Comment by igetspam
3 years ago
For this reason, I just cancelled my nest doorbell order. I will gladly share access with the police if the situation warrants it but I don't accept that Google (or any company) should be able to make that decision without my consent.
1984 was overly optimistic about people, government didn't even need to enforce putting spying devices in homes. Instead a huge chunk opted in voluntarily with doorbell cameras, Alexa, and other smart devices
1984 and Brave New World weren't exclusive. We can have both at the same time.
I like how much of Brave New World is being created in SoMa.
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There's absolutely nothing wrong with the technology, and it obviously makes peoples lives better to have it. I think the issue is that there are only a handful of vendors that happily operate like the monopolies they are and provide you with zero differentiation or choice within the market.
The government isn't particularly interested in ending this problem either, I suspect this is due to a combination of industry capture and intelligence agency interest in these products.
> There's absolutely nothing wrong with the technology
Oh, but there is. It's subservient to the manufacturer, not to you.
I'm still annoyed that no country decided to classify "selling" things where the manufacturer keeps complete control and denies you access as fraud. But just because no legal system decided it's a crime, it doesn't mean it's right.
You say there is nothing wrong, but then go on to list things that are in fact wrong.
You think the problems are a mistake or otherwise something to be "fixed" the products are working exactly as both the government and the manufacturers want them to, and it has nothing to do with "intel agencies"
Having your entire life "cloud connected" and them complaining about privacy, is like opening a window then complaining that the house is drafty.
I love home automation, not a single component of my home automation is cloud connected, if more people would accept, learn and support non-cloud systems, services and protocols everyone would be better off
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This is not limited to Alexa or seemingly unnecessary tech gadgets.
This includes ALL your data. Gmail, Google, Android.
So unless you're opting for iOs (provided they're not doing the same as Google here) and not using Gmail or Google you're still falling under "Surveilled by the gov via tech company who serves their interests and not yours, even if you pay money for their services".
OR you can opt for a version of Android without the proprietary bits like GrapheneOS.
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This is why Apple is going to continue to crush it. They can build a subpar equivalent to google services and a large portion of the tech world will adopt it for its privacy benefits. The 'tech world' is a large influencer to the general public, leading to further penetration.
It's a great strategy as Google makes 80%+ of it's revenue from Ads, and their ad model does not work well with a privacy first mindset.
Apple designs with privacy in mind. Google designs with invasiveness.
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It's hilarious. Freedom/privacy-loving Americans voluntarily give it up for minor gains in comfort.
Google's ToS is 16 pages with what appears to be about 50+ hyperlinks, including several hyperlinks to "additional service-specific terms" which itself has ~50 links to other terms which are all multiple pages.
Perhaps instead of pinning all of the blame on users, we could have the companies producing labyrinthian ToS contracts written by top-grade lawyers and full of legalese (that no layperson should be expected to understand) shoulder at least some of the blame?
This doesn't even touch on the fact that many topics (as related to data aggregation and privacy) are highly technical and require at least a few years of post-secondary to even begin wrapping your head around (e.g. de-anonymization via large sparse datasets is not something I can reasonably teach my 85-year old parent, nor to my child, both of which use Google services in some capacity).
But, yes... Let's blame it on Average Joe, who just wants to watch their dog for a few minutes while at work and saw an ad on TV about a convenient way to do so. Shame on them for not being both a lawyer and a CS graduate.
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Eh, it's exactly what you expect from America though. Ie the embodiment of short term thinking. Economy, environment, politics, etc - not that America is entirely unique here, just that the population seems to embrace this as a foundation in my experience.
Privacy to tech like this is very hypothetical till it happens, and it'll rarely happen. If it's not in our faces we won't vote against it.
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It's hilarious.
That's an odd take, I honestly don't find anything about this article, or the broader topic of privacy and overreach by companies and law enforcement, amusing in any way.
Fahrenheit 451 has a part where they get the entire city to go to their doors to try and spot a fugitive, this action is coordinated by the radios that everyone wears.
With these cameras and recognition algorithms, you don't even need people to go to the doors. Just pull the feeds.
I think Larry Brin's "The Transparent Society" is the best read on the topic. Not predictive of all outcomes, but many aspects of modern surveillance he did see coming.
This is confused. The Transparent Society is by David Brin[0]. Two of the founders of Google are Larry Page and Sergey Brin. The confusion is understandable given the name collision.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transparent_Society
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His novel 'Earth' also predicted glassholes.
In the West, Orwell was wrong and Huxley was correct.
