Car Parked Illegally on Sidewalk | October 30, 2016
It’s crazy to me that cars never innovated on this, yet scooters feel the heat.
I mean it’s fairly easy to throw a scooter into a van and dump them all somewhere else. Cities could easily run scooter sweepers.
Cars on the other hand need an actual fix. They have been a long-time sidewalk hazard around the country, where apparently nobody came up with a single technology suggestion let alone solution.
A neighbor recently sent us some photos of problem areas. “I see lots of mothers pushing babies in strollers that consistently get forced into the street.”
Car manufacturers wouldn’t even do it for mothers and babies. So what’s up with these scooter companies innovating?
To put it another way, who will drive the car that advertises it has a control to prohibit driving or parking on sidewalks?
The Smithsonian tells us America’s “founding fathers” promoted and spread early forms of vaccines very widely.
Jefferson had given 200 members of his extended family and neighbors the vaccine by August of 1800
When they didn’t, they experienced a devastation of regret for not having vaccinated more.
Both Jefferson and Franklin had to argue with the early anti-vaccination movement. For Franklin, some of the discussion veered from the scientific into the personal: One of his sons died of smallpox at age 4, six years before Jenner discovered cowpox’s use. Some thought that little Franky had died after his father inoculated him with smallpox. But those were just ugly rumors. Franklin wrote in his autobiography: “In 1736 I lost one of my sons, a fine boy of four years old, by the small-pox, taken in the common way. I long regretted bitterly, and still regret that I had not given it to him by inoculation.”
Source: Ring Store. Amazon is literally promoting the very thing a judge just struck down as intent to violate privacy. Protecting the home legally failed to extend “around” a home.
Ring seems to be hurting the surveillance industry as well as privacy rights. This makes it a bizarre product that benefits very few while it spreads far more harm than good at scale (only really helps the people selling it, I suppose).
Start by looking into the whistleblower “Ring must die” story from just a few months ago:
The deployment of connected home security cameras that allow footage to be queried centrally are simply not compatible with a free society. The privacy issues are not fixable with regulation and there is no balance that can be struck. Ring should be shut down immediately and not brought back.
Then review things like the earlier completely broken and unsafe security model of Ring, leaving all the data exposed.
Software to hack Ring cameras has recently become popular on the forum. The software churns through previously compromised email addresses and passwords to break into Ring cameras at scale.
Finally, consider this emerging odd story about a woman being awarded a huge fine because her neighbor installed Ring cameras:
Judge Melissa Clarke dismissed Mr Woodard’s claim that the driveway camera was used legitimately. She ruled that ‘crime prevention, could surely be achieved by something less’ than the devices. Judge concluded images and audio of Dr Fairhurst’s property captured by devices was her personal data. Also ruled Mr Woodard had breached UK GDPR by failing to process her personal data ‘transparently’. He then ‘sought to mislead Claimant about how and whether the Cameras operated and what they captured’. Fine of up to £100,000 could be handed out by judge. But final sentencing decision will be made a later date.
Putting hefty fines on the people caught with a Ring is… an interesting approach to the problem of product safety.
Image: Alan Lee. A concerned neighbor (left) confronts a Ring user (right).
Will Amazon respond by selling a legal insurance policy along with their freedom-destroying invasive technology (and would any Gollum even accept such a policy)?
At first I didn’t believe this third story was real… then it went to the BBC.
…the judge added: “Even if an activation zone is disabled so that the camera does not activate to film by movement in that area, activation by movement in one of the other non-disabled activation zones will cause the camera to film across the whole field of view.”
On the positive side the latest push back mounts pressure on all retail surveillance camera vendors (looking at you Lorex, DLink, Swann, etc.) to up their game in competitive tests, proving to the market technically how they aren’t back-hauling data that leaves everyone exposed (end-to-end encrypted for local operators using public networks for privacy-preserving views) — to improve confidentiality.
The push back also begs the question of scoping tools, such that sensor technology can limit range and integrity of recordings, while still being obsessively compelled to do the exact opposite — increase range (and fidelity) — to improve integrity.
Reminds me of a homicide case I was pulled into after high resolution cameras on the outside of a building had captured details of a moving car hundreds of feet away. I had to testify the resolution was really that good that long ago (police had downloaded the footage soon after the incident, yet the case wasn’t heard until years later).
While obviously I’m not a lawyer there are some deep legal issues for a judge who generally indicates a camera shouldn’t be pointing at a neighbor or even around a neighborhood the camera owner lives in. That’s seriously grey space.
This case to me thus seems to rest more soundly on an “unfair” and “unsafe” operation principles, rather than on diminishing a right to install and operate sensors for the open spaces around one’s own home.
As a long-time surveillance camera installer and operator, including investigations and court work, I look at the Amazon Ring product as a disaster for all those involved. Without Amazon would such flagrant disregard for security (confidentiality and integrity failures) even survive in the market?
Click to enlarge. McAfee VirusScan Wireless packaging from 2000. Client side scanning for mobile devices has been around a very long time with little to no resistance.
Here’s an important podcast with Hany Farid (transcript), definitely worth a listen for anyone interested in the facts related to Apple’s client-side scanning for child sexual abuse material (CSAM)
In this Safeguarding Podcast with Hany Farid, Professor at the University of California, Berkeley: PhotoDNA, what is is and how it works, what PhotoDNA doesn’t do, what are Hashes and do they work in an End-to-End Encrypted world, is Apple’s NeuralHash child safety proposal the incipient slippery slope as many claim, Apple’s Secret Sharing Threshold and why that’s a problem, and “WhatsApp’s hypocrisy”.
Keep in mind when listening to (or reading) this podcast that the very big and primary difference between decades of client side scanning of mobile devices for viruses, and Apple’s new proposal to scan for CSAM is… the latter benefits children (society in general) whereas the former benefits mainly a device owner (with some secondary benefits to society).
Farid repeatedly visits allowing the latter and not the former as a form of hypocrisy without pointing to the ugly underlying cultural motive (selfishness).
In other words, what if I told you a primary objection to Apple’s CSAM seems rooted in American political thinking (e.g. techno-political-extremism denying children rights) that wants to block power from being used to protect the most vulnerable in society (e.g. sad history of America’s unique tipping culture)?
This is exactly why Holland and the UK (with high levels of female participation in the political process) can successfully run technology-aimed regulation campaigns like “stop killing our children”, whereas in the US male-dominated government constantly tries to legalize murder (and rape) using technology.
Also I bristle when anyone attempts to claim an “incipient slippery slope” to CSAM or any other technology. A slippery slope risk is like arguing eventually we will be impaled by unicorns. The reason it’s a fallacy is because a line is drawn somewhere, and everyone knows this (if they accept basic science).
Here’s how the fallacy works and why slippery slope is illogical:
They warn the government soon could be using this thing to hurt you.
Then I say why stop there, the next thing I know they are using it to hurt me.
They say whoa there, that’s crazy, why on earth would they want to hurt me.
Then I say sorry it’s a slippery slope (fallacy) therefore nothing stops the slide. Anything is possible, therefore everything will happen including them hurting me.
They protest saying reasons X, Y, Z means they wouldn’t do that.
Then I say AHA! See the problem? Suddenly reasons exist for a slope being not slippery?
