You could, and then it would be limited by available number of police officers, and time, and so the risk of, and potential scale of, abuse would be far lower.
The opportunity cost is often the difference between something being reasonable and nearly the same act becoming grossly invasive.
A real world example: Norway has traditionally had public tax lists where anyone could see everyones taxable income and tax paid. Before the internet this involved going to an office, and so the opportunity cost was high enough that most people never would without good reason (e.g. suspecting tax fraud and wanting to substantiate it before going to the police; or investigative journalism). When the internet arrived, the lists were soon made available online. Suddenly all the newspapers offered searchable interfaces where you could look up all your neighbours and friends in seconds.
What had been seen as a reasonable tradeoff between transparency of the tax system and transparency of society (though some would argue it was encouraging snitching...) became seen as grossly invasive, and the question was raised whether to shut off access entirely.
Instead restrictions were added to try to redress the balance, and now while you can still look it up, there are limits (500 views per month, unless you're registered as part of the press, which has special access), and the person you look up can see who has viewed their information if they themselves log in[1], which raises the barrier to just randomly snooping.
The same information has been available to the same people the whole time. All that has changed is how convenient accessing it is, and how likely it is that snooping at someones data might affect you, and the result has been wildly different perceived levels of invasiveness.
I mean people complained so Amazon stopped giving police access. Now as soon at Amazon thought they could get away with it, Amazon started giving access again. That's pretty shady behavior in my book.
So you are telling me the can get the data my Facebook, Google and any other US company without my consent but in this case it's somehow actually enforced?
If they can get the data without a user's consent, then it's independent of this new feature and thus unrelated. If you believe that the government has unlimited access, then it was most likely already possible before this feature.
Now, there is at least a "proper" way to give law enforcement access.
You’re missing the point. The last report in 2021 stated that they sold 1.7 million units in that year alone. The effect is that nearly every square inch of any populated area now has a camera pointed at it that police can access. Please tell me how you opt out of that.
That was the case before as well, as you could easily export Ring footage and share it manually with police if you want. This just makes it slightly easier.
The owner isn't the only party whose privacy is being affected unless you believe these cameras will never capture anything other than the owners.
You could also invite a police officer over to your house to watch recordings from a completely offline air-gapped camera pointed at the street.
You could, and then it would be limited by available number of police officers, and time, and so the risk of, and potential scale of, abuse would be far lower.
The opportunity cost is often the difference between something being reasonable and nearly the same act becoming grossly invasive.
A real world example: Norway has traditionally had public tax lists where anyone could see everyones taxable income and tax paid. Before the internet this involved going to an office, and so the opportunity cost was high enough that most people never would without good reason (e.g. suspecting tax fraud and wanting to substantiate it before going to the police; or investigative journalism). When the internet arrived, the lists were soon made available online. Suddenly all the newspapers offered searchable interfaces where you could look up all your neighbours and friends in seconds.
What had been seen as a reasonable tradeoff between transparency of the tax system and transparency of society (though some would argue it was encouraging snitching...) became seen as grossly invasive, and the question was raised whether to shut off access entirely.
Instead restrictions were added to try to redress the balance, and now while you can still look it up, there are limits (500 views per month, unless you're registered as part of the press, which has special access), and the person you look up can see who has viewed their information if they themselves log in[1], which raises the barrier to just randomly snooping.
The same information has been available to the same people the whole time. All that has changed is how convenient accessing it is, and how likely it is that snooping at someones data might affect you, and the result has been wildly different perceived levels of invasiveness.
[1] https://www.skatteetaten.no/en/forms/search-the-tax-lists/
There is a major qualitative difference if it becomes something like police AI systems analyzing it all continuously.
They could use dark patterns. E.g. make you click yes in an inattentive moment.
Or use a checkbox that mysteriously takes on the checked state while you are sure you didn't check it.
If they do those things, then it would indeed be a privacy issue, but right now they're not.
I mean people complained so Amazon stopped giving police access. Now as soon at Amazon thought they could get away with it, Amazon started giving access again. That's pretty shady behavior in my book.
So you are telling me the can get the data my Facebook, Google and any other US company without my consent but in this case it's somehow actually enforced?
If they can get the data without a user's consent, then it's independent of this new feature and thus unrelated. If you believe that the government has unlimited access, then it was most likely already possible before this feature. Now, there is at least a "proper" way to give law enforcement access.
You’re missing the point. The last report in 2021 stated that they sold 1.7 million units in that year alone. The effect is that nearly every square inch of any populated area now has a camera pointed at it that police can access. Please tell me how you opt out of that.
That was the case before as well, as you could easily export Ring footage and share it manually with police if you want. This just makes it slightly easier.