Jason Bassler | @JasonBassler1
Big Brother just got an upgrade.
Starting December, Amazon’s Ring cameras will scan and recognize faces. Don’t want to be in their database? Too bad — walk past a Ring and your face can be stored, tagged, & analyzed without consent.
One step closer to total surveillance.
[Image: A Ring doorbell camera mounted on a brick wall. A digital overlay shows facial recognition scanning a person's face with grid lines. Text on the right reads “Amazon's Ring Adds Facial Recognition to Home Security” with additional text below.]
6:00 PM | Oct 4, 2025
Source: https://x.com/JasonBassler1/status/1974640686419857516
Maybe we should bring back covid masks as a privacy/fashion statement now?
Sorry, that’s illegal now
876.12 Wearing mask, hood, or other device on public way.—No person or persons over 16 years of age shall, while wearing any mask, hood, or device whereby any portion of the face is so hidden, concealed, or covered as to conceal the identity of the wearer, enter upon, or be or appear upon any lane, walk, alley, street, road, highway, or other public way in this state.
It’s part of the big campaign to disrupt criminal anarchy, treason, and other crimes against public order
Illegal for you, I guess. I can wear a mask outside. Good luck down there in the US, guys.
I always thought of them as a privacy aid.
I was looking to install an electronic lock as a redundancy for the tumbler lock to decrease “have I locked the fucking door” anxiety.
The problem could be solved with Yale lock. I’d just be swapping the disadvantages of a Yale for the disadvantages of an Electric lock.
But cool automations are cool, and who doesn’t love a little over engineering?
Just get a camera you can access any time and face it towards the lock in your home if you want to check if it’s locked or not. All electronic locks are hackable.
I know, which is why it’s not going to be my primary lock.
For someone to bypass my locks, instead of breaking a window, a bunch of things have to come about and they’re all “and” statements.
First, I would have to forget to lock the door, I don’t typically forget, I just get anxiety about it and it can ruin a nice day. With the electric lock I would be content someone can’t just opportunisticly walk in.
And someone would have to want to get in my house enough to put effort into it. They’re breaking a window at this point regardless of the locks. Or they’re testing a neighbour’s door, with only one lock.
And they would have to identify that only the electric lock is active.
And they would have to have the tools/skills to break an electric lock. Along with the skills/tools to break a traditional lock (if they’re both engaged)
If any of those statements is false, I would be no worse off, or better off, with an electric lock. If they want in, they’re coming through a window.
I did think about a Yale as an auxiliary lock, but I’ve run up against it’s advantages (read: locking myself out) more than once. Also, if they can bypass the main lock, they can bypass a Yale, I figure, as it’s a similar skillset.
“All electronic locks can be hacked” is the same statement as “all tumbler locks can be picked”. I’m guessing you still use one though.
Does anyone have an actual source? A twitter link to a screenshot of another twitter post collage is bullshit sourcing.
https://letmegooglethat.com/?q=ring+face+recognition
By doing that you end up with sources like
- https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/10/03/amazon-ring-doorbell-facial-recognition-pricacy/
- https://techcrunch.com/2025/09/30/ring-cameras-can-now-recognize-faces-and-help-to-find-lost-pets/
Please don’t be that lazy in the future, the knowledge is literally at the tips of your fingers, you just need to reach out.
We should make dazzle makeup standard when going outside. It’s the perfect fashion trend for today.
Luckily I live somewhere where they will have to hide it
This isn’t legal where I live. It’s not allowed to record public spaces
Same here. All private cameras that record or process data from a public space need to be announced on entrance of a property. Though now that i think about it, idk how ring got passed that law to begin with in 99% of its use cases…
( if its a front door that can only view private property its fine iirc, and if it has public space like roads its a nono )
Same as non-legal ebikes perhaps? Where I live the police don’t seem to care unless the rider happens to be a drug dealer or otherwise wanted by the police.
I’d take a guess that while a ring doorbell might be illegal and not enforced, it probably means the recorded footage might be not accepted in court if ever needed… Perhaps (I’m not a lawyer or even close to being an expert). Unless a doorbell inspector becomes a thing then it probably just slides.
idk how ring got passed that law to begin with in 99% of its use cases
It doesn’t comply… but the responsibility falls on the person who mounts/uses the hardware, so Amazon does whatever they want.
