That this is not only a market, but a "wish" which seems to get traction even here on HN confirms to me that the old joke "1984 is not a manual" is more relevant than ever, and scarily not only in regards to the usual suspects, corporate and nation states, but people themselves.
Can anyone explain to me why anyone would advocate a profit-driven, systematic eradication of soul and character around each and every human residence?
Why would you trade the vibrancy of your young urban block or the sense of trust and community in your suburb against prevention of low-impact black-swan events like serial packet thiefs?
Why would you surrender your home, not only your safe haven in life but also your gateway to low effort exploration of your surroundings to wide-spanning AI surveillance and automated purge of any nuisance?
Maybe I am just weird or out of touch but I can absolutely not get in my head how people surrender to such a dull dystopia based on an apparent fetish for weaponized gossip and abnormal levels of fear of petty crimes...
> low-impact black-swan events like serial packet thiefs?
I live in Seattle. Package theft is a white swan event here. Everyone I know has had packages stolen. Most people are forced to come up with some strategy to deal with it: get things shipped to work, use Amazon lockers, get a camera on your porch and make sure to bring the package inside as soon as it shows up, etc.
You are right that materially it is a low-impact event. However, psychologically it isn't. It sucks having shit stolen from in front of your own home. It immediately undermines that "sense of trust and community" you mention. My home no longer feels like a sanctuary, and random people ambling down my street no longer feel like friendly neighbors. Any of them could be a thief scoping out porches and the evidence is clear that at least some of them are.
It is a maddeningly disempowering feeling to know that I am unable to prevent someone from stealing shit from my own property. Worse, I know the police won't do a thing about it either. I literally have video of the dude grabbing shit off my porch, but can do nothing about it.
I think it is that feeling of helplnessness that leads people to buy security systems.
Fair enough, but as you literally state yourself, the security system does not even help. I repeat, it does nothing.
> I literally have video of the dude grabbing shit off my porch, but can do nothing about it.
The only thing all this security theater does is aiding super convoluted scenarios where your neighbors system informs you to take your package in, if you have one currently out, and are fast enough, and are at home.
In the long run, all this does for prevention is creating an arms race easily won by covering up your face and randomizing routes as the thief...
So: Make a startup selling big-ass secure post boxes. Minimize crime by, you know, education and financial aid. Kill this excessive package-delivery culture which is super damaging anyways somehow. Make the police force more efficient. Make small package-taking centrals. Whatever. I understand. But this cloud-based security is the absolute worst thing you can do.
> but as you literally state yourself, the security system does not even help. I repeat, it does nothing.
My first sentence said I agree with your overall point.
In my case, the main reason we have the cameras is because my wife felt they would help her feel more secure. They have been somewhat useful and/or worthwhile for other things:
* We can see who's at the door and ignore them if they are solicitors.
* When we're not home and someone knocks on the door, we can respond to them since the camera also has a speaker. When our friends dropped off a few Christmas presents while we were out at dinner, it was cool to be able to say thanks right then.
* On the off chance a more serious crime is committed, we may have footage of it. The police don't care about package theft, but they are likely to investigate trespassing, breaking and entering, etc.
* Sometimes we see bunnies and baby raccoons meandering around the alley, which is always cute.
I'm not a big fan of the system, but it is occasionally handy or rewarding to have access to a live camera around my house.
>Fair enough, but as you literally state yourself, the security system does not even help. I repeat, it does nothing.
Because it's a single system and not part of a network. If it were part of a network then, theoretically, the thief could be tracked back to their car/home and arrested. Hackernews loves to jump to the dystopian when it comes to public surveillance but somehow has a blind spot for the utopian possibilities. A sufficiently broad and technologically advanced public surveillance system would essentially eliminate crime in public. Why steal a package off a porch if you're going to be immediately identified and then automatically tracked via camera until it's convenient for the police to arrest you?
I think people in general are kind of dumb in terms of useful vs shiny.
When I first heard about Amazon wanting to unlock your door to prevent theft, my immediate response was roughly: "It'll be a cold day in hell before I ever give control of my home access to any company".
I then went on to describe what I WOULD do, and that is purchase a box with a lock on it, chained to something. But here's the thing. There are so many low-tech ways to solve this problem.
