September 4, 2020 - 7:00am
As I’ve previously noted, Amazon has partnered with police forces in America to promote Ring — as a kind of citizen-led CCTV network. This has raised concerns about the extension of the surveillance state into every corner of our lives.
But it turns out that the spread of ‘smart doorbells’ may be something of a double-edged sword for the authorities. The BBC reports on FBI concerns that people are using this technology to remotely spy on what the police are up to.
The naïve idea of the internet as a tool of citizen empowerment has long been exploded. We know very well that governments and corporations are adept at using tech to further their control and influence over our lives. Communication networks don’t necessarily disperse power, they can just as easily be used to centralise it.
But I wonder if the latter won’t prove more of a nuisance than the former. Certainly, there’s no doubting the sophistication of the technology now flooding the market.
Writing for Wired, Victoria Wollaston provides an excellent, if alarming, guide to what’s currently available. It’s full of such phrases as “infrared night vision sensors”, “built-in fingerprint readers” and “attack rods”. One system even has a “built-in deep learning model to detect the motion of people and vehicle shapes in real-time.” Furthermore, it can play pre-recorded messages — for instance, at someone parking in the wrong space. Imagine a nightmare neighbour with all of that kit at his or her disposal — or a burglar who knows exactly who’s in or out on your street.
In time, the best hope may be that DIY surveillance becomes so ubiquitous that criminal acts are always detected. If malefactors can’t act illegally on the information they gather then perhaps they won’t bother.
For the merely nosey, however, the future looks bright.
Peter Franklin is Associate Editor of UnHerd. He was previously a policy advisor and speechwriter on environmental and social issues.
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SubscribeAnyone who invites Amazon into his home is a mug. By the way, what are my rights with regard to neighbours who fly their drones over my property? Can I shoot them (the drones) down?
Don’t do that. Buy the cheapest drone you can find and fly it into theirs.
(That was a joke by the way, not legal advice)
Jokes aside, I had the experience of a drone hovering while working in the garden a couple of years ago, unpleasant and disturbing. Bad enough the someone is spying and invading my privacy the fact that it is recorded and so easily shared makes it much more threatening than the peeping Toms of years gone by.
What were you doing in your garden that was SO interesting that anyone would bother wasting time to watch? Paranoia rules?
No you shouldn’t shoot it down but, if your neighbour’s drone is fitted with a camera, it’s against the law for him or her to fly it within 50m of you or your property (Air Navigation Order Article 95).
Good to know! Thanks
As an IoT geek myself I think most of this is comparable to CB radios back in the day. Remember them? Too young maybe.
I’m using old smartphones as cameras because it’s fun solving the problems that invariably come up. My router is limited to 16 devices on wifi for instance, so I’ve repurposed an old router as a second wifi. The multitude of devices that need internet to work is clogging up the internet itself forcing me to purchase more bandwidth.
On the other hand Opensource solutions are being developed to ensure that your data and images stay inside your own system and are not shared. Tech nerds are disruptive of the status quo by their very nature. Shoving it to the man is a hobby in and of itself.
But I’m also 60 years old and can see myself looking out into a world I am physically unable to navigate in about 20 years. Is there really that much difference between sitting on a park bench watching the world go by and using a webcam? If the technology allows an 80 year old to live a quasi-independent life in an IoT equipped home then that’s a positive.
Certainly it’s a balance but when your kid is the one that goes missing, you want all the cameras you can get. There’s a reason why the police make door to door enquiries after a series crime and it’s because people see things all the time.
If you are parking in the “wrong” place then you are parking in the wrong place as far as your local authority is concerned. More citizen involvement in local government decision making strikes me as a better approach.
And maybe this is a better use of this technology. Online voting for double yellow lines where webcams show the problems for traffic or whatever that the wrong place parker is causing. Better to look at what we consider to be right or wrong than have an expectation of being able to ignore the traffic laws.
But I know, you were only popping in to the shop for a minute. How could you know that ambulance would need to get by.
DIY security is going to be big business – even bigger than now.
My prediction is that ever increasing numbers of immigrants into what were previously balanced and reasonably well behaved countries where you had policing by consent, will break down into lawless areas and gated communities. You already see it in lawless cities v peaceful countryside. So far the lawlessness of the cities has not, by and large, jumped to the countryside, but it is only a matter of time.
The Police will become increasingly ineffective, yet more violent. Communities will switch to private security. In time, in the UK, where we don’t have access to guns, we will have to employ people who do. Happy days.
Please tell me I’m wrong ….
It’s hardly surprising when the general perception of the criminal justice system is that it’s pretty useless most of the time.