Comment by jjav

> 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.