amazon – Wetmachine

Does the Amazon “Drone Cam” Violate the FCC’s Anti-Eavesdropping Rule? And If It Does, So What?

Harold September 30, 2020 October 1, 2020Digital Platforms, Privacy, Tales of the Sausage Factory

Folks may have heard about the new Amazon prototype, the Ring Always Home Cam. Scheduled for release in early 2021, the”Drone Cam” will run a pattern of flight around your house to allow you to check on things when you are away. As you might imagine, given a history of Amazon’s Alexa recording things without permission, the announcement generated plenty of pushback among privacy advocates. But what attracted my attention was this addendum at the bottom of the Amazon blog post:

“As with other devices at this stage of development, Ring Always Home Cam has not been authorized as required by the rules of the Federal Communications Commission. Ring Always Home Cam is not, and may not be, offered for sale or lease or sold or leased, until authorization is obtained.”

A number of folks asked me why this device needs FCC authorization. In general, any device that emits radio-frequency radiation as part of its operation requires certification under 47 U.S.C. 302a and Part 15 of the FCC’s rules (47 C.F.R. 15.1, et seq.) In addition, devices that incorporate unlicensed spectrum capability (e.g., like Wi-Fi or Bluetooth) need certification from the FCC to show that they do not exceed the relevant power levels or rules of operation. So mystery easily solved. But this prompted me to ask the following question. “Does the proposed Amazon “Drone Cam” violate the FCC’s rule against using electronic wireless devices to record or listen to conversation without consent?

As I discuss below, this would (to my knowledge) be a novel use of 47 C.F.R. 15.9. It’s hardly a slam dunk, especially with an FCC that thinks it has no business enforcing privacy rules. But we have an actual privacy law on the books, and as the history of the rule shows the FCC intended it to prevent the erosion of personal privacy in the face of rapidly developing technology — just like this. If you are wondering why this hasn’t mattered until now, I will observe that — to the best of my knowledge — this is the only such device that relies exclusively on wireless technology. The rule applies to the use of wireless devices, not to all devices certified under the authority of Section 302a* (which did not exist until 1982).

I unpack this, and how the anti-eavesdropping rule might impact the certification or operation of home drone cams and similar wireless devices, below . . .

*technically, although codified at 47 USC 302a, the actual Section number in the Comms Act is Section 302. Long story not worth getting into here. But I will use 302a for consistency’s sake.

What Makes Elizabeth Warren’s Platform Proposal So Potentially Important.

Harold March 12, 2019 March 12, 2019Censorship Public and Private, Digital Platforms, Tales of the Sausage Factory

As always when I talk politics, I remind folks that this blog is my personal blog, which I had well before I joined my current employer Public Knowledge. I’ve been commenting on Presidential campaigns since well before I joined PK, and I don’t run any of this stuff in front of my employer before I publish it.

Friday March 8, the Presidential campaign of Elizabeth Warren, not to be confused with the actual office of Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), announced Warren’s plan for addressing the tech giants. Warren has been drawing attention to massive concentration in industry generally and tech specifically since well before it was cool, so the fat that she is out of the gate with a major proposal on this early in the 2020 campaign is no surprise. Nor is it a surprise that her proposed plan would end up breaking up, in some significant ways, the largest tech platforms.

What makes Warren’s contribution a potential game changer is that she goes well beyond the standard “break ’em up” rhetoric that has dominated most of the conversation to date. Warrens proposal addresses numerous key weaknesses I have previously pointed out�in relying exclusively on antitrust and is the first significant effort to propose a plan for permanent, sustainable sector specific regulation. As my boss at public knowledge Gene Kimmelman has observed here, (and I’ve spent many 10s of thousands of words explaining) antitrust alone won’t handle the problem of digital platforms and how they impact our lives. For that we need sector specific regulation.

Warren is the first major Presidential candidate to advance a real proposal that goes beyond antitrust. As Warren herself observes, this proposal is just a first step to tackle on of the most serious problems that has emerged in the digital platform space, the control that a handful of giant platforms exercises over digital commerce. But Warren’s proposal is already smart in a number of important ways that have the potential to trigger the debate we need to have if we hope to develop smart regulation that will actually work to promote competition and curb consumer abuses.

