Don't take that to mean they will actually respond to a home break-in or car theft 🤣
this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2026
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Automated License Plate Readers (ALPRs) are AI-powered cameras that capture and analyze images of all passing vehicles, storing details like your car’s location, date, and time. They also capture your car’s make, model, color, and identifying features such as dents, roof racks, and bumper stickers, often turning these into searchable data points. These cameras collect data on millions of vehicles—regardless of whether the driver is suspected of a crime. While these systems can be useful for tracking stolen cars or wanted individuals, they are mostly used to track the movements of innocent people.
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I don't know why people are surprised. This feature was the basis of an entire Superbowl ad at the beginning of this year. In other words: Amazon spent millions to tell as many people as possible that their cameras can do this.
Because, as a general rule of thumb, most people are either oblivious or have so many other demands on their time and energy that they are unable to take notice.
Especially because if you truly want a doorbell camera there are other options. There’s even local only options!
can you list one, I might look into it if you don't have to pay a subscription
Reolink and Lorex both make doorbells that expose rtsp streams. They have apps and such but these aren’t necessary, and at least reolink doesn’t require a subscription even with the app (not sure about lorex). The reolink comes in Poe and WiFi version, not sure about lorex. I have reolink Poe cameras (including doorbell) and they work great, everything is local only and aside from the initial config they do not require internet access. I have them on an isolated vlan that has no internet access and they work fine. They make WiFi versions too but in my experience Poe is substantially more reliable if you have the ability to run ethernet
There are many other options too, there’s like a billion doorbell cameras, just research bc almost (if not all) “cloud” cameras can view the footage on their servers. The only thing I’ve seen is encrypted in transit, they all are not encrypted on their servers. This means their employees, intruders, etc can view your cameras (and in the case of stuff like Amazon and Google actively view it to apply ML models as well as actively share with law enforcement with no need for a warrant). This applies to literally every “smart” camera I’ve seen that’s not local only, whether it’s a doorbell, baby monitor, dog treat dispenser, basic security camera, etc
If the police can, then so can CIA and MAGA headed government departments. Could be a shame if they knew your movement timings.
the design of our house makes it where we can't see who's in the door through the windows and holiday reefs (idk if that's the right word, decorative things that go on the door) blocks the peephole :/
I tried to come up with a reason to justify a door camera. I couldn't.
If the doorbell rings, and I'm not expecting anyone, then I don't answer it. It doesn't matter to me who it is. I don't need to know.
Also, if I don't answer and it is someone I know, they can call me from my doorstep and let me know it's them.
If a package gets stolen off my doorstep, which has never happened, and doesn't happen much here at all as far as I know, the video is of zero use, unless I know who it is. Because, the cops sure don't know who it is, or even care to find out. You might think that's their job, but you'd be wrong. Their job is to take the report and file it. That's it.
Here's my pitch:
You have a package go missing, and you don't know why. It shows as delivered, but you never saw it. You check the ring camera to see what happened to it, and one of your kids picked it up, took it inside, forgot about it, and when you asked, was too dumb to piece together, "Oh, THAT package."
Wreaths?
Holiday reefs are way cooler though.
So get a not ring.
planning on it
i think the big difference comes down to that flicks are put up by police departments and city governments, while ring cameras are put up by private citizens.
Like, they both do effectively the same thing, but, criticizing your neighbors for putting up a ring is self censored because people don’t want to come across as “preachy” or judging their neighbors. But no one has any hang ups about criticizing a town government.
I think the bigger issue is that people have not internalized that the companies behind these systems are the real problem, less the people conned in to implementing them.
the big difference comes down to that flicks are put up by police departments and city governments
Legit.
they both do effectively the same thing
Nobody is getting traffic tickets from a Ring camera. That's another important difference here. Car brains do not want to be monitored while operating deadly machinery and they definitely do not want to be held responsible for their violence.
I'm pretty sure the people who are sawing off flock cameras for the most part aren't the ones with ring cameras
I think the message is that we should be just as frustrated with ring cameras too, and not saying you should, but if they accidentally get smashed...
The obvious, important difference is at whom the camera is pointed.
Privileged USAians don't give a shit about the police state stalking their neighborhood, until you threaten them with a traffic ticket then it's time for a "revolution".
If it records to the cloud, it's not your footage. It can and will be acquired/distributed against your will.
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I was watching a murder case on YouTube
An unknown phone number called the victim.
They saw it was a burner phone.
They have video of him buying the phone.
They have video of him walking around in different states.
They have video of him driving around in different states.
They knew where his real phone was at all times.
The video was uploaded 5 years ago.
USA is a crazy on surveillance.
Yet they have no idea who abducted Nancy Guthrie 🙄
All this money and effort spent on catching people who commit crimes, but no money spent on raising people’s material conditions, which would actually prevent crimes.
USA is a crazy on surveillance.
... and prisons, war, genocide, etc... It's all one big shitberg.
Was this the one where the victim was his mom? If it’s the same one, it’s pretty insane
america gets the culture it deserves. I have no more energy to care about this bs.
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It amazes me how some people cant comprehend different mindsets existing in the same space. Especially coming from fucking europe
A quick search looks like the Roman empire at its peak was about half the size of the US. I don't think people recognize the absolute size of the US.
I mean, most people in urban areas agree generally, but even like city to city there are massive leaps in quality of education, climate, policy, social environment, etc etc that all shape how a person thinks and acts.
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"Alexa, is constant surveillance a bad thing?"
As your mail, mobile geolocation and plenty of other data.
The difference is that in flock case the system is “push” (flock alerts the police with their alerts real or due to bugs) while ring/gmail/mobiles is “pull” (police needs a warrant if you are an US citizen, it needs to be processed by the cloud provider, etc) and most crucially police needs to already know what is looking
Police don´t need a warrrant to get third party information for you UNLESS that third party refuses.
Guess what?
police need a warrant to view your camera specifically, but they absolutely do not need a warrant to request video from a ring camera stored by amazon. they just ask for it and amazon hands it straight over.
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