internet access.

What are the nature of those vulnerabilities though? How many require physical access or network access to exploit?

If someone is in my house tapped into the network, cameras are the least of my problems.

Who cares? If you're doing local-only cameras they're not internet accessible. Who's going to try to hack those vulns? The mailman?

They're investors, not bosses

Being an investor is not an excuse. It makes you amoral, too.

"I didn't build the bomb, I just funded the company that built it."

Humans are basically the same, even if the technology is different.

"History doesn't repeat itself but rhymes a lot" (or words to that effect). What is happening now in the US (and many other places) strongly echoes the events leading up to WW2.

I am quite sure there are a few lessons from the past that can be used to guess where current administration is going.

Then is up for the citzens to let it happen or react.

This is just the systemization, scaling of what existed previously. It's a rather predictable pattern at this point in America. Introduction through innocuous means, expansion through a combination of convenience and fear, then systematic expansion once the slaves have become accustomed to the new state of things. It's a rather common ratcheting normalization staircase.

Even public information clearly describes how it is the "CIAs" one trick pony, whether it's orchestrating a "color revolution" for "democracy", instigating conflicts and war to feign innocent self-defense, implementing social engineering and Constitutional subversion, or implementing mass surveillance specifically. It's the same wife-beater and child rapist type pattern of grooming abuse that then feigns innocence and deflects blame to anything and anyone else.

Most people are really not all that different than any run of the mill battered wife (even if only in the making), psychologically. I get it a lot when I point out what a trap and an illegitimate, enemy entity that the EU is (not to pick on the EU, because it also applies to the US and many other places, but it's far more pronounced with the "EU-cultists")... You get the constant predictable defenses of the love-bombing "abusive boyfriend"/wife beater in the making responses. "you don't understand", "the EU really loves me", "you never want anything good for me", "he showers me with all kinds of benefits and slick marketing", "we are going to be happy forever".

It's sad, and as someone that has watched that cycle unfold even in my own family, it's really kind of demoralizing and somewhat depressing to know exactly where it's heading and being unable to counter the forces that have roots a long long time ago, forces of nature. So, the US and the EU will have to suffer that which is predictable and was preventable, no matter how much they wanted to see the world through rose colored glasses.

Maybe for humanity's sake, China can free the world of the scourge of this cycle and the psychopathic, narcissistic, maniacal group of people that causes it all... if they don't just kill all life on the planet because if they can't be in control then no one can be in control.

That was a major, if not the core theme of 1984, and how the system could create and manage such a state.

I think this is correct, but buying something like a Ring camera is 100% voluntary. And buying a smartphone _used_ to be 100% voluntary, and people couldn't get enough of them. People aren't ignorant about privacy, they don't even care about it. Try telling your friends you turn bluetooth off on your phone and don't have a data plan for it. They'll think you're very, very weird. They do not care about privacy whatsoever.

I feel this entirely. The constant surveillance is almost unavoidable if one ever wants to participate in society. How can I always avoid using a cell phone when my source of income requires that I be accessible most of time. People will respond to get another job or buy this obscure product instead, but as you said, I can’t live my life if I’m constantly researching EVERYTHING that affects my life, and having to wade through so much bs to do so.

I don't understand why you assume that the government is following all the laws when it comes to cell phones and cloud data but won't when it comes to ring data?

> or turn it off entirely

That part you can't do. Unless the battery is removed, phone can be turned back on remotely.