- The aforementioned box with a child-safety lock on it and a plate on the inside lid that immediately disables the lock and springs the box open.
- An alcove in the side of your house that does essentially the same thing as the box, but looks more like a mail slot but for packages.
- The same thing as above, only in your garage door.
What these things all have in common is that they're low tech and effective, which isn't the new shiny. People are so goddamned dumb about this stuff that they would rather string up cameras everywhere, or give control of their home access to a company and allow strangers into their home. It blows my fucking mind.
And so many people haven't picked up on the fact that Amazon didn't go for the low tech solution because it doesn't lock you in. Your local chinese restaurant can just as readily use that box as Amazon can, whereas, if they haven't already started doing it, they're going to start giving other companies access to those doors and charging for it. They're going to start charging the grocery store delivery service to open that door for them, and that delivery service is going to pass that on to you. You're literally going to be paying amazon to open your goddamned door.
Mainly it helps with my wife's anxiety. We didn't get it for package theft specifically. We have had a drug addict get into our fenced-in backyard and wander around for a while, others shit in the alley, and we sometimes hear screaming matches from addicts or mentally ill people. Having the cameras helps her feel a little safer from those kinds of people.
(Whether we are materially safer is a separate question. But given that I think we are actually quite safe in general, the product is worth it to us in terms of peace of mind alone.)
These seem like reasonable solutions. Why not just do them?
> I literally have video of the dude grabbing shit off my porch, but can do nothing about it.
So what will more surveillance technology do? Maybe the innovation needed is apartment-community style mailboxes or dropboxes where only the mailperson and the tenant can have access, but scaled to single-family-home use.
Needing to safeguard your possessions lest they get stolen is a sign of a broken society? By that yardstick, every human society past and present is broken. Leaving aside small sleepy towns, everyone locks up their house, car, bicycles, and other possessions, even the people complaining about stolen packages. That's not considered an unreasonable burden, but the minute unattended packages get taken off porches everyone loses their minds.
>Needing to safeguard your possessions lest they get stolen is a sign of a broken society?
Yes. You are just probably too used to it to notice.
Decades before it didn't happen as often in places it does now (yes, it did happen in other places. No excuse for a neighbourhood to go bad though, e.g. through tons of meth/opioid addicted piling to the crime rate).
In nicer neighbourhoods it doesn't happen still.
In whole countries (like Japan) it's unthinkable.
>Leaving aside small sleepy towns, everyone locks up their house, car, bicycles, and other possessions, even the people complaining about stolen packages
In my place (like in places like Tokyo or Singapore today still) we used to sleep with open windows, and had no problems even living cars unlocked. So there's that.
In other countries (like Italy where I currently live) leaving a package unattended is unthinkable. If there is nobody home they leave a slip of paper that says there will be another attempt at delivery the next day or else you have to fetch the package in some remote dispatch center (things are getting better now and many couriers are now taking their time to call you on the phone a few minutes before they drop by; sometimes you can ask them to drop the package at neighbors or at some small shop nearby, if the owner is willing)
Sure there are police in every society but even in cities some neighborhoods have bars on their first floor windows while others don’t. And if you go out of the country, you could leave a wallet on the street or bicycle unlocked in cities in Japan or Singapore.
I think we should address the root of the problem. Why are package delivery companies just leaving these packages outside, unattended anyway? Of course they're going to get stolen in a city. Any city. That's beyond absurd and they should be held liable for their missing packages. I don't leave a thousand dollars in cash in an envelope on my porch unguarded. How about properly securing valuables first before blanketing the neighborhood in surveillance that you know doesn't work? This would possibly require an act of congress, literally, to force carriers to accept liability for their actions. As is, by having a package delivered, you're tempting people to steal it and hoping that human nature will not prevail. It's hard to have empathy for such a negligent action that's so full of ignorance about human nature.
If package theft is the problem, maybe the real solution is something closer to "Package Theft Insurance" than "Cloud-based Neighborhood Surveillance."
Package theft is not just about the money. If I buy something, I want that something, not my money back. Not mentioning that some of the things I receive may be "priceless" (understand: much more valuable than the price tag the insurance will use as a reference).
Furthermore, insurance companies don't like to lose money, and they are likely the ones to encourage you to install a surveillance network. If anything, to make sure that you aren't stealing your own packages.
