A Smart Doorbell Company Is Working With Cops To Report 'Suspicious' People, Activities (vice.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Smart doorbell company Ring is making it easier for customers to call the cops on "suspicious" people and activities. The startup, which Amazon acquired for reportedly "more than" $1 billion this year, uses security cameras to let people monitor their entryways. Now, it's launching its Neighbors app -- a platform for reporting crime that, so far, police in Fort Lauderdale and Orlando, and the Ventura Sheriff's Department, have access to. "Over the next days and weeks, law enforcement across the U.S. will be joining Neighbors," a Ring spokesperson told me over email.

The app, while presented as a crime-fighting aid, could also be a new place for paranoid people to profile fellow citizens, as similar platforms in the past have turned out to be. According to the company's statement in a press release for Neighbors today: "In addition to receiving push notifications about potential security issues, app users can see recent crime and safety posts uploaded by their neighbors, the Ring team and local law enforcement via an interactive map. If a neighbor notices suspicious activity in their area, they can post their own text, photo or video and alert the community to proactively prevent crime."

Comments

Neighborhood Watch

[amiga3D]

My daughter's neighborhood had several cars broken into. The neighborhood watch has a facebook group that alerted members. They all polled their surveillance cameras and each found the same van casing their houses throughout the area. They emailed all the pictures to the local Sheriff's department and they caught the van in another area the next night. Cameras are everywhere now and if neighbors unite they have an amazing amount of coverage.

Re:It's paranoia when they're really victimizing y

[swb]

A losing effort.

The city has had at least two controversial shootings in recent years and activists are wholly opposed to anything involving "more police". One shooting involved an African American male who fought white officers and tried to take their gun and was shot and killed. The OTHER shooting happened about 1.5 miles from where I lived and involved an African American (first Somali immigrant police officer) officer who shot an unarmed white woman who had actually initiated the police call.

So it's a total political clusterfuck with the cops in this town. In last year's mayoral election, a major candidate actually suggested disarming the cops. Another major candidate rose to prominence in the precinct occupation/protest which went on for a month or two (in addition to disrupting things like the Park Board meetings, screaming racism and preventing the meeting from taking place). We use ranked choice voting and both candidates polled top 4, so there's that kind of crazy here.

The latter shooting (white woman shot by Somali cop) has everyone spinning in circles. The African American activists and white liberals don't know whether to be outraged or not because while they're trained to be outraged at police shootings, the racial role reversal here has them flummoxed. The pro-police "conservatives" who usually give the cops the benefit of the doubt are annoyed, but are equally flummoxed because a black cop shot a white woman.

The 100% democratic city government just wants it all to go away. The DA had to turn to the Grand Jury (after saying he would no longer use it after the previous shooting) to forcibly extract testimony as all the officers even tangentially involved in the Officer's career and training went blue wall of silence, making it take 8 months to get an indictment. The so-called legal experts are calling the odds of conviction 3-2 against due to the incredible lack of evidence (body cameras -- turned off, no witnesses, etc).

So yeah, run for city council on a "we need more police patrols" platform? Uh, no.

I'm not a fan of police state tactics by any means, but shit, what else can we turn to?