So “Porch Pirates”, those folks who steal packages off your porch, have become an ever-increasing threat to Amazon, but they are not taking it laying down. In February of 2018, Amazon paid a billion dollars to acquire Ring, the maker of video doorbells that record anytime motion is at your door. Now they have partnered with over 400 police departments to share videos when potential crimes have happened.
I just read the article from CNN on this and thought I would weigh in with my thoughts. Now I know that police will need to request any video from the area and they have to specify a specific time period that they want footage from. Then Ring will email all the users with a message that gives them a specific amount of time to decline to share before the videos are available to the police.
This is really a double-edged sword. If police are tracking a criminal much like they were with the escaped inmate in Tennesee they just apprehended using Ring video, then they need the footage immediately. My thought here would be to allow people to opt into sending authorities their video when requested from the get-go and not wait for email responses.
Now, on the other hand, Amazon, the company that owns Amazon Web Services which holds a 33% market share on all web traffic, can combine their data with all of the Alexa voice apps, your shopping history, and now they can even see who is coming to your door. I hate to be a bit Big Brother here, but it’s possible that this is starting to look a little more like one of the sci-fi movies that we saw growing up.
I get that Amazon is replacing packages that are stolen from customers and that cuts into profit, but there is a difference between a corporation’s fiduciary responsibility to increase shareholder value, and colluding with the government.
Some will define Fascism as the collusion between Big Government and Big Business in order to suppress the populous. If that is the definition, then I feel that Amazon and the government, in this case, the police, may have taken this a step too far.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/29/us/ring-cameras-police/index.html
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