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Why we don’t recommend Ring cameras: They’re affordable and ubiquitous, but homeowners shouldn’t be able to act as vigilantes
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- Title
- Why We Don't Recommend Ring Cameras
- Authors
- Adrienne So, Parker Hall, Louryn Strampe, Simon Hill, Julian Chokkattu, Nena Farrell, David Nield, Scott Gilbertson
- Published
- Jul 9 2023
- Word count
- 761 words
Like so many Wired articles, this gives the impression of some detailed issue when really there's nothing to say.
Here's the summary on why these authors don't like Ring:
They did, however, praise Ring for the following:
I spent five minutes of my life reading this article. I wish I hadn't.
There is an insane amount of useless and often outright racist reports that systems like this generate. My dad signed up for some neighborhood group to be kept abreast of possible issues since there were some break ins. 99% of it is completely paranoid ramblings because people dare to walk the streets. I've twice been "reported" on the system and once had some local lunatic pull over and interrogate me on why I was walking out at night. Something i'd been doing in that neighborhood on and off for 20 years, but only threatened for recently.
So ignoring the whole surveillance state argument entirely, it's just a crap ton of false positive nonsense that occasionally helps catch some package thief who then gets hit with a fine, some sort of probation, and let go.
Certainly true that communities full of paranoid weirdos like that can exist, but I don't follow how that's something that can be the fault of Ring.
Are they saying that by enabling the reports they're complicit in how they're being used? Or that by merely allowing people access to cameras they're creating racists?
This sort of guilt-by-association crap always bothers me tremendously, because in the exact same article they discuss Ring being transparent and taking active steps to discourage that kind of behavior on their platform - and yet the authors are intentionally mentioning it as if Ring were at fault any more than every other doorbell camera manufacturer out there.
They're making it easier for racists or even people who don't even realize they are racist to hassle minorities with reports to cops just cause they seem them walking by their house. If you make it easier, more people will use it (which also means more minorities get cops called on them for stupid reasons and maybe even killed cause the cops aren't so great about not being trigger happy especially if it is a minority).
It doesn't have to create racists... just enable them to easier harass minorities. And it will cause people who don't realize they are even racists (and yes, I do think many of those exist) to also join in. It will cause more problems for minorities basically even without creating racists.
Pointing at one small negative factor doesn't make it legitimate criticism for the entire system as a whole, though.
You know what most racists use to communicate? Phones. When is AT&T going to stop turning a blind eye to racist behavior on their platform and start policing the content of what's said over their devices? Just imagine how many lives could be saved!
I think maybe the flaw in that comparison is that phones are multi-purpose and vital for everyday life, while door cameras are not?
With phones, there's not really a choice involved there -- you and me and everyone else will end up with a cell phone whether they like it or not. But, with door cameras and community watchdog groups, there is a choice? These things aren't so ingrained into society that they become mandatory in order to live. People can choose to opt-out? So, it's a bit... hyperbolic to paint this slippery slope picture where criticising door cameras is equivalent to criticising phones? They're very different!
In the case of door cameras, I think there's still room to debate whether or not these things truly have a net benefit or harm to our society. There's room to explore whether or not it's worth it to opt-in? And, that's what's happening in this thread! I don't see it as throwing out the whole system -- I see it as examining the nuances that come with adopting such a system. Exploring all of the effects (both good and bad) to determine whether the bad outweighs the good.
@Tigress is essentially asking "Is the increased perception of security worth feeding into paranoid instincts about safety? Will having a constant eye on their neighbourhood turn folks into more distrustful, prejudiced people? Do newfound opportunities for vigilante justice tap into ingrained, systemic racist instincts folks might not even know they have? And, are the benefits worth these risks?"
Those large-scale questions are valuable and worth thinking about. I think we as a society are coming to terms with both the incredibly damaging effects of social media and our complete helplessness to quit.
But the problem I have, and why I stand so strongly in these conversations, is because what the Wired article is doing is saying that this societal trend then necessitates individual action. And again, that's kindergarden logic at best, authoritarianism at worst.
Because someone somewhere is using something "wrong" now we as a society - or me specifically - can't have it at all? Apply this logic to anything: guns, abortions, drugs, social media, doorbell cameras, doesn't matter. I say screw that.
