Jason Bassler | @JasonBassler1
Big Brother just got an upgrade.
Starting December, Amazon’s Ring cameras will scan and recognize faces. Don’t want to be in their database? Too bad — walk past a Ring and your face can be stored, tagged, & analyzed without consent.
One step closer to total surveillance.
[Image: A Ring doorbell camera mounted on a brick wall. A digital overlay shows facial recognition scanning a person's face with grid lines. Text on the right reads “Amazon's Ring Adds Facial Recognition to Home Security” with additional text below.]
6:00 PM | Oct 4, 2025
Source: https://x.com/JasonBassler1/status/1974640686419857516
walk fast, carry stickers
And you’re always seen as a “weirdo” or “crazy” or maybe even a thief if you want to opt out with a mask.
just tell them you’re ice
Given any large database this is going to be a massive problem.
Did someone steal your package?
Do you want to know who did it?
Will you settle for knowing which of the 385 people in the country look like your villain? Some of them may even be close enough to be falsely accused!
Would the police do anything about it even if you had 100% irrefutable proof of who did it? Would you settle for Amazon displaying to those 385 people in your town that sort of look like the thief ads for tools that would make it easier to break into your home?
There are factual existing cases of someone being tried and losing months of their life due to facial recognition wherein the accused wasn’t in the same town as the crime. When the authorities are handled sufficiently gift wrapped cases here is bob bob did wrong here’s the video they often DO pursue them because 95% of such cases are a charging document arrest and plea bargain. In this phase we regularly ask people to choose between probation or a short sentence and being threatened with being punished with 20 years for defending themselves. Sometimes innocent people actually cop a please to avoid their life being destroyed.
Whilst in theory people may be entitled to a lawyer they may either not qualify because they aren’t poor enough or may not get actual representation without spending thousands of dollars people simply don’t have.
Creating a whole host of such cases could be a disaster.
“One step closer?” Good one. Total surveillance is already here and has been for a while.
This Ring fuckery just makes it even more convenient forfascistslaw enforcement to find you.Removed by mod
Nothing a decent laser can’t fix.
We need to normalize spray painting the lenses on these things, as well as painting “big brother” on doorways of those that own them. If you enable fascism, you should expect some minor vandalism.
You could start by sending them a letter that informs them of this occuring and how it impacts the world around them before you skip straight to vandalism. I’m sure a lot of people just never considered the extent of that data that is being shared so much as they figured only they would have access to the footage.
Sure, but then you’re a suspect.
Just go from the side and toss a Molotov at their door.
You can send a letter without a return address. I plan on taking this idea and sending it out to my neighbors who have one. It honestly seems like a fun side activity.
Ugh… Idiots ruin everything. How can people not understand this? Just so fucking ignorant
I don’t know if it is the same brand, but my morning walks are cheered on by an increasing chorus/wave of “hello, you are currently being recorded”. Weird dystopian vibes.
That’s so creepy!
I’m losing my mind. Ring cameras everywhere, Flock cameras, ID/face verification, everything Google touches, airports, Tesla car cameras, every modern car actually, Meta glasses, Chat Control every year, the OSA, stores using facial recognition (and other tracking), social media billionaire shenanigans, Samsung installing Israeli spyware and putting ads on the fridges, fuck even the Windows 11+Chrome+iPhone combo I see in public. I could keep going. We could all keep going.
It’s too much. Idk anymore. This post broke me a little.
I’m rapidly approaching the point where I go completely feral and begin smashing every advertisement and camera I see. Smashing large billboard screens and smearing shit on walls. Just to tear this monstrosity to the ground.
I wouldn’t advise you to smash cameras but it would make you my hero
Same here. My landlord has security cameras (possibly option activated so they turn on only when people are in the hallways) in all corridors. This means I simply cannot leave my own apartment without being caught on camera, and there are so many cameras in my neighborhood that it is insane. Almost all (if not all) are private, but fuck me…
PREACH WTF SERIOUSLY
I am Italian and I have much fewer reasons to feel like you, but I still do and, although loving the friends I made there, I know I will never again set foot in the USA, since this comes from a culture of surveillance dating back more than a century.
I am actually offering temporary accomodation to any of my friends who may want to try their luck in the EU.
The UK has a CCTV facial recognition system that’s quite massive, we’ve resisted such programs for the most part (a few cities have them but they’re not linked together).
So it’s not like Europe is free of this.
Here most of our camera systems are for our own use only, not for the government, with this giant exception.
The UK’s CCTV network has been well known for decades. It is actually nuts.
A massive nationwide network of facial recognition CCTV doesn’t exist in the UK
I have no idea how regulated it is right now within the EU, outside of GDPR, but surely there are different laws locally. I don’t know if after Brexit something has been added to such laws in the UK, but I must say that even before that it was obvious that the UK LOVED their cameras.
Willing to host a small family from the US that absolutely loves your country?
In 52 m2 I can offer a matrimonial bed for a couple visiting to get job interviews for some time, not much more.
The problem is Amazon has this. I don lt care if my neighbors do this. But random corporations should not be involved.