Right, so i could in theory start sueing. Nice haha
I was gonna say, I’m not sure this would hold up to legal scrutiny, not that that makes it ok in the first place.
Ran into this one Halloween a few years ago. Fuckers had Halloween decorations out, seeming welcoming, and when my kid went up to the door they used their ring camera to make fun of him. Once society falls in the next year or two, that’s where I’m going first.
For legal reasons, he jusut told me in PM that he will go there to get more candy. He will take ALL their candy and EAT it in front of the ring camera.
So what happens to images of your face when they’re stored? Who tf really knows. We do know these oligarchs will literally try to exploit and profit from literally anything and everything they get access to.
Some countries that aren’t treated like a state run corporation are actually letting citizens copyright their own faces for their protection.
Uploaded to a database. Linked to your meta data full of wrong think. Face blown off by a AI built and operated kamakazi drone.
Sucks to be anyone that looks like you, but that is a price the 1% are willing to pay for complete control. Because what’s left after you own all the wealth and assets?
probably to use your face in AI image generation of a person.
Americans are fucking weird, they piss and moan about speed and red light cameras, and claim they are unconstitutional. However, the Ring shit is good to go.
Ring cameras don’t toss a fine at you for walking past them too quickly.
Also, where are people complaining about red light cameras, so I can avoid taking my bike or car anywhere near there? It’s probably a vocal minority, but I’d prefer to know and cover my ass. Just in case.
Nah Ring cameras will just toss police to your door because you look loosely like a person of interest in a case.
Good think police visiting houses doesn’t lead to the death of innocent people on the regular.
So just people can’t perceive longer term costs. Damn the government can decrease this backlash so much by just billing from their liability insurance directly instead of sending the fine to the person.
All of Ontario apparently
they even have speed cameras now, any slightly above the speed limit of a street will imediately give a warning, and fine if it occurs multiple times. you can easily accidentally go over like 5 miles above in an empty street.
Hell if your car is old bitch like mine you may run into the problem of your speedometer being very minutely off. It’s nothing massive just a mile or two off, but my 01 Tacoma doesn’t have cruise control so I can’t be cautious that way so it can be problematic.
so use GPS to double-check your speed?
I’m not pissing about with GPS speed over a 2 MPH difference that is only a problem going down hill in 25 zone. 90 percent of the time it is wholly irrelevant since I drive a 24 year old 4 cylinder truck.
So you drive over the permitted speed limit put in place to protect pedestrians on “an empty street”. And you’re complaining about getting multiple warnings before getting fined for ignoring the safe speed limit? You ‘accidentally’ went over the speed limit multiple times on the same street, but the rules shouldn’t apply to you I guess, your highness.
I don’t know if it is the same brand, but my morning walks are cheered on by an increasing chorus/wave of “hello, you are currently being recorded”. Weird dystopian vibes.
That’s so creepy!
I really don’t care what Amazon does with Ring’s facial recognition. The populace doesnt give a fuck and trust me, I tried to give a damn but its like going up against a tide of stupidity that keeps smashing. No one bats an eye with Costco/WalMart/Target facial recognition software, let alone caring enough how companies like Apple sell your data or manipulate your wants/needs down to the pervasive marketing tactics that are threading the line of psyops.
Idiocracy came a lot sooner than expected and there is no closing that Pandora’s box. I still try to refrain from and mask my digital footprint, but sadly with how how easily our data is passed around like a ladyboy aboard a navy ship, we’re doomed
target is a given, they probably had it for a decade+ to catch shoplifters who hit multiple stores.
We need an anti-camera movement in this country
Or go all-in.
“The courts might not work anymore, but as long as everybody is video taping everyone else, justice will be done.” - Marge Simpson
I don’t really think cameras are all that bad, the bad thing is the centralization. If someone is willing to record local-only for their own security I see nothing wrong with that.
I need camera in my bedroom to give back for all the porn I watched.