I think the tricky thing with this list is that it includes things that both primarily affect the individual who chooses to partake (drugs, abortions) but also includes things that often directly affect others (guns, doorbell cameras). Obviously there's an extreme amount of nuance here, and you could probably make arguments that all of the things in your list affect a single person, multiple people, and/or society as a whole? But, I do think some of the things on your list are a bit more insular/personal than others.
Specifically, though, it's the "directly affect others" category that I think deserves a bit more scrutiny. If someone using something "wrong" directly harms others in their vicinity, should they be given the freedom to use that thing wrong? Or, should their use of said thing be challenged and discouraged? ((There's nuance to what "challenging something" means, too! From pure societal pressure, to actual restrictions/regulations. But, I don't necessarily mean the latter in all cases -- the discussion in this thread includes challenges to doorbell cameras, but I'm sure very few people are calling for their actual regulation/restriction.))
Again, very much not cut and dry here, but I don't think arguments about personal freedoms can be applied in such a blanket sort of way, when the extent to which each [thing] affects other people varies to such a large degree.
I completely agree that personal freedoms aren't a blanket treatment - my intention in throwing out a half dozen different issues isn't to say they should all be treated identically, but to point out how even logically consistent people can have drastically different views on extremely similar issues.
The place I keep coming back to is the idea that responsibility should fall all the way to some random individual reporting videos on his doorbell camera.
There were police who swore an oath to serve and protect. There were Ring employees and programmers who are considering their legal exposure.
IF some random crotchety old person sees someone on the street, IF that person happens to fit a racial stereotype, IF they report them, IF they are later questioned by police, IF they were doing nothing wrong, IF the police harass or harm them...
That's an awful lot of "IF" between the crotchety old man and the actual harm being done.
If the moral hand-wringing of Wired authors can attribute blame through all those layers of chance and say that some 2% increase in racial profiling is so bad that Wired must now withdraw their endorsement of Ring as a company, then let me turn their logic around for consideration:
What's the percentage improvement in security to a community after Ring doorbells are installed? If Wired withdraws their endorsement and someone's home is broken into, does that mean these authors now have thousands in property loss to answer to?
Attributing blame through the tenuous thread of a hypothetical scenario is only ever used as a criticism, and conspicuously only ever used in one direction. For this reason I dismiss it as valid and take this entire Wired article as something more indicative of the loss of Ring kickbacks than anything meaningful.
And let’s not try and make door cameras a weapon for racist people be an argument.
Racist people had windows long before cameras to spy on their neighbours. And before that they had redlining to make sure undesirables didn’t even live in their postal code.
A camera on your house is a normal and convenient thing, that will only get more normal and convenient as time goes on. You can’t put the camera back in the box, so can we please stop acting like it’s exclusively a tool by the racists to destroy minorities?
This feels like it... Misrepresents the arguments that folks are making in this thread?
It's not so much "overt racists have a new tool to oppress minorities" but instead "having a door camera makes you more aware of what's happening outside your door, which may play into fears about perceived threats, which in turn may play into deep-seated, internalized prejudice and suspicion that white folks have towards minorities (even if they aren't capital R Racist), which may lead to more false positives."
In a vacuum, it's tiny effect? But, it's one that multiplies across thousands of homeowners with thousands of cameras sold. If having access to a rewatchable, shareable 24/7 video feed increases the likelihood that someone calls the cops on a "suspicious person" by like... 1%... that number may seem small, but it compounds!
In fact, I just read of a similar statistical situation in an Admiral Cloudberg post talking about random drug testing for pilots:
Replace "random drug testing" with "calling the cops on a POC walking through a neighbourhood" and "drug-using pilot" with "person who plans to rob your home" and the point becomes clearer.
That's what makes these issues so much more complicated. I mean even drugs and abortions affect the friends and family of folks around them.
Truthfully that wasn't really the point I wanted to get across, hehe. :p
In terms of the effects on others, I think there's a world of difference between someone acting via their own bodily autonomy, vs. someone taking actions that directly harm others (calling the cops on someone in a situation they otherwise wouldn't due to the presence of a door camera, and like... actually shooting someone with a gun!)
So, that's why I sort of took issue with the list that was provided... It felt like it was a very cookie-cutter argument being applied to vastly different scenarios.