Comparisons to 1984 are hack, but I seem to remember that in the book the telescreens were described as something that people willingly bought.
right!?
TikTok could be a spyware (lol) that requires your SSN and people would STILL download it and defend it just because it brings them mindless 10 second videos. I remember reading 1984 as a kid and thought it was so far fetched, that nobody would willingly let society get to that point... but it just only made more sense as I got older... people really just don't care...
I mean, you carry a listening device with you almost 100% of the time. Why would you even worry about the Alexa in your home?
For me, the difference is that the phone (with voice assist turned OFF) is not supposed to be listening all the time, while a device like Alexa is supposed to be listening. I don't want devices listening so I turn that feature off when I can and avoid the device when I can't.
Is the phone listening anyway? Maybe, but that violates a privacy expectation, and there may be recourse if someone discovers it's doing that.
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I definitely understand your point, but I think the greater issue is why should this have to serve as a rationalization in the first place? Why can't we expect our phones to serve us rather than the other way around?
That's a fallacy. The average "listening device" it's not constantly recording and uploading audio. We would notice if it did.
Now if only you could get your neighbors to quit too. The ones that have it are all still recording you. You really only need one or two per block to monitor everyone on the street. ML should easily be able to work out "Silver Corolla with license plate ABC123 left 1200 Sunnyside St at 4:32pm and headed East." Then another one 3 blocks away can report the same car turning North on 127th, and then another can report...
That would assume that nest and ring cameras are even capable of making out license plates. They're all crappy sensors with horrible night vision.
So you're saying it will only be a few more years then? Look at where cellphone cameras were 20 years ago, and where they are today. The present inadequacy of hardware doesn't give me any comfort.
Why would you stop at the first model once you are already in the ecosystem? People upgrade their devices all the time.
This is much easier (and already accomplished) by the government installing license plate readers.
It is even easier by the government using EZPass and electronic toll readers. No optics or OCR required.
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Who needs the hassle and appropriations process when you can just send a friendly email to the country's biggest data broker and they'll give you whatever you want?
To be fair, though, there's a flip side. My neighbors seem to get more utility from my driveway feed than I do. Every couple of months, I get a text from a neighbor asking if I got footage of some such thing. Everybody knows who has cameras, and those people are invaluable whenever something nefarious happens (mail theft, break in, kids running amok, etc).
Or live in a metro area with WAMI already in place...
Don't live so close to your neighbors? Easier said than done, but on the long scale...
Note that this is already in-line with their policy, you've already agreed to hand over your data and allowed them to share it, so I don't understand why this single article suddenly changed your mind.
>... so I don't understand why this single article suddenly changed your mind.
Prior ignorance of said policy (which is standard for most users), for one.
Is this tucked away in the Terms/Privacy policy? If so, it might be because they did not read the policy.
To me, a Nest or Ring is pointed at a basically public space. So what if the cops can look at the feed?
> To me, a Nest or Ring is pointed at a basically public space. So what if the cops can look at the feed?
Perpetual and pervasive surveillance completely changes the human expectation of public spaces.
For most of human history, even the most public of spaces was effectively mostly private most of the time. A few decades back you could be in, say, Times Square between thousands of people and yet your actions and presence was completely private. Because unless you did something particularly attention-grabbing, nobody would notice or much less remember. Even if you did do something that people took notice, few of them would really remember you individually a day later (let alone years later). If the cops wanted to interview people about your presence they'd have to find those few that noticed and remembered you, nearly impossible. Thus even public spaces were for most practical purposes private space, and that is the expectation human minds has.
You might say even decades back they could assign people to watch you. And they did. But only for select people so there had to be some cause and selectivity (sometimes unjust, but still). It was literally impossible to watch everyone everywhere all the time.
That's what changes now. It is possible to track everyone everywhere all the time. And not just at the moment, but recorded for posterity for future ML queries.
Because I don't want to live in a surveillance dystopia where the state - or Google or Amazon - has a camera on the outside of every house.
It's bad for public spaces to be pervasively tracked.
Is there an internally consistent reason for why that's bad?
Because every argument I've seen along those lines fall apart after drilling down a few layers.
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The funny thing is I'm of the opposite mind.
"Convenience and if I go missing mysteriously Google will hand info over to the people trying to find me? Win-win."
You're right! That hypothetical and highly unlikely scenario is completely worth all of the ways in which the tech could be and is being abused.
If it's so hypothetical and highly unlikely, then we've nothing to concern ourselves with over the fact that Google will comply with attempts to rescue these hypothetical and highly unlikely endangered people. After all, if it basically never happens, Google will basically never grant the extrajudicial request.