Add it to the list of shit we desperately need yesterday
Bring back masking.
We need to normalize spray painting the lenses on these things, as well as painting “big brother” on doorways of those that own them. If you enable fascism, you should expect some minor vandalism.
You could start by sending them a letter that informs them of this occuring and how it impacts the world around them before you skip straight to vandalism. I’m sure a lot of people just never considered the extent of that data that is being shared so much as they figured only they would have access to the footage.
Ugh… Idiots ruin everything. How can people not understand this? Just so fucking ignorant
Sure, but then you’re a suspect.
You can send a letter without a return address. I plan on taking this idea and sending it out to my neighbors who have one. It honestly seems like a fun side activity.
Just go from the side and toss a Molotov at their door.
This feels like it should be illegal in the EU.
Swede here, our laws disallow private security cameras from filming public areas.
The law is so broad that it interfered with dashcams, disallowing them for years.
Same in Italy, minus the dashcam part
Same in Belgium, and Tesla is even having issues with it’s “sentinel” feature being ruled illegal 🙏
I wish we had more protection in the UK. Technically the law allows filming public property as long as it is not the direct focus, eg you film your front door and catch some of the street. But it’s not policed at all. Living on a terraced main road I cant leave my house without being filmed by at least 5 different neighbour’s cameras from a range of different American or Chinese companies. One camera literally just points towards a window of my own home. It’s insane, I feel like they’re all just standing outside watching me.
Technically, I have the right to ask to see the footage they record and ask for adjustments to angles etc, but it’s left to individuals to do. I’d have to have an awkward individual conversation with a bunch of strangers (sad but true) about something I doubt they even consider an issue.
I’d love to see some legislation that would require some publically accessible way to review what’s in camera for doorbell cams, but I guess that would just be seen as helping criminals.
It is more specific in France, but I actually dug around regulations a year ago when the other homeowners in my building wanted to install a security camera. The common parts of a residential building are considered somewhere in between public and private.
The short version is you need majority approval, the tape can only be accessed if something happens, you can’t film apartments doors or windows and as few people as possible may have access. Which put quite a damper on my neighbours who were already celebrating how they would watch who enters and leaves the building at all times.
Bunch of fucking weirdos.That’s really interesting. Is it specifically security cameras?
Can you generally take videos of people in public places? Photos?
Normal cameras and video cameras are fine, the key point is that the camera should not be fixed for continuous monitoring of public spaces.
Dashcams were a grey area, most are fixed mounted to a car with the capability to continously record so at first only cameras you manually place and trigger when about to drive were permitted, then the law was loosened further, and now I believe they are permitted.
Now here we have an interesting fact about the Swedish court system, you can present any evidence regardless of if it was collected through legal or illegal means, and the court will decide on if they will accept it or not.
The illegal part only comes into play in a separate case where you have to stand trial for whatever illegal act you did.
I found this page explaining that it’s not that it’s illegal (necessarily, keep reading), but that there is a GDPR exemption for private property and if you’re filming areas the public access then you need to comply with GDPR. The page says for dashcams you need to comply with GDPR as well.
This page says it’s generally not allowed to record, but if you read the Swedish version it has a flow chart (that I can’t read 😅).
What most interests me is that it keeps referring to the GDPR as the reason why you can’t record public areas (or your neighbours). I’m not in Europe and don’t know much about the GDPR but why is Sweden special with these rules, why aren’t all countries in the European Union limiting the use of security cameras on public areas?
Can’t speak for other countries, but Sweden’s rules sound similar to Germany’s. You are allowed to monitor your own ground, but not public ground without good reason. Which makes cameras like Ring not explicitly forbidden, but you are not allowed to place them in a way which would monitor the street for example.
And regarding your question in the other comment: in Germany you are allowed to take pictures in public spaces, but you are not allowed to publish them when people are the main focus and identifiable. So you take a picture of Neuschwanstein and some random people are small in the foreground? Not important, so you are free to upload it to your internet blog. But if you film a couple having an argument in front of Neuschwanstein, then you are not allowed to upload it, because the focus is on the couple. You would need to anonymize their faces and voices.
