Yesterday, my spouse told me we were going to his friend’s house.
When we got there, it was yet another friend with one of these damned Ring Doorbells.
I don’t recall the part of the Illinois Felony Eavesdropping Law or the Biometric Information Privacy Act, where I gave Amazon or random homeloaners (they usually don’t own their house, they owe debt to banks) permission to record me, my face, my voice, or my conversations.
Yet it seems the government is promoting these. Chicago even has a program that pays people to put them in.
Something that causes the homeloaner and Amazon to commit felonies every day and open themselves up to civil lawsuits for stolen biometrics at $5,000 per incident be damned, the police have people to spy on!
The people who install these things have been hoisted on their own petard before, like that dude in Michigan who got convicted after he filmed himself shooting at the black kid who “missed the school bus” and ended up with video footage from his own doorbell, which they pulled from Amazon’s server, which he could not delete, center stage at his own trial.
Typically, they tell people who don’t like Ring that we are paranoid nutcases.
No, the paranoid nutcases are the people who install the Ring. They are committing serious crimes, at least in Illinois, just by having it there and doing what it does, and they are all freaked out that someone will break into their house and steal from them and rape them by a hyper-sensationalized news media, which is working with the government to make Americans suspicious of each other.
Where making them fear a crime wave that isn’t actually going on hasn’t worked, the media has started blasting more garbage about COVID.
The situation in America benefits when people don’t want to know or care about anyone else, and adopt a bunker mentality where it’s all about them and the things they need….to protect their television set, or something, I don’t know. It’s fucking stupid, isn’t it?
I have never installed a Ring and I never will.
This is Surveillance Capitalism and police state horseshit.
The police don’t even solve very many crimes when you do have a video camera. (NBC News. They admit it to your face and people still buy these things.)
Anecdotally, my ex was mugged in Chicago and the mugger actually grinned real big at the camera. The Chicago police gave us a report number and nothing ever happened after that.
The Ring doesn’t solve crime.
The Ring turns you into a criminal for recording me. ⬆
–Illinois Felony Eavesdropping Law
(720 ILCS 5/14-4)(from Ch. 38, par. 14-4)Sec. 14-4.Sentence.(a) Eavesdropping, for a first offense, is a Class 4 felony and, for a second or subsequent offense, is a Class 3 felony.(b) The eavesdropping of an oral conversation or an electronic communication of any law enforcement officer, State's Attorney, Assistant State's Attorney, the Attorney General, Assistant Attorney General, or a judge, while in the performance of his or her official duties, if not authorized by this Article or proper court order, is a Class 3 felony, and for a second or subsequent offense, is a Class 2 felony.(Source: P.A. 98-1142, eff. 12-30-14.)720 ILCS 5/14