Right after we adopted our first cat, she ran away. We were heartbroken. We live in an urban area so the search for her felt fruitless. A kind old neighbor who had cameras set up around his place to catch package thieves and who loved cats found our cat on his property, sent us the clip, and let us know. He gave us permission to setup shop and catch the cat again on his property. We brought her back and she bonded very closely with us after the experience.
Like the phone, a camera is a tool. It depends on how you use it. I'm eternally grateful for the neighbor and his cameras because now my cat is at home with me.
How does this actually address what Tigress is saying? There’s obviously no way to stop people from communicating altogether, but we can and should stop the most egregious abuses like this that are already happening. Calling it a “small negative favor” also sounds needlessly dismissive. If Ring cameras have resulted in a measurable uptick in these racially motivated false reports, we can and should look into it.
"There’s obviously no way to stop [racist] people from communicating altogether"
And if there was? Do you think you have the moral authority to do that?
This is what I object to here: when we identify negative effects of some large system, the first assumption is that something MUST be done. The second assumption is that the system must have authority over individuals to do it.
I strongly disagree in both cases.
(Disclaimer: I am white)
IMO we can’t solve massive societal problems like racism by playing whack-a-mole with anything that can be tied to it. However, when looking at specific issues, we do ourselves a disservice by saying that it’s pointless to do anything about it since we wouldn’t be fixing the broader problem. In this case, there’s a pretty widespread issue of people becoming paranoid from nebulous reports of “suspicious individuals” from apps like Nextdoor and reporting innocent people to the police for passing in front of their house. That’s not something that should be taken lightly, even though the majority of users aren’t doing that.
While individualist absolutism is a valid position, I think we need to accept some level of regulation in our daily lives for society to function. “My freedom ends where your freedom begins” is a commonly used phrase that relates to this. I don’t think people, particularly those who get racially profiled in this case, should have their freedom not to be surveilled dismissed so others can have as much security as possible. There’s a middle ground that’s difficult to find here, but I do think a solution is necessary with how these devices can contribute to harm.
I'm as close to an individual absolutist as I can get while still being reasonable, but I think we can absolutely agree that there are societal structures (social media) that are absolutely harming us as a whole and we need to come up with a large-scale solution for what to do about it.
My issue with these cameras is the same issue with many large scale systems: the solution is always a system-down solution that inevitably takes agency away from individuals and places it in the hands of some unilateral decision making group. It could be the government, a regulatory body, the police, or Ring Incorporated in this case - but it's never the individual who owns the Ring doorbell, owns the house, and has a vested interest in keeping himself safe.
Are we really such dumb cattle that we cannot make decisions on our own and must be herded into the "correct" mindset by authorities above us?
Even hyperbolic slippery slopes aside, I would even doubt that there's harm being done at the individual level. So you saw a person walking on the street, and sent that information to the police. If they're arrested and if they're harmed, there are several layers of "if" in that scenario and several layers of other people who have the explicit responsibility to handle situations ethically. I think it's a very far stretch to say the blame here should fall past the police and on the hands of an overzealous camera watcher.
I think anyone who would look at the past 20 years of technology fueled innovation from social media, to uber, to ring, to amazon, the answer is a big fat resounding yes.
Humans are literally not equipped to fight entities using big data crunching to manipulate our lizard brains. The problem is doubly compounded because these are massive entities with instantaneous, global reach. We can't band together as a town and run the snake-oil salesman or huckster out of town (or even tar and feather, etc.) because they're not even in arms reach to us.
The only tool available to us to fight such large and powerful entities is the authorities above us.
I desperately hope you're wrong, because a world like that should be absolutely chilling to any human being living in it.
Facebook, before they completely made it impossible to research the things they're doing on their platform, was literally manipulating their users moods by changing aspects of their Facebook feed.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/06/28/facebook-manipulated-689003-users-emotions-for-science/
They can literally manipulate voter turnout in elections, and they have plenty of information at their fingertips with no oversight to swing close elections.
https://slate.com/technology/2012/09/facebook-voting-study-online-friends-influence-voter-turnout-in-elections.html
People had best start believing that we do need the authorities to do something about three entities, because we're already living in a world where they can and do sometimes manipulate the people to get desired outcomes.
If you need a recent example, see Twitter deprioritizing trust/engagement on the order of *tweet replies and instead letting the people who will pay Musk money for a blue check be up top. It has radically changed the discourse of the platform, and generally not in a good way.