Everyone is so obsessed with surveillance. My uncle has a Ring and even if I told him about this, he wouldn’t care; he wants to know who walks past his house. Now the cops will know whether he lied to them because they can subpoena Ring for their records. People are literally giving away their rights for the convenience of not answering the fucking door
The depressing part is that even if you don’t own or use Ring, you will be in their database because those cameras are everywhere. The populace has completely given up all their privacy and have done it willingly.
Not only willingly, they’ve fucking paid for it.
The depressing part is local self hosted alternatives exist like Ubiquiti unifi, all their cameras store locally to a hard drive on your property with all local processing.
Yall gonna stop paying companies so you can’t help build the surveillance state? No? Awesome…
My parents have one of these. 💀
Guess I’ll be going into their place through the garage lmao
If they have more than one and you can’t avoid them all …. The press release says they will be able to trace your route on the property
Set anything with a ring camera on it on fire. It is the enemy.
Edward Snowden may say (in reality he says to desolder and add manual switches to mics and cameras):
FTFY
Set anything with a camera and mic on it on fire. It is the enemy.
It’s much harder to disperse and admit to using the camera in my phone than that you illicitly accessed.
I’m very happy with my ubiquiti doorbell. It records to a local NVR on my network. No cloud for this guy!
I’ve been telling anyone that will listen about my ubiquiti setup. Storing the video data locally is the only scenario that I’m comfortable with. I can still remotely log into my network and check camera footage, but no one else has access to it.
Ubiquity has been awesome. I’m running a cloud gateway max and a single U7 pro wall AP. It was $400 all the networking stuff, and $300 for the doorbell. The doorbell was a little steep, but you gotta remember there’s no subscription. And after trying a bunch of AP/routers, $400 is honestly a great value for the quality of the networking gear. And I have a ton of headroom for upgrades in the future.
I’ve heard ubiquiti support isn’t the best for professional installments, but in the home, it’s been fantastic.
I’m a certified network engineer so I wasn’t too fussed with their support. I have a Dream Machine, a 24 port PoE switch, two APs (one U6 Lite, and one U7 Lite that I added later), and three cameras. We mostly just use the cameras to check on the cats when we’re out of town, but it’s nice to have the extra security just in case.
Is the setup a little excessive: absolutely. Is it awesome to know within seconds if there’s an issue with my network or if it’s just another ISP outage: also yes.
In the five years that I’ve had this setup, I’ve had exactly one issue with the network and it was just that one of the APs died after four years of continuous use.
Considering how much money I spent on crappy router/WiFi solutions, I think the UniFi stuff is very reasonably priced. From a software standpoint, it’s definitely overkill. The only wall I hit so far is I don’t think you can send IPv6 traffic over a VPN. I use a network level VPN to Mullvad via Wireshark. I whitelist devices to VPN but blacklist some domains that don’t play nice with a VPN. If I turn on IPv6, it leaks my location via IPv6 address. But if I turn it off, Mullvad reports my location is hidden. 🤷
That sounds like an issue with Mullvad to me. I haven’t used it personally, but a quick search pulled up some issues with Mullvad leaking location over ipv6 and even disabling it by default.
You have my attention… Does it have a good / comparable app that you can use to view recordings?
The iOS app is decent, and the web interface is excellent imo. Web has better search. I think the AI computer vision stuff performs slightly worse than Ring. E.g. package detection is pretty good but not great. However, pretty impressive considering everything is running locally. I think they have some dedicated hardware now for running local computer vision stuff that likely performs better.
Great, my downstairs neighbor has one of these things that everyone has to walk by when going in or out of the main building. Why she needs one in an apartment building with a locked main door that you have to unlock yourself for guests is a mystery to me.
Simple - Because she doesn’t trust the strangers living in the building any more than the strangers on the outside. I don’t blame her one bit. In my lifetime, I’ve seen countless stories of women being raped and/or murdered by other tenants and the complex 's own security.
In the olden days, before electricity, I used to be friendly with a neighbor, and she became convinced that someone was sneaking into her apartment when she was at work, and stealing her underwear and prescription meds. She took a day off because she was under the weather, and one of the maintenance guys, who was always overly-friendly, unlocked her door, and walked right in.
It turned out that he’d been warned about this before, and he was fired. But if she, or other neighbors, had Ring cameras, they would have caught on to him immediately.
A camera inside her apartment would have the same results without invading the privacy of every other tenant in the building.
In that specific case, but most people want to identify people BEFORE they enter their promises. I’m not opening my door to any cops, for instance, unless they can slide a warrant under the door.
You are missing the point entirely. There are about a million reasonable reasons someone would want to have a doorbell camera, and they have every right to them. The owner of the camera isn’t violating your privacy, AMAZON is doing that by collecting the data from a privately-owned source who hasn’t given permission to hijack data from their device.
Don’t be mad at the tenant for protecting their safety, be mad at Amazon for exploiting that reasonable fear, encouraging people to get Ring cameras, and then stealing the data they collect.
Is it too much to ask for a doorbell camera to operate like a doorbell? We’ve had peepholes on doors that can be opened and checked when needed for years with no problem, why do we suddenly need constant surveillance of the public commons? This is also on the owner for buying into the scare tactics.
