My neighbour across the road has one of these ring cameras installed... the problem is that his front door, faces his neighbours front door just 4 meters away.

So he's actually filming her house, and she has two young teenage girls.

I find that insidiously creepy and I made a point of bringing up the subject to her a few months ago, as she didn't seem aware of it... Her response was basically apathy... a seemingly willing acceptance of 'meh, what can ya do'

I'm in the UK, we actually have laws about this kind of thing and what this creep is doing... breaks those laws.

If it was facing my house, he'd have been told to remove it immediately or face the consequences.

This is how a feel as well. It is far too easy for these video recording things to be setup anywhere with no thought or consideration as to what else is being recorded.

As far as I am aware these is nothing covering the storage, use and retention of the recordings and even if there is, there is no enforcement.

The low cost of the cameras and the resultant quality is surprisingly good and as you say, they are not just recording the person at the door.

But hey, it is all "cool" tech that is cheap and people buy into the entire ethic that it is great to be able to access everything from Apps on your mobile phone and sod the consequences.

Well that's so very virtuous of you, isn't it? You're branding your across-the-road neighbour 'a creep', when in reality he's probably just an ordinary person concerned for his personal security; there are any number of perfectly legitimate reasons for him to wish to monitor anyone approaching his door.

But no, you've decided he's 'a creep'. And for why? Because there are teenage girls living in the house opposite? They probably share far more of themselves on their public social media than would ever be seen by a ring doorbell camera... what will the camera see, people going in and out of the front door on the other side of the road?

But that doesn't matter does it, because you're the self-appointed curtain-twitching Guardian of Morality in your street, and you feel free to defame the chap over the road and spread malicious gossip about him... there are laws in the UK about that, too.

It's more than just apathy. If you mention the privacy/security aspect to most folks, they immediately brand you a paranoid New Age type and block their ears to any and all reality. They are utterly determined to believe that they can trust the likes of Amazon and Google and that no harm can come of their wonderful status symbol, and nothing but a death sentence will change that.

If it was facing my house, he'd have been told to remove it immediately or face the consequences.

And what would these be?

If in the UK, the ICO has a tool to determine this: https://ico.org.uk/your-data-matters/domestic-cctv-systems-guidance-for-people-being-filmed/

It frequently ends up with "Call the police".

From the link: "However, in most CCTV-related disputes between neighbours, the ICO will not consider it appropriate or proportionate to take enforcement action against the CCTV user."

As for the police. Plod is too over-worked to deal with old-fashioned burglaries. I can't see them even turning up for this. Simply having it on the door is not going to count as "harassing or intimidating". If they've set up a camera on a tripod pointing into your bathroom, you might be in with a chance. Anything less than that, and you're hiring solicitors yourself.

Vaseline, spray paint? Wouldn’t that solve the problem?

I'll bet Amazon T&C have a different PoV.

Something along the lines of "You don't own this device, you're just looking after it for Amazon while they run it to collect information"

Data fetishists got to fetishise.

But yes it's our data. It's their choice of system architecture that insists we send copies of it to their servers as well.

Maybe copyright is the only way to bring these jackals to heel.

Every device should die in an electrons pushing through cables deficiency. The blackout should at least last 14 days. Better to last longer. The longer it lasts, the more they can stream the inevitable chaos live... oh wait :-)

Some hopes are up when the initial shock wears off. Maybe some will actually start to talk to each other; IRL facetime. But I fear humanity cannot be saved, even by a no-electricity harsh measure.

A lot of people would also die in an 'electrons pushing through cables deficiency'. I think you would need to be a little more specific in your outage. Sound principle though.

Hopefully this is just people submitting their own footage, the same as 'You've Been Framed'... but this is Amazon, so all bets are off

Ring-fence - used it twice.

had their Ring door-bell / camera stolen. Apparently it didn't record the theft either! Couldn't help laughing.

Ordinarily I'm very suspicious of blaming the victim. But this time, really? Anyone who ever saw a vampire film knows that you don't invite the monster it.

It gets worse... they also have pet cams for inside the house. I tried to warn a client about this stuff, but they are also in the "Trust Apple, Trust Amazon, Trust Google" land. Their response to my warnings (and El'Reg articles) was to go buy the inside the house cameras. "To keep an eye on the dogs"...

That is the one thing Orwell got wrong with the Telescreens in 1984. It is not government watching - it is the salesman working out what to sell you next...

sf/invite the monster it/invite the monster in/

What is it with my typing these days? That wasn't even the right hand. And I just had to correct a similar f..f..foul up in this one.

I wonder which US corporation currently harvests the most metadata daily Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, Apple or ????

And I also wonder which US corporation currently owns the largest cross-referenced archive of historical metadata.

This makes things interesting in terms of GDPR-related CCTV legislation, where generally there's an appointed person recognised in law (terminology varies between countries) who's the controller of the system, in principle the person who controls the footage and who can access it. Even on a cloud-based system, for something like Ring, this would generally be the homeowner who'd installed it. However, if Amazon are able to access footage directly, by design, then this arguably makes them the system controller/data custodian, which brings with it many legal obligations, shifting them away from the homeowner. Whether Amazon would meet those obligations is another question, of course.

Yes, there are systems that are intended for domestic use, so legislation may not be quite as applicable as it is for commercial CCTV systems, but even where it isn't, guidance by the likes of the ICO in the UK is that the spirit of the same principals apply, even if they're not likely to be actively enforced. However, there's nothing to prevent someone taking action against a homeowner; most legislation doesn't specifically exclude private/domestic systems.

And as for dashcams...