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
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.
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 is 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.
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.
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.
Same in Belgium, and Tesla is even having issues with it’s “sentinel” feature being ruled illegal 🙏
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.Same in Italy, minus the dashcam part
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.
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?
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.
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 their 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.
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…
I went to my sister’s house yesterday, she lived in a gated community and to visit i have to let them take a picture of my face and then scan the cam for access. i thought that’s extremely obnoxious. This is far worst.
Yeah, no. I’d be inviting my sister to visit me instead.
Yeah this has to be super inconvenient for the residents. I imagine many delivery services, DoorDash, instacart, will refuse to do this bullshit. Forcing the resident to meet them at the gate, or just not receive service at all. I would be pressuring my HOA to end this policy.
Not in US, but all those non-perishable deliveries will leave their stuff at the main gate guardhouse. Not sure about food though.
You think people doing door dash deliveries actually care about that? The average person that also uses an iPhone probably has been ok with face unlock for years.
In my workplace they rolled out the face unlock for Windows laptops some time ago. I see many many people making use of that. And I don’t care if in some cases the claim is being made (right or wrong whatever) that images don’t leave the device. The average person won’t think there is a difference to it.
I’ve had uber drivers cancel on me because they don’t want to enter a gate code. Because it’s inconvenient, could be error prone, and slows them down (I would assume.) So it might not always be privacy concerns but also inconvenience.
Don’t conflate opt-in local facial recognition with mandatory cloud facial recognition, especially when it’s being sold to cops. It’s a bad take and weakens your credibility.
Jokes on you if you ever thought I am credible.
they might not even have a choice.
You know details on issues with Apple’s implementation of it, Face ID?
you’re assuming she is allowed to leave
Good point. Disturbingly so.
I’d be saying I was an only child.
that’d be a nope from me
Everyone is so obsessed with surveillance. My uncle has a Ring and even if I told him about this, he wouldn’t care; he wants to know who walks past his house. Now the cops will know whether he lied to them because they can subpoena Ring for their records. People are literally giving away their rights for the convenience of not answering the fucking door
The depressing part is that even if you don’t own or use Ring, you will be in their database because those cameras are everywhere. The populace has completely given up all their privacy and have done it willingly.
Not only willingly, they’ve fucking paid for it.
The depressing part is local self hosted alternatives exist like Ubiquiti unifi, all their cameras store locally to a hard drive on your property with all local processing.
Set anything with a ring camera on it on fire. It is the enemy.
Edward Snowden may say (in reality he says to desolder and add manual switches to mics and cameras):
FTFY
Set anything with a camera and mic on it on fire. It is the enemy.
It’s much harder to disperse and admit to using the camera in my phone than that you illicitly accessed.
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 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.
Not in Illinois it won’t. The states attorney will have Amazon for lunch.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biometric_Information_Privacy_Act
In EU this is also illegal
Like I needed more reasons to never leave the fucking house.
Wear your balaclava, get your spray paints
Welcome to the basement
“Mr. xxce2AAb, are you home?”
“Uh… No!”
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!
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.
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.
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.
I’m very happy with my ubiquiti doorbell. It records to a local NVR on my network. No cloud for this guy!
I’ve been telling anyone that will listen about my ubiquiti setup. Storing the video data locally is the only scenario that I’m comfortable with. I can still remotely log into my network and check camera footage, but no one else has access to it.
You have my attention… Does it have a good / comparable app that you can use to view recordings?
The iOS app is decent, and the web interface is excellent imo. Web has better search. I think the AI computer vision stuff performs slightly worse than Ring. E.g. package detection is pretty good but not great. However, pretty impressive considering everything is running locally. I think they have some dedicated hardware now for running local computer vision stuff that likely performs better.
We need an anti-camera movement in this country
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.
Add it to the list of shit we desperately need yesterday
I need camera in my bedroom to give back for all the porn I watched.
Bring back masking.
Need to normalise IR and UV LED strobe flares, blind those CCDs.
UV??? That’ll just damage our eyes, please don’t encourage that. IR, 100%
“In other news, the Trump administration has expanded the powers of the FCC. No more will antifa terrorists be allowed to assault private businesses with radiation.”
THEY WANT TO TRANS YOUR DOORBELL
There has to be a way to make one that is powerful enough to blind the cameras but not damage eyes.
IR