==Not mentioning that some of the things I receive may be "priceless" (understand: much more valuable than the price tag the insurance will use as a reference).==
These are the types of deliveries that should require a signature for drop-off.
==Furthermore, insurance companies don't like to lose money, and they are likely the ones to encourage you to install a surveillance network.==
Profitability depends on the pricing strategy. If police departments don't act on these videos anyway (as stated prior), more of them would likely just act as a visual deterrent. No different than taping an old cell-phone to your front door.
==If anything, to make sure that you aren't stealing your own packages. ==
Fraud exists in every industry insurance companies serve.
Do US postal services offer a shipping option where you need to sign for the parcel? I'd try and opt for something like that, if possible, rather than trusting the courier to leave the package on my doorstep.
What I'm saying is, the problem isn't people stealing your packages. It's that you leave valuable property outside. Perhaps a good analogy is locking your door.
> systematic eradication of soul and character around each and every human residence?
Why would you trade the vibrancy of your young urban block or the sense of trust and community in your suburb against prevention of low-impact black-swan events like serial packet thiefs?
Why would the “soul” and “vibrancy” of a neighborhood die with some kind of digital neighborhood watch? Seems like a flawed premise.
There’s also something to be said about the hypocrisy of accusing others of having abnormal levels of fear of crimes that occur every day, while assuming that your neighbors installing a security camera on their porch will inevitably lead to a surveillance state dystopia on par with 1984.
> > systematic eradication of soul and character around each and every human residence? Why would you trade the vibrancy of your young urban block or the sense of trust and community in your suburb against prevention of low-impact black-swan events like serial packet thiefs?
> Why would the “soul” and “vibrancy” of a neighborhood die with some kind of digital neighborhood watch? Seems like a flawed premise.
People act very differently when they are being filmed. Go to the nearest largest city and start filming passerby in an obvious fashion. People will not appreciate it and act differently towards you (likely visibly hostile). That reaction supports the notion that something of value is lost when you blanket-surveil a society.
> People act very differently when they are being filmed. Go to the nearest largest city and start filming passerby in an obvious fashion. People will not appreciate it and act differently towards you (likely visibly hostile). That reaction supports the notion that something of value is lost when you blanket-surveil a society.
I don't agree with this premise. People act very differently _when they don't know why they are being filmed_. (Almost) every retail store in the world has had CCTV for 40 years now and people are not alarmed. They know why the filming is happening - as a deterrent to theft. I'd argue that the same principle applies to dashcams, stoplight cameras, helmet cams on bicycles, and, yes, porch or doorbell cams.
Once you start filming people _without_ an obvious reason, then they start acting differently.
1984 is only a manual if the state or federal government implements it. If an HOA implements it, I don't see how that is 1984. If I turn my house into my own surveillance state, that's not 1984 either, that's me automating tedious things like looking out the window for suspicious characters or events.
HOAs are practically incorporated hamlets - local governments. There is a government (board) which imposes taxed (dues) and imposes zoning & other laws (rules), and can impose debilitating punishments (liens) against subjects (residents). Some are little more than friendly neighbors trying to keep neighborhood home values stable, others are wannabe tyrannical dictatorships.
I could certainly see an HOA installing (increasingly cheap!) license plate & face recognition to monitor local activity "for security reasons"; seems innocuous enough if actually used sparingly to help police solve real crimes, but could quickly become obnoxious/oppressive when meddling board members with hyperactive imaginations start "looking for trouble before it starts".
Yes, "HOA going 1984" is not full blown 1984, but it can terrorize & harm locals until they manage to move (i.e.: persuade someone else to move into a place locals are fleeing for reasons), and if less problematic still proceeds to normalize progression of 1984-ish governance.
My neighbors (Maryland) have had a broken down car in front of their house for 2 years now. I see HOA violation notices on it every once in a while threatening to get it towed if they don't fix it, but nothing ever comes of it.
And every year we see news stories of HOAs inducing foreclosures etc on owners for $10 late dues, flying national flag, or painting a porch the wrong shade of white.
Gov't/HOA involvement & enforcement varies wildly. This subthread regards those thinking "1984" was a good idea.
Fully agreeing within your premise. Digitalizing the grandman standing at her window 25/7 does not change the world.
