Schneier on Security

Clive Robinson • February 20, 2026 10:41 AM

@ Bruce, ALL,

The thing that still makes me shake my head is that it was well known that Amazon Ring units were spying even those inside peoples houses were in “E.T. Phone Home” mode.

We also knew that Amazon were not just making video and audio available to “guard labour” in states and federally but they were doing “special deals” for Police Officers to “encourage” the take up of Ring devices by ordinary US householders…

Apparently since the “lost dog advert” during the Super bowl, many people have “woken up” and are now demanding and getting full refunds from Amazon.

However there is no news as to if Amazon have deleted stored video and audio data, or if they have sold it on in bulk to Palantir or similar first.

For too many there is now the sense of dread about going out because they feel their every move is being watched and listened on by their neighbours “home security” and they have no right to privacy on the street or other place “over looked” by Ring devices including their own homes.

The fact is courts determine what is and is not permissible not just in US States but in the entire US Federation. And it appears it’s nolonger the cut and dried,

“You have no privacy in public”

As for Flock they were not well known outside of “Number plate reading at car parks” and the like until very recently, but one or two scandals has changed that.

The fact is these “Home and Street” security devices are seen as of great importance to certain states like Texas, who use them across the entire US to track down women seeking “reproductive health care”.

These are States where “rape” is inflicted on the victim by the state due to people that are, lets be honest not exactly near the center line of the mental health distribution curve…

To someone from Europe their attitudes are frankly quite shocking, tyrannical, draconian, and very much unhinged and extremely backward. Even more so to those who understand exactly how “birth control” actually works.

Hopefully the up coming mid-terms will get significantly effected by what has been revealed about Amazon, Flock, and similar surveillance organisations, that causes pushes for change for better privacy legislation in the US.

Clive Robinson • February 20, 2026 2:57 PM

@ Who?, ALL,

“Can we read something that is not behind a paywall?”

Sadly the paywalls are going up faster than the fake-news AI sites. And even site that were not paywalled are fetting paywalls because Advertising is not paying the bills any longer.

But neither link @Bruce gave stopped me getting to the full article when I clicked on them.

However when it does happen to me I’ve found that many paywalled sites allow you to see the report/article title, which you can then,

1, cut and past the title,
2, into DuckDuckGo search engine,
3, to get a link to the full article

On the likes of msn.com news aggregation site.

I hope that helps.