He's referencing that we have early 20th and late 19th century case law about third parties holding documents, etc, that is used to make everything sitting at a cloud service subject to subpoena without a warrant (email, etc, too).
There's all kinds of precedent that was based on sane tradeoffs for the 1800's that doesn't make sense anymore with the more complicated ways we transact and interact and with the ability of technology to commit mass surveillance.
He's wishing that things like your e-mail, videos in the cloud, etc, required a warrant for the police to search, instead of just a subpoena to a third party.
The article falsely implies that a warrant is required, but in practice police can just subpoena the information.
The problem has only been super significant for 15-20 years, which is a blink of an eye in this sense; not even enough time for the populace to really understand and appreciate the issue.
It is, of course, still broken.
One of the more ridiculous examples I have come across, unpasteurized milk. In the US, as well as Canada and other western countries I believe, it is illegal to sell raw milk for human consumption. Meaning that if I have a neighbor with a milk cow, I can't buy a gallon of milk from them to drink or cook with. Stores can obviously do what they want, and requiring FDA certification for example would effectively block raw milk from stores. But why can't I choose to ignore FDA guidelines meant for industrial milk production and just buy a damn gallon of milk from a local farm?
Attitudes have changed a lot.There is an episode of Yes Minister where the minister does not want to push a shared govt database law because of privacy concerns. Another where the idea of ID cards is called political suicide. Absolutely true at the time, but the former is happening, and the latter is still not with us the UK but its no longer unacceptable to push the idea.
Kids are growing up expecting to be tracked (a lot of parents use "apps" to track what their kids do) so it will become even more normalised. People are used to being tracked as the tradeoff for map apps. There is a lot of surveillance anyway (CCTV and face recognition, number plate recognition, paying by card) so its already normal
The problem is that the market success of products from Ring and similar companies have obliterated the market for DIY systems, so the few RTSP doorbells that exist aren't very good.
Eventually, this has to change for the better. Right now, users don't understand/don't care...
How? Things don't magically get better "eventually" just because we wish for them to. Things change if rich and powerful people push for them or if millions of little people revolt about it in order to impact the elected leaders, otherwise everything stays the same or gets worse.
Currently the rich and powerful are not on your side on this, and the little people care more about putting food on the table and making rent rather than who gets to access their cloud storage.
>Right now, users don't understand/don't care...
Nor will they anytime soon if what happened after Snowden (nothing) is anything to go by.
I know that's not helpful, and I'm sorry. My process is to research options when the time comes that I am actively trying to solve a problem and just buy the one that fits best. For surveillance cameras, for me, this means "dumb" ones that I feed into a control unit that manages multiple cameras and applies any smarts I may want.
And in this case, judicial precedent follows evolving (both popular and legal) ideas of what the words in the constitution mean.
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures..."
"Persons, houses, papers, and effects" has been interpreted in terms of what things a person had, excluding things that they had given someone else to hold. It was a pretty reasonable interpretation and compromise, until it was the governing case law that covered the cloud.
Legislation can limit what Federal agents are allowed to do totally irrespectively of whether those things would separately violate the constitution.
We have dairy cows these days. Raw milk straight from the cow takes an extremely long time to actually spoil in a dangerous sense. If left out it will sour and eventually separate, while it isn't usually what a person would want to eat it isn't dangerous. It absolutely doesn't go bad in a fridge, we've had jars in the fridge for weeks with absolutely no problem.
3 day old, unrefrigerated pasteurized milk is absolutely dangerous, don't drink it. Pasteurization of milk became commonplace as a solution for shipping milk long distances and storing it in warehouses for days or weeks. If pasteurized and managed properly the flavor won't changed. Raw milk will effectively ferment at room temp as the lactic acid bacteria begins to consume lactose. The byproducts aren't dangerous and are effectively the curds and whey that Little Miss Muffet told us all about, that's just not what you want to find in a jug of milk at the store.
After reading the product description on Amazon, it looks like it is the hardware that you need to buy in order to use Amazon's doorbell and monitoring service.
See: In order to view "your" video history, you must subscribe to the Amazon Protect plan.
Someone goes into politics because they want the power to run things.
Bureaucrats and agencies of the government want the power to run things for similar reasons, and it makes their jobs easier. Will the police ever say they do not want more powers to investigate crimes, or catch criminals? Will social services either? There are all kinds of things that can be better enforced with more information.
On top of all that they are part of the same cultural change that puts a lower value on individual liberties. It means politicians are a lot less inclined to refuse. There has also been a political drift to following expert advice with less scepticism, and the experts on these issues are the police, intelligence agencies, etc.
One cause close to my heart is that in the UK a number of local authorities keep hassling home educators (trying to bully them into sending their kids to school) even though their kids tend to do better than school going kids (their are studies showing better outcomes) because it seems inconceivable to them that people can do a better job than they do. I know people affected by this. A lot of them are utterly opposed to the idea that parents can make this decision at all.
You'd be surprised how easy it is to get time one one-on-one with a congressperson/senator and their entire legislative team. My strategy is simple, I just call and ask if I can stop by and say hi for 20 minutes or so. If you get 10 minutes, you are doing as well as most lobbyists. If you do get a meeting be nice, even if you disagree with the Senator. Your not going to debate them into changing their vote. But... if you share engaging and emotional stories, especially about people back in the home district, you might just get what you need. Also, be ready for this question: "What's your ask?" That is where you can be really direct: "I'd love it if we could get ___ passed, or It would be really good for the home district if ____ didn't pass." Have a quick story answer for why: "so people like ___ don't have to close ____ on ___ st in home city." Schedule around meals - a lot of time the legislator will go to lunch (and pay for yours) just to avoid another hour with legislators and negotiators.
So you admit they are not actually liberals and when they say they are they are incorrect.
And in any case: the law is a blunt instrument. It's (usually) better as a slowly changing representation of conventions and social consensus instead of something that we make sweeping changes in (whether legislatively or judicially).
Those server side components provide a lot of value and that’s why people choose to buy those products, as opposed to similar products that are just dumb wifi cameras.