Well, there's an assumption here: the police will misuse the footage.
Without implying that the police are always or even usually trustworthy, I expect it would just go into their archive and they'd only use it as part of some other investigation. Hopefully.
The larger issue here is that, if you think having police is a good thing at all, do you want it to be easier or harder for them to do their jobs? Having more video footage would sometimes make it a little easier. Maybe too easy, if you think there should be more safeguards. Maybe a more productive way to think about it would be what kind of safeguards there should be against the police misusing footage, rather than saying they shouldn't have it at all?
And here's the crux: some people are under the impression that police are irredeemably evil and we should get rid of them. So, anything that makes their jobs harder is fine. If you're not of the opinion and think that sometimes it's good for there to be police and they do have important jobs to do, then things that assist the police aren't inherently bad, they're just too easy to misuse.
There’s no reason to assume they’ll misuse it, but you also can’t assume they’ll use it in a way that benefits you. While I’m not aware of any situations where doorcam footage has been used against the people with the camera, I don’t know any law or restriction that would stop police from doing that once you consent to it. Giving them preemptive access to footage seems analogous to responding to questioning directly by police instead of having a lawyer present to make sure it’s to your benefit to provide them with that information.
Yes, there probably should be more oversight. Maybe judicial review of some sort?
Just turning footage over to the police, no questions asked, does seem rather trusting. But people will do it as long as it doesn't affect anyone they know.
As an analogy, it seems more like people talking to the police about someone else.
They're streamlining mass reporting of false positives, and I think they're all at fault to some extent, but having it be a button click to submit evidence to the police is a problem from multiple directions
This is what NextDoor often leads to in my neighborhood. Some old person will report a "suspicious" darker skinned person walking around in the evening - and then their neighbor comes in to say that was them and they were just walking their dog...
Camera systems are basically security theater anyways. Thieves are probably going to be obscuring their faces anyways, and they all know to get in and out quickly enough that it won’t matter if the police are called on them anyways.
Statistically most homes don’t require security systems, but if you need to secure your house you would be much better served by actually making your house secure. Get some secure locks (hardware store specials aren’t likely to stop the most amateur lock pickers) and reinforce the windows. That kind of thing. Sure it’s going to be more expensive, but it’s a better use of your money than subscription services that basically only provide you an illusory sense of security.
I don't think cameras are going to stop any thieves, but as long as they don't steal my video storage (somewhat hidden) I'm basically just hoping to have proof that there was theft involved for insurance claim purposes. Not sure how useful that idea is, but I hope to never find out.
I had an old truck parked on my pad for hauling cargo/dump runs, it had the battery removed, the doors unlocked, glove box open demonstrating nothing in the vehicle. It stopped maybe 1 in 4 prowlers from checking locks, they would look directly at the camera and turn around. So it's like a Master brand lock, useless at stopping all but the most casual theives.
But yea it's more about the insurance proof, screening visitors and seeing when packages arrive... And it generates some sweet timelapse when there are weather events.
My neighbour has used my footage for an insurance claim when his vehicle was stolen from across the street.
I've got a doorbell camera... but the security/deterrent aspect isn't why. I like being able to easily screen people at the door like screening calls, between door to door salesmen and Mormon missionaries. It also makes it easier to see exactly when packages are delivered, and getting a box inside immediately does more to discourage theft than trying to video the people taking them.
I've also got a security system in the house, although it's also not primarily a security thing, since I haven't bothered to sensor most of the points of entry (a window break sensor covering half a floor is one thing, but it was going to be expensive to put an open sensor on every window). Mine has centrally monitored smoke and CO detectors. I get back most of the monthly cost of the system in homeowner's insurance discounts, and it makes me feel better about pets being home alone with the fire monitoring.
Screening and proving malfeasance on delivery companies are good reasons to get one of these. It’s just the security angle they advertise these with that I have problems with.
Great comparison. I wonder why the general consensus on dashcams seems so highly esteemed while there are much more mixed feelings about doorbell cams and other home security cameras.
Camera on your car? Great, super useful, can corroborate your story if something happens. Camera on your doorbell? Well why are you acting like a vigilante anyways... just install better locks... cameras won't prevent anything... etc.
