Comment by hedora
3 years ago
Infuriatingly, as a non-well-connected victim of a boring (not going to be good PR) crime, I’ve found it is completely impossible to get the police to pull data for my own yard, warrant or no.
In my experience, these capabilities are only used to protect the politically connected or for oppression.
I’d be less skeptical if the program allowed any homeowner to pull any nest footage that included their property, and also allowed individuals to pull any footage that included them.
Of course, that will never happen.
I gave the police a 4k camera video of a crime happening and they did nothing with it. This is pretty standard police laziness in the US, individual cops might care but departments overall give zero shits for small people except as revenue sources.
Data ownership issues like this in the US will never be pushed by existing political interests, hopefully we'll see more EFF-ish PACs in the future that take a page from the fascists and provide the written laws and bills they would like enacted to state and municipal governments so local representatives can edit the title block and get back to harassing their interns.
When I was younger our house was robbed and some prescription drugs stolen. Not only did we know who did it, we had text messages where they admitted it and a witness who came forward. The police refused to do anything about it, and told us that if we wanted them to do anything at all we should consider voting for a different mayor.
Because the mayor created policies that tied the police's hands? Or because they just wanted a different mayor ("vote that librul out or we ain't doing shit" type of thing)?
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Actually I think the police should take direction from a democratically elected mayor. The problem is that they are most often not politically accountable to anyone at all. Not sure about the particulars of your situation, but that is a very odd response.
Same. I even know who stole stuff from our place of business and found the eBay listing tied to the person who did it. And yet, nothing.
It’s not just the US. This happened to me in a west European nation as well
If the police refuse to subpoena the security company, in the US you can get a civil attorney to file a "John Doe warrant" and use that lawsuit against that unknown defendant to subpoena whoever has the footage you need.
Thank you for that info! I am in a similar situation and that was something that did not occur to me.
> I’d be less skeptical if the program allowed any homeowner to pull any nest footage that included their property, and also allowed individuals to pull any footage that included them.
I don't know how exactly it's in the US, but in EU security cam footage is considered to be personal information and as result of that GDPR applies. So whoever controls the security camera is the data controller and is required to e.g. provide access to people who were recorded. In this case it would likely be the home owner and unless Google was acting as data processor for the home owner they wouldn't be allowed to process that data.
At first I did not believe this could possibly be true but you're right, there's been a case and everything.
I don't think you have gdpr obligations if your private cameras are just capturing your own grounds and home.
But it DOES apply if your private cameras capture footage of public places.
Interestingly, it looks like it must apply to all cameras in and around AirBNBs.
https://edpb.europa.eu/sites/default/files/files/file1/edpb_...
2.3 Household exemption
As far I understand it, if the cameras are pointed towards your home the exemption applies. If there is even a partial view of the street it would not apply (like the case is with many doorbell cameras). If there was a fence and the camera did not see above the fence it would likely apply though if there is a gate on the view it might not.
If your cameras are on your private property and for your personal use, the household exemption means that the GDPR absolutely does not apply.
Are you saying police issued a warrant but a large tech company ignored the warrant?
He is saying that the police weren't interested investigating crimes.
OP is also raising the point that because only the police have the ability to retrieve Nest footage that pertains to them but is not owned by them, access to that data is gated by the police, who may not use that access evenly.
Coming from a small-ish area, how does this happen? Do they say "no" and then offer you the door, or how does it normally go? I assume it could be a manpower issue, if it is a city with more pressing issues, or a city without a detective unit maybe, but outright saying no is hard to justify. I can't imagine a situation that would make it normal to just say no with a straight face.
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Hmm, I think you're right. I was confused by the phrase "warrant or no", thinking it meant hedora had tried to get data both with and without a warrant and neither worked.
Since when does police issue warrants? A warrant is issued by a judge, unless it somehow works differently in the US. I assume police just didn't do anything with that warrant.
Police request warrants. Judges approve and sign said warrants and they then become legally executable.