IMO it should be flat out illegal to have any permanent camera that monitors a public space. I don’t consent to have a stalker track when I enter and leave my home, I won’t consent to have a neighbor do the same.
Exactly. Why the fuck is it on at all times?
This isn’t the 20th century. We get a LOT more deliveries these days, and a lot of them are expensive small electronics, like phones. They sit there on our front step all day , while we are at work, tempting porch pirates.
About the only thing keeping those jackals from stealing EVERYTHING, is the fact that they know there are cameras on the house, and also most of the houses surrounding the target. That scares off all but the most desperate thieves.
Peep holes are the most basic security precaution, but they are severely limited. They are distorted, and can be easily beaten by ducking. You may look out and see one guy, while three more are below the peep hole. They don’t record, so there is no evidence to identify troublemakers later. They can’t be accessed remotely, so you can’t see who is messing with your house while you’re out.
To extend your logic, we shouldn’t use cars, because bicycles did the job just fine. Or phones, because we could just yell to our neighbors. Or stoves, because open fires cook food good enough. Or computers, because writing on paper always worked fine. For that matter, why use ballpoint pens, when a quill pen always worked good enough.
Why bother to improve?
Lacking a secure drop off point is a service issue between you and the company delivering the package. It’s just as possible to install a lock box or a set a pickup point or require a signed delivery. Complain to Amazon if they’re too cheap to do anything about porch piracy. The convenience of opening your door for a package doesn’t stand up to my right to privacy.
For the rest of your points: sure, if you really need a camera to watch your private porch then feel free to aim it at the porch and not the entire street. I’m not saying it should be illegal to monitor your property but that your right to 24/7 monitoring ends where your property line does.
They already have porch lock boxes that deliver very guys seldom use. Amazon also has drop off boxes at local businesses.
Once again, the problem isn’t with the person who is justifiably concerned about their safety. The problem is Amazon collecting data without permission. Keep your focus on the actual problem, instead of attacking your fellow citizens.
There are also a million ways to achieve the same goals without agreeing to be Amazon’s snitch for your entire building. Amazon isn’t stealing the data. The ring camera owner sold everyone out.
Also, just so we’re clear, the maintenance worker still had access to her apartment and could have just lied about the reasons. It would not have stopped him in any meaningful way.
“But she would have known who it was!” … yeah, AFTER he was inside her apartment. It doesn’t even do the one thing you’re claiming it would be useful for.
Yeah, except if he knew everyone that entered the apartment at any time was recorded, it would maybe have been a deterrent.
Her other option could be a hidden nanny cam trained on the door so she’d have proof she wasn’t crazy.
But again the issue isn’t people wanting to know who is outside their door, or entering without their knowledge. The issue is the camera companies keeping all the footage for themselves.
We have an off brand camera aimed at our porch for porch pirates. It’s not going to get someone walking by on the street. We have it only recording to the sdcard.
But we can live view and it alerts through the app. We don’t use the cloud service or AI. But there’s nothing stopping the app from screenshotting alerts and sending them somewhere.
I’m trying to figure out how to have an actual closed system so only computers under my control can access camera(s)
Fair enough. My downstairs neighbor can get a doorbell cam that records locally then.
Why did a maintenance guy have access to her home?
Maintenance in apartment complexes always have access to any apartment, in case of fire, overflowing bathtubs, inspections, deaths, smoke detector battery replacement, etc. They are supposed to give 24 hours notice, but the point is that a nefarious character could gain access to any apartment in the complex, if they don’t keep their master keys secure.
We had a case recently of a murder in a gated complex. A maintenance guy got obsessed by the 19 year old daughter of a resident, and eventually kidnapped, raped, and murdered her. All because he had access to the master keys. They ended up passing some law under her name. I think they have to do a better job of clearing their criminal backgrounds, which would have caught this guy. It seems like keeping the master keys under better security should be a major thing, too.
That’s nuts.
Like, the landlord/maintenance people here do have a master key, but it doesn’t work unless the flat is locked from the outside and set in a particular position. If you lock it from the inside, or don’t put it in the special position, they can’t access the flat.
There are inside devices that could stop someone with a master key, like chain locks, but you have to be in the apartment. Once you leave, you obviously can’t set the chain, and anyone with a master key, or is a good lock picker, can get in.
I’ve never heard of setting the bolt a certain way, except maybe in hotels. Even then, it only works if someone is physically in the room.
This is how my door works. You lift the handle to engage the bolts in the doorframe (otherwise the lock doesn’t even turn), then you can turn it either a full rotation, and pull it out, or turn it a full rotation and then about 45 degrees further. If the slit points downwards only people with proper keys can access. If you turn it slightly more, so it’s at an angle, then it’s in “service mode” and people with service keys can also access it.
You can’t put it in service mode from the inside.
If it’s fully locked and you want access for some reason, you’ll have to call for a locksmith. Alternatively remove the entire doorframe from the wall. It’s reinforced though so that’s going to be a hassle. The door itself is some kind of thick metal. Great soundproofing.