Because for some reason lots of people do use their home cameras to play vigilante and form public mobs who are "concerned" about an individual "wandering" their neighborhood. The large minority if not majority of these online interactions contain some vaguely or overtly racist stuff.
This is kindergarden logic. Because Billy can't figure out how to use glitter without rubbing it in his eyes, now the whole class can't use it?
We're adults. Racists can go pound sand, but that's not a justification for criticizing very solid tools to keep our communities safe.
One needs to be aware of what kinds of things society does with tools. I would argue that is simplistic reasoning to deploy technology and pretend like the consequences to society are ignorable just because we're "adults".
We have discussions on this very site about the effects of social media on individuals (highly negative to teenage girls for instance in one discussion), of the coming of AI models on all sorts of things such as artists, and of things like rideshare apps funded by VC ignoring all sorts of local and labor regulations.
Mass deployment of cameras used in significant amounts to fear monger about specific kinds of people is something that can't just be handwaved away.
Sure, but the ease of use enables other behaviors that normally wouldn't happen because the effort bar to clear was much higher.
To be fair I have a home camera, but the whole neighborhood thing has probably caused as many problems as it has solved. Bonus points, those negatives are overly distributed towards specific groups in society, per usual.
People do advocate against social networks, or at least the way social network algorithms work and the kinds of online behavior that encourages. Once sites started changing their algorithms to increase engagement (ad revenue), everything took a sharp dive in the good effects/bad effects ratio.
It's perfectly fair to criticize doorbell systems for having a "forward to police" button and integration into social with little to no moderation resulting is highly disparate negative impacts to certain groups.
It's not just the racist individuals, it's the systems that are setup to allow racists to easily promulgate their message, fear monger, and form little harassment cliques with no effective oversight or deterrence.
I'm not disagreeing with most of what you're saying, just the rather handwavey "we're adults" attitude that was put up front.
It's incumbent on the companies, social media sites, etc. to have robust systems in place before they infect humanity with their junk sowing massive negative externalities. Ring is partially at fault for giving racists an easy to use platform to spread hate. Facebook is definitely at fault for their algorithm causing harm.
I don't agree with the offloading of responsibility just because it's someone else pulling the metaphorical trigger. I doubt you would agree with the same "we're adults" argument if a company littered live-ammunition-loaded howitzers across our cities and towns. The amount of cumulative damage enabled by these companies is not small and can't be handwaved away.
At the risk of getting too far into the weeds of metaphor: I believe it's perfectly fine to hate the player and the game.
I will now use a greatly condensed argument: The companies are controlled by the very same people who continually lobby and bribe the government officials to ensure that such regulations are never passed in addition to fighting other regulations to reduce the effect said lobbying and bribery from those people.
Expecting the system to fix companies highly negative actions when those same companies purposefully break the system is just wishing and hoping for change that will never come.
Direct and accurately assessed accountability for negative externalities needs to be foisted upon the companies (and their owners/boards) as well.
More of the issue for me is the authoritarian streak that comes out when people start talking about how to limit bad behavior.
In one of my earlier comments about the cell phone comparison I had asked if AT&T has the same imperative to identify and regulate people's speech on their phone lines - and someone began their reply with "There’s obviously no way to stop [racist] people from communicating altogether" to say that if they could, they would.
Absolutely bone chilling.
I’m the person you’re talking about and I have no idea how you got that impression from what I said. I definitely didn’t want to suggest that we as a society should consent to phone networks monitoring everything we say. Obviously you don’t know me so you have no reason to assume I’m not some kind of closet surveillance fanatic (though it’s kind of hurtful), but I’m not one by any means. Sorry for the confusion, and I hope my latest reply clarified what I meant.
Yeah I probably owe you an apology, I'm falling back into the argumentative shouting matches that I specifically wanted to leave behind me at reddit.
That said, I still feel like there's nothing genuine in the kind of moral hand-wringing that Wired is using here and no matter how I try to interpret their article I can't see it as being written in good faith. I've read it 2-3 times now going back through these comments and my honest opinion is "Huh, I guess Ring recently stopped giving Wired kickbacks for good press."
Very good point. Hadn't considered that. Was thinking more about the individual impact to the homeowner/car-owner rather than the societal impact at large, but you're absolutely right.