Would it be so difficult for Google to add a configuration step where people can explicitly consent to this?
The short answer is "yes," but I would be in favor of it being added. Of course, it's not going to secure your data if somebody that isn't you is the one under threat of imminent harm or death and Google believes the data you are holding could save their life.
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That's fine, as long as we're clear that is said in a position of privilege.
I rented a house 2 years ago and it had some cloud trash with camera and mic in it. I said I will move out unless they remove it. They simply removed it as it was there only to appease prospective tenants.
I only use these types of cameras outside where neighbors are recording anyway. In home, I use internal networks.
But will you stop using all of Google's products?
"Google will allow law enforcement to access data from its Nest products — or theoretically any other data you store with Google — without a warrant."
Wait a second, do I need to panic that the police can thumb through my gmail, or not?
Need to panic? No. Can choose to panic? Of course.
We choose to ignore risks all the time. We also choose to panic about stuff all the time. You're in control of what goes into what pile.
Yes. Do you remember snowden and prism? Not just the police.
My understanding is under US law, any data you allow a 3rd party to "see" (aka "host") is considered public and they don't need a warrant
Police don't need a warrant to get into your gmail or icloud or whatever else you host with 3rd parties
The data isn't public. It belongs to Google. They can ask for a warrant or just give away "your" data willy nilly.
and from my understanding this is incorrect.
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This just seems extreme to me, considering how you've likely never been in this scenario and will in all likelihood not ever be in a scenario where you wouldn't give the police this information but Google would (e.g. your own home being robbed or a masked stranger ringing your doorbell).
Sometimes I think people covet privacy for its own sake, and don't think about the practicalities. The whole point of living in a collective society is that we give up some freedoms for the sake of overall increased prosperity, that's always been the tradeoff, and this is just one of those tradeoffs.
We already have that tradeoff. It’s called a warrant. If the police get one, you are forced to give them access to your otherwise-private affects.
This is a step beyond that. Warrants are granted at the discretion of a judge, the bar is high, the scope is narrow and you (theoretically) have recourse if it’s abused. Here, the discretion is Google’s, the bar is nonexistent, the scope is unlimited and you have zero recourse if you think you’ve been wronged.
This wouldn’t be an issue if people trusted Google or the police. But they don’t, and it’s pretty easy to imagine ways in which this could be abused to harm people.
Let’s say you live in Texas and get abortion pills in the mail. If the police have a warrant to search your house for something unrelated, they (theoretically) can’t see the pills and decide to charge you with an unlawful abortion (unless they were “in plain view”, etc). But if Google gives police access to footage of your house extrajudicially, police can use anything they see as evidence against you. And make no mistake — things like that will happen as a result of this policy.
I think you're taking this way further than anyone actually involved would. IF what you're saying ever did even come close to occurring, we both know Google would shut it down quickly. Not just because it's horrible, but because it's also bad for business, and they've shown a propensity to protect data when it would be used as you hypothesize here.
Google is smart enough to know that "snitching" on its users is bad for business.
Think "track a burglar as he moves through a neighborhood" not "snoop (illegally) on the contents of people's mail".
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In the vein of principals, yes, privacy for its own sake is valuable to me.
In the vein of practicalities, both Google and the justice system (USA for me) are monstrously large bureaucracies known to make difficult-to-redress errors. Google's capricious account banning, police raiding incorrect addresses, eg. The decision to share with them more information than the law requires is one I'd prefer to make myself.
>bureaucracies known to make difficult-to-redress errors
Or just plain out refusing to fix errors where they would be relatively easy to fix; compare Scalia's "it's fine to fry a provably innocent person as long as the procedures are followed" argument.
And I think this view is irrational. Privacy for its own sake is effectively hoarding, and as you clearly show, hoarding can be caused by fear, which you have for Google and the justice system.
A numerate person would know how rare these things you're afraid of are, and not let those fears drive how they live. I (hopefully) follow that path, and I recommend you check it out!
I read what you wrote in the same way I suspect you would read someone who is afraid of space because meteors have killed people (as a rough example).
It just doesn't seem like the rates at which the things you're worried about are happening in a volume that would actually matter to a society.
Louis Brandeis on the right to privacy:
https://louisville.edu/law/library/special-collections/the-l...
Yeah, like I said, you give up some of your rights in order for a prosperous society to exist.
I'm not denying the right exists, I'm saying we give up our other rights all the time for the benefit of society, why is privacy any different?
Further, it's a spectrum. You're not putting a camera up for police to peruse at their leisure, it's only in specific situations.
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