But you missed the part where not you (or your HOA) implements it:
> Services model. Part of the purchase includes a technician showing up and doing the installation. There would be no DIY component.
> Subscription only. The product would be a hardware/software/services bundle with an up front fee and ongoing subscription as default.
So, you have scale. Someone owns all the data. Or three companies, same difference. The state of the "art" security in this sector is beyond laughable (Xiamoi camera showing feed from other peoples camera [0]) and even if not, just buy the dataset. And then the real shit begins.
Give me that dataset of say 20% of the Americans and a decent laptop and I blow Cambridge and their silly facebook data out of the water.
Recognizing people gets ridiculously easy - instead of 7 billion people I only have to identify you out of maybe 100 persons frequenting an area. Cue all the low hanging fruits like your affairs, about all disabilities affecting gait, your bedtime regularity.
Let me assume the role of a big store chain: I can not only see plants and garden equipment you buy, but also how you use it and how often you break stuff or let your grass grow brown. Nice!
All these habits, unfiltered, unlike in the internets! How regular is your daily routine? Are you up to some risks due to little sunlight and sport? Your insurer would like to know! Your other insurer would also like to know, should you be considered a traffic risk considering how angry you take your driveway sometimes? But your other insurer has already pattern matched: Is probably an anger management issue. Your future job interviewer thanks you for this red flag!
But hey, you did avoid getting your electric pepper mill stolen that one time, probably!
I suspect that if a non-government implementation becomes widespread the authorities will require access. A bit like grabbing the feeds from Facebook etc.
Since HOAs are much less capable of doing violence to people, it's certainly not as harmful for them to implement this technology as it is for the state to do so, but I think the impulse to view every single person passing through the neighborhood as a potential threat can create a very dystopian vibe.
There's always a house or two for sale in our neighborhood, and naturally people will slowly drive by the houses to check them out, and without fail, someone will post on the HOA FB page to watch out for such and such sketchy vehicle.
The house we bought was vacant for a short time and some kids came along and threw rocks at some of the windows, but for a few weeks after we bought the house, people would ask us if we knew about the "break-in."
We live in one of the nicest neighborhoods I've ever seen and it's some combination of the news and technology like this that makes people think they're about to get Purged every night.
I don't think the technology is the problem so much as the attitude it creates toward the world, and I think the technology can be quite useful, but when everyone believes it is necessary, it creates a 1984 vibe without government intervention. No government involvement is necessary for us to be suspicious and mean toward each other.
Yeah I agree, I thought the parent overstated the difference between governments and HOAs. A lot of HOAs are basically just the very local-est of local government, being responsible for roads and utilities, even approximating some functions of super small town law enforcement in the form of that guy who open carries really conspicuously.
There's good odds that the HOA won't home-grow this - I'm sure that if this product did exist, it'd either come from or end up being scooped up by one of the usual suspects of the information gathering and advertising age. I don't think that corporations helpfully defining what sort of crime was committed for the local HOA is any less dystopian, it just makes it potentially more subtle.
The problem is that in a capitalist society, the surveillance options that provide the best combination of price and feature set are likely going to come from a company that has other revenue streams such as connecting all those cameras together and monetizing the entire customer network. Enter Ring.
It's one of the gaps/ downsides to tech development. We see anything not yet in existence in as an "underserved market", design a product and assume everyone thinks like we do.
The whole time I was reading that section all I heard was, "Let's move from individual neighbor racism tools to group chat!"
I wholeheartedly agree with this. I bought a house with a front porch, and for three seasons of the year my wife and I sit out there almost every day. It's mind-blowing to me how few of our neighbors sit in front of their houses. They're all nice. They say hello as they walk their dogs and strollers. But then they go back inside and hide from the world.
Not many packages get taken on my block, though they seem to on others. I'm not saying it's because of us, but I assume being outside and neighborly helps. It seems we've collectively lost that sense somehow.
I played with this idea some with a startup called Perch, which intended to turn old smartphones into security cameras or modern webcams.
While some users were interested in deterring crime, others just like to watch webcams. Sometimes weird and noteworthy stuff happens, though I found not nearly often enough. Also low-cost application specific cameras like wyze emerged that were easier to setup than old phones.
Anyhow, Petty crimes are currently very interesting to people to catch in this sort of age of online shaming. This is evidenced by the stolen package bomb videos.