That's a good point too. Was recently looking at doorbell and security cams that didn't require a subscription and the list is disappointingly low unless you're willing to spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars to install an actual security system. None (or nearly none) of the consumer brands that are available in retail stores to the everyday not-super-tech-savvy consumer offer much without a monthly plan. Nowhere near as user-friendly as a basic dashcam that you buy once, stick a micro-sd card in, and then record to your heart's content.
The one that I've seen that you can use without the cloud service is Blink - you can put a USB stick in the hub and it'll record to that instead of the central one. You can only access the video when you're on the same network as the hub in that case. That said, the Blink cameras are kind of limited compared to some of the others as far as resolution and clip length.
If this happens.
I don't see an incentive for it to be. I wonder what it would actually take, though.
As usual, an article on this subject is filled with overwrought concern.
How on earth are these two comparable? Nextdoor posts are nothing but noise. With Ring one is sharing tangible evidence of something.
Also, why on earth should police have to obtain a warrant to access recordings I'm glad to share with them?
There’s a pretty big difference between the police being able to pull whatever they want from your camera at any time and you actively choosing to give specific evidence to the police.
The latter has never required a warrant.
Of course not. But "The Police have an open door into all my recordings" is just as extreme a position as "The Police must get a warrant in order to get access to private recordings."
I'm not arguing against the warrant process.
But the article takes issue with Ring making it easy for homeowners who want to share footage with the police to do so, which is absurd.
If there was a specific incident I was concerned about, being able to initiate easily sharing it with the authorities is a good thing. If the Police came to me with a request for anything that might have happened in a specific window of time then more likely than not I'm going to be happy to help.
The alternative to police always needing a warrant doesn't have to be always having full access: they can simply ask on a case-by-case basis.
That's not at all what was described here, though. What was described was a "Share this video to local PD" button. One video, voluntarily shared. Not "Share my entire life history", not "Automatically opt in to sending the PD all my stuff". And even that tiny thing was putting the article's author into histrionics.
They described exactly why I would love to have one. People stealing parcels are usually morons that don't cover their faces and I would love to be easily able to share a video of them using built-in functionality.
They also capture racoon mischief that's helpful in the fight against the little bandits, let one know who's coming up the driveway so you can quickly decide to throw some pants on, and come in battery powered models that are helpful to move around when you want to keep a temporary eye on your tomatoes, attic, or bird feeder to see how exactly the squirrels are up to no good.
The combination of Ring's wireless ecosystem and their value-priced legacy cloud subscription makes them tough to beat. Any article that wants to convince me to switch from Ring needs to sell me on another system that is better.
I have a Blink camera in my backyard for monitoring my dog when she's outside playing. One of my favorite videos was a raccoon family deciding that the camera would be better off in their possession and trying to take it off the wall - a bunch of clips of their faces looking at it and their little hands pawing all over trying to detach it.
Uploaded a video of the masked bandit in question...
I was thinking about getting a Ring camera this morning at 2 am as between 15 and 20 cars pulled into the Air BnB adjacent to my house in our usually quiet residential neighborhood for a party. They spent a good hour or two moving their cars all around, into and out of the driveway, parking in ours and the neighbors yard, and drinking and talking in the road, at the edge of our yard, in and out of the Air BnB, etc... This caused a lot noise and lights flashing in and out of my house which of course caused my dog to go nuts barking. I was too afraid to go confront them (not worth the risk to my health and safety) so I called the non-emg police line. As I waited for the police to show (they didn't as far as I know), I thought it might be worthwhile to have all of this documented, especially if things got out of control and there was any property damage done to our house or yard. I wonder how useful it would be in the event that any of that happened?
Ring cameras serve to turn neighbourhoods into panopticons that feed into the paranoia of the racist WASP suburbanite class. They're tools of surveillance and an extension of the police-state. If you're a minority, these neighbourhood reporting apps will be frequently used against you for frivolous and downright schizophrenic reasons and even endanger your safety. I don't use one, and I will never use one, because the principle disgusts me.
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We humans are instinctive creatures who mostly act in self interest. Most people want privacy for themselves, yet want to spy and record others!
But since they know it instinctively that the other guy would love to have their privacy too and it'll be slightly unethical to record them with a ring camera, the resulting guilt would prevent them from actually voicing that opinion and recommended it!
But rest assured, the fact that they're not only available but also affordable, as you say, means only one thing - they're quietly buying it and using it to record you 😉