And why is it not all countries? Because they didn’t see it as necessary to have same rules everywhere in EU, probably due to different values, making it hard to getting a compromise. Or that it wasn’t seen as important enough to bother establishing the same rule everywhere.
EU rules have to exist in order to regulate a certain thing, and even once they exist they don’t apply automatically, each country has to codify and adapt them in their own legal frameworks. There are time limits to do this.
Before GDPR came, we had PUL, PersonUppgiftsLagen, The Law of Personal Information.
It was stricter than GDPR is now.
Why wasn’t PUL kept? EU-countries can have laws that are stricter than EU laws, they just need to be at least as strict as the corresponding EU law.
It was replaced by GDPR, probably to make it easier to conform to just one set of laws.
Now here we have an interesting fact about the Swedish court system, you can present any evidence regardless of if it was collected through legal or illegal means, and the court will decide on if they will accept it or not.
The illegal part only comes into play in a separate case where you have to stand trial for whatever illegal act you did.
That’s a good way to handle it.
do public seccurity cameras exist though? In the US, we have cameras watching the movement of cars thru the road network via license plate. It’s dystopian
Yes they do exist, the areas are clearly signed when the cameras are used for surveilence, we also have traffic monitoring cameras to get info of how the traffic flows, they are publicly viewable and fairly low resolution so you can see the traffic flow but can’t really identify a specific license plate.
There are cameras that do do that though, they are put up to automatically bill you for the congestion charge.
I believe this is also illegal in some US States. I know of at least a couple that don’t allow biometric data to be stored without concent; I think Facebook even lost a case in one state and had to pay a pretty large sum of money.
It most certainly is. There’s no way they’re implementing this here.
there’s no way
What. You gonna make em? Once the data’s on their servers, they’ll do what they want.
Unless you physically disallow and destroy their hardware that’s invaded your continent.
Will it happen in Europe too?
This cannot happen in EU with the current GDPR, they would need to request and receive consent prior to collecting the face.
Google nest camera has been doing this for years already though?
Is it sold in EU with the face collection?
I’m losing my mind. Ring cameras everywhere, Flock cameras, ID/face verification, everything Google touches, airports, Tesla car cameras, every modern car actually, Meta glasses, Chat Control every year, the OSA, stores using facial recognition (and other tracking), social media billionaire shenanigans, Samsung installing Israeli spyware and putting ads on the fridges, fuck even the Windows 11+Chrome+iPhone combo I see in public. I could keep going. We could all keep going.
It’s too much. Idk anymore. This post broke me a little.
I am Italian and I have much fewer reasons to feel like you, but I still do and, although loving the friends I made there, I know I will never again set foot in the USA, since this comes from a culture of surveillance dating back more than a century.
I am actually offering temporary accomodation to any of my friends who may want to try his luck in the EU.
The UK has a CCTV facial recognition system that’s quite massive, we’ve resisted such programs for the most part (a few cities have them but they’re not linked together).
So it’s not like Europe is free of this.
Here most of our camera systems are for our own use only, not for the government, with this giant exception.
I have no idea how regulated it is right now within the EU, outside of GDPR, but surely there are different laws locally. I don’t know if after Brexit something has been added to such laws in the UK, but I must say that even before that it was obvious that the UK LOVED their cameras.
The UK’s CCTV network has been well known for decades. It is actually nuts.
A massive nationwide network of facial recognition CCTV doesn’t exist in the UK
Willing to host a small family from the US that absolutely loves your country?
In 52 m2 I can offer a matrimonial bed for a couple visiting to get job interviews for some time, not much more.
I’m rapidly approaching the point where I go completely feral and begin smashing every advertisement and camera I see. Smashing large billboard screens and smearing shit on walls. Just to tear this monstrosity to the ground.
I wouldn’t advise you to smash cameras but it would make you my hero
PREACH WTF SERIOUSLY
Same here. My landlord has security cameras (possibly option activated so they turn on only when people are in the hallways) in all corridors. This means I simply cannot leave my own apartment without being caught on camera, and there are so many cameras in my neighborhood that it is insane. Almost all (if not all) are private, but fuck me…