Importantly, adding more surveillance does not mean you can go out now and not assume you're being recorded or that your actions in public might turn up on a social network. We passed this as an assumption years ago.
However, it is still possible to do terrible things in broad daylight and get away with it. We had, I believe two unsolved daytime pedestrian hit and runs in inner Portland in December! Hard to imagine but there is still relatively low or even no useful video coverage in some areas. And it isn't always a great thing.
> I played with this idea some with a startup called Perch, which intended to turn old smartphones into security cameras or modern webcams.
> Petty crimes are currently very interesting to people to catch in this sort of age of online shaming. This is evidenced by the stolen package bomb videos.
I hope you do not take this as a personal attack, but I consider this line of thinking...well, fucked up. Just because an idea is remotely viable in an economic sense it seems to be instantly within the Overton window of serious consideration.
> However, it is still possible to do terrible things in broad daylight and get away with it.
Like manipulating the self-assigned greatest democracy in the world as a foreign actor via, you guessed it, mass surveillance and analysis. I would rather prevent that instead of pleasing some digital mop and peoples craving for "vengeance" on criminals, but oh well.
I don't have a single one of the 26M views of Porch Pirate vs. Glitter Bomb Trap 2.0 on youtube. To take your comment personally would be the equivalent of being mad people like Marvel movies.
As for ideas remotely viable in economic sense, that's the only way black swans are born. That's startups. They're remotely viable until they're entirely new engines of economic activity.
I'm not really sure what the rest of your comment is driving at.
I've worked both sides of privacy of both consumer and enterprise products and realized sometimes "good" products made by good people protect and help "bad" guys too. Things are not all one way or another.
Such a system could be designed in a privacy-preserving fashion which might be a customer-valued property. Even better if it could avoid the toxic crap fed by Nextdoor.
For example: I considered writing an app that verified that a caller did indeed work for the company they claimed (have a facial recognition digest, send to company, get a thumb up/down, then discard the local data on thumb up).
There’s nothing to stop me from remembering the faces of people I’ve met; what’s creepy is that the machines know essentially everybody’s face. But the opposite can be true to: we could make machines that discard everything inessential. There’s just no customer demand for that yet.
Because the normal result of this for people isn't that they have to go perform two minutes hate or praise Big Brother; it's that their packages don't get stolen. And the downside? Nothing. In fact, the expression of "I could be watched at any time but no one will" is a greater expression of trust.
People live their lives very differently from the universe you're talking about. They enforce things through trust networks. My friends and I have Find my Friends access to each other. That's right. If I wanted I could sit there and spy on one of them. But she knows I won't. I know I won't. That's how a sense of trust works.
Well, 300 million people are currently living under an administration whose election was most likely heavily influenced by mass data collection and analysis.
Nobody cares if you and your friend read each others diaries or whatever. The problem is the metaphorical diary being owned by a global entity, along with two billion other diaries. Locked behind shoddy security and regarded as sellable for the right price at any point in time.
As a German I was thoroughly (and rightfully IMO) teached to treat the opinion of "haha personally I just don't look further than a few meters beyond my nose and the world looks quite fine now" as danger, not as an excuse and your statement are falls quite clearly in that category. Just because you don't see nothing doesn't mean nothing is happening.
It doesn't have to be sellable and it doesn't have to be shoddy security. Those don't come inherently with the product.
Nothing inherently wrong with mass data collection and analysis and nothing inherently wrong with an election being heavily influenced by that. If there were falsehoods advertised then the problem is the falsehoods.
> 300 million people are currently living under an administration whose election was most likely heavily influenced by mass data collection and analysis
There’s has been little to no evidence any of the data collection/analysis done by the Trump campaign influenced anyone.
I completely agree with most of your point, but "black-swan events like serial packet thieves" made me laugh. Checking in from San Francisco, where over 50% of the packages that I had delivered to my home (wherein the package delivery area is behind a locked grill-door!) were stolen in the first two weeks after I moved there. I have shipped everything to my work since then.
If you buy or rent an old enough house you might still have the vestiges of a coal chute somewhere on the side of the house. Unfortunately, I don't think today you could leave that much external access for a 'package chute'.
Amazon tried to solve this by making your front door the package chute. And we laughed and laughed. Maybe there's something in between, but it's not as simple a solution as replacing the doorknob and lock.
