alt Hacker NewsEveryone has known Google reads your email since day one. In the early days they would spin it as a good thing: "that's why the spam filtering is great!"
Why is everyone suddenly outraged Ring has access to your footage? These cloud-connected cameras...hosted on someone else's servers. It's literally how they work. "But I didn't think they would use the video in a way I didn't personally approve after giving it to them!"
So instead, people are rage-returning Ring cameras and posting their receipts and exchanging them for...Chinese cameras. Which do the same thing, except this time the servers are overseas and completely uncontrolled.
It's hard to have any empathy when the warning label was already on the box for all these products.
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> Everyone has known Google reads your email since day one.
These constructions feel too simplistic to capture anything useful.
My credit card company can see my transactions. My medical provider can read my medical records. People who hire house cleaners let people see inside their house.
It's commonly accepted that when you engage with a company for business purposes, they can see things involved in your business with them.
The problem with the Ring situation isn't that Ring can "see" your video cameras. It's that they were using the information for things outside of the scope of business that was implied when you bought the camera.
People don't care if a Google bot "reads" their e-mail for spam filtering. They don't care if a contractor sees the inside of their house during construction. What they do care about is if the other party tries to use that access for something outside of the scope that was agreed upon.
> It's hard to have any empathy when the warning label was already on the box for all these products.
These snooty takes where we're supposed to look down upon others for having reasonable assumptions about usage of their data are why it's so hard to get the general public to care about privacy. It's unnecessarily condescending for what? To look down upon people or play "told you so" games? If privacy advocates want to get anywhere they need to distance themselves from people who run with this kind of attitude.
> But I didn't think they would use the video in a way I didn't personally approve after giving it to them!
This is exactly the sort of thing there should be legislation for. To a somewhat weaker extent than I’d like this is what GDPR and friends covers, the law says that companies must state what data they’re gathering and what purposes they’re gathering it for. If they overreach then they can be fined into oblivion.
In practice this is not as strong as it should be, broadly companies can and do basically go “we’re collecting all your data for whatever purpose we like” and get away with it, but they do at least think carefully about doing so.
There’s no reason we can’t force providers of cloud backed devices to treat your data with respect, rather than thinking of it as residual income they’re leaving on the table if they don’t also sell it to third parties for data mining.
We have known all of this for over a decade now, ever since the Snowden leaks revealed some very damning things. The public has unfortunately decided they do no care it seems...
Yes, that is what many people thought because people assume that a state with a reasonable commitment to individual liberty would have safeguards in place to force merchants to not spy on them.
The fault is not with the idea of expecting that you own the data that you made and the equipment that you purchased. The fault here is the regulatory structure that makes you by default not the owner of your data or your things.
People are waking up too late, so don't support them, rather ridicule them and tell them their newfound awareness is futile?
>Chinese cameras. Which do the same thing, except this time the servers are overseas and completely uncontrolled.
Which Chinese cameras do this? I've only seen some dumb IP cams.