Chatted with a retired cop about Ring doorbells and it made me pause

He told me he used to spend 40 hours a week reviewing neighbor's footage for his beat before they got rid of the program. Said most of it was just raccoons and mailmen, but the real privacy cost was everyone agreeing to let Amazon store their front door 24/7. Does handing over your own surveillance really make you safer, or just more watched?

3 comments

3 Comments

samk775d ago

A cop seeing your front porch footage is way different than some random creep with a WiFi jammer casing your block. Ring doorbells have literally helped catch package thieves and porch pirates in my neighborhood, and the deterrent alone is worth it. Plus if you don't want Amazon storing your clips, just turn off cloud recording and keep it local - that's on you, not the tech.

adams.uma5d ago

My neighbor literally caught a guy stealing his lawnmower at 2am because his Ring picked up the motion and he checked his phone right when the alarm went off. lol. But I think this whole debate actually ties into something bigger I've noticed. People are getting really comfortable with surveillance as long as it feels like it's THEIR choice, but then they freak out when the same tech shows up in someone else's hands. Like how everyone wants traffic cameras but then complains when they get a red light ticket in the mail. It's the same principle just different packaging. The real issue is nobody trusts the system but everyone thinks they can control their own little piece of it. Anyway thanks for actually explaining how to turn off cloud recording because half the people complaining probably don't even know that's an option lmao.

leehall5d ago

Local storage is the way to go if you're worried about Amazon having your footage. Just grab a $30 microSD and you're set, no cloud fees and nobody else can peek at it. I've had my doorbell running that way for two years, zero issues.