I'm with you, but then again I currently live in a nice neighbourhood where something like "serial packet thiefs" are considered a "low-impact black-swan event", as you say.
Not everyone is so lucky, and I'd wager that many folks would be happy to "automatically purge nuisances" if all it costs them is some sidewalk privacy. I would certainly make that trade-off if I lived in a dodgier environment.
I'd rather people actually got involved in their neighborhoods and formed or joined a real Neighborhood Watch group, rather than letting some AI handle it badly, or outsource it to some faceless company.
At least if your neighbors screw it up, there is an avenue of redress. Plus, outside of TV shows, few bad things come from neighbors getting involved in their neighborhood.
What can a start-up driven cloud mass surveilance do in that regard what a 1950-tech alarm system can not?
Why not look into the countless measures other nations with far less crime or individuals have successfuly done which coincidentally also are not opening an attack surface for sinister activities as large as Alaska?
>Why would you trade the vibrancy of your young urban block or the sense of trust and community in your suburb against prevention of low-impact black-swan events like serial packet thiefs?
It's a big and a privileged assumption that the worse that happens in neighbours is "low-impact black-swan events like serial packet thiefs" or that otherwise they resemble a "vibrant young urban block".
In China, this already happened with smart cameras everywhere to monitor traffic and people. It’s only a matter of time other sensors are added. And only a small slippery slope away from a US city gov/municipality to think it’s a good idea to install for the whole community. When 5g comes online...
Its difficult to argue against safety. For some people there are no pros and cons, just black or white. 10% more safety vs 0% more safety. They dont want to do hard work to solve the problem. They just want short time fixes of the symptoms.
>Can anyone explain to me why anyone would advocate a profit-driven, systematic eradication of soul and character around each and every human residence?
The more money you make, the more effort you spend cementing your position and systematically eradicating soul and character. See: Gated communities.
You can seriously not see how the the entanglement of psychological effects of being watched, mob justice, alienation, gossip, public shaming and threatening and first and foremost real or imagined social scoring breeds dull monoculture?
Security cameras generally don't actively monitor either - they merely record and let someone go back and look at the footage if they feel there is a reason to
So you list every possible bad thing that possibly could happen, and that is reason enough to not even bother with something? Have these horror scenarios played out in any place that actually is heavily surveiled?
Are there no young vibrant urban blocks in London? No sense of trust in Islington?
There are gentrifying city streets that I, a white male, will not walk down because the entire street is new construction with builder included Ring systems. I don't want to walk down a street and have literally 30 people get notifications on their phones that I'm there.
I can't imagine how the local PoC that are getting pushed back feel about that. Existing neighborhood watch networks already have people crying wolf at the smallest things. This is how the culture of the area dies.
Yeah but there's a difference between an entire street of personal security systems accompanied by apps and social networks built on fear mongering.
"just vague fears" they're called opinions which I'm allowed to have and voice in a public forum. Sorry for trying to consider the well being of the less privileged overly targeted people getting aggressively kicked out of their neighborhood.
PoC have a voice. If they have a fear, they can express it. They don't need a random white person hand-wringing on their behalf when that person self-admittedly doesn't even know how they might feel on the subject.
I never said white people couldn't "give a shit". I said that you self-admittedly don't even know the viewpoints of PoCs on ring doorbells. "Is slavery morally wrong" is a fairly easier question to answer in my book than "are cheap cameras available to most people morally wrong"
That this is not only a market, but a "wish" which seems to get traction even here on HN confirms to me that the old joke "1984 is not a manual" is more relevant than ever, and scarily not only in regards to the usual suspects, corporate and nation states, but people themselves.
Can anyone explain to me why anyone would advocate a profit-driven, systematic eradication of soul and character around each and every human residence?
Why would you trade the vibrancy of your young urban block or the sense of trust and community in your suburb against prevention of low-impact black-swan events like serial packet thiefs?
Why would you surrender your home, not only your safe haven in life but also your gateway to low effort exploration of your surroundings to wide-spanning AI surveillance and automated purge of any nuisance?
Maybe I am just weird or out of touch but I can absolutely not get in my head how people surrender to such a dull dystopia based on an apparent fetish for weaponized gossip and abnormal levels of fear of petty crimes...