I break these out below . . . .

Smashwords, iPad, Doctorow, Zeldman: further bumbling self-publishing adventures

John April 2, 2010 February 24, 2013My Thoughts Exactly

Over on the Self-Publishing Review, my Adventures in Self-Publishing is still front-paged and generating some nice contact, public & private. Go me! But I’m still not rich yet. So anyway(s), as discussed, I’ve signed up with Smashwords to distribute my Acts of the Apostles. It’s been accepted into the iPad store, for which iPad-hater Cory Doctorow would give me a “boo-bad” and iPad hater-hater Jeffrey Zeldman a “way-to-go”, I expect. DOCTOROW-ZELDMAN STEEL CAGE DEATH MATCH! Or not. So long as they both keep saying nice things about my books it’s all good, as the surfers say.

So far, my Smashwords results not all that impressive: 82 downloads and zero sales.

On the other hand, the book is only available on Smashwords so far, not on Amazon or iPad. Maybe best-sellerdom is right around the corner!

Further reflections on Smashwords, iPad, OpenLaszlo, self-publishing, etc, etc, below the fold.

Entering the E-book age, kicking and screaming

John February 10, 2010 February 25, 2013My Thoughts Exactly, Writing

So after a nearly a decade of giving away PDFs of my first two books, I’ve decided to sell them as ebooks in different formats.

The technical hassles in so doing are bigger than they should be, although most of the problems are perhaps more in my head than in the format-conversion technology.

Mainly, I’m trying to convert PDF versions of my book to MS Word .doc format.

Any help in making me un-stupid in this process would be much appreciated.

On Highest Authority from Soviet Russia: Sundman Novels “not shit Dan Brown”

John November 24, 2009 February 25, 2013My Thoughts Exactly, Writing

So, checking my Wetmachine referer logs this morning, I found that this livejournal entry has already sent me 54 visitors. Since the page is what appeared to be (and in fact is) Russian, I turned to Google Translate, which provided this wonderful text:

A good example for the present writer can become a success John Sandmena.

This is a modern writer, he wrote great novels of an action and distributes them for free. About how this is done you can ask from him, look at the website or call in at www.wetmachine.com kickstarter.com.

In place of, say, Lukyanenko, I have started to click links kickstarter.com. Sandmen requested for the next novel 5 000 dollars. Who? Yes to all. “Kick” it just for this purpose and is intended to collect money from the crowds of internet users in all sorts of interesting initiatives.

John had something to show his readers:

novels “Acts of the Apostles” and “Developing Obama”[Ed: ????] is not shit Dan Brown. “If Brown was Sandmenom, according to Jeffrey Zeldman,” he would have realized that this thriller is far from absurd, flat and one-dimensional. “

Credit confidence Sandmenu from the Internet community for the next novel, ”Science works” expressed in the amount of U.S. $ 8 059. Slightly more than requested by the author. And how much money you need to write this novel?

Note — my final Kickstarter tally was not quite as great as the amount pledged — about $900 did not clear when presented to credit cards; plus, Kickstarter.com and clearing house Amazon.com each take cuts (including on that $900, by the way). But still, not half bad. Or as we say in Russian, according to Google Translate, недурно.

Do it yourself publlishing — R.W. Ridley style

John May 22, 2009 February 25, 2013My Thoughts Exactly, Wetware

Last week this fellow R.W. Ridley started following me on twitter after I tweeted about kindlizing The Pains. He’s a writer with a horror series called The Takers aimed at young adults. Turns out that like me, he’s a self-publisher. Like me, he’s won the Self-Published Book Award from Writer’s Digest magazine. Like me, he’s got a blog & is experimenting with kindle and various other ways of getting the word out. Unlike me, he seems to have good portions of his act together. For example his blog is streamed to his author page on Amazon. (How do he do that?) And he has a couple of other neat things, like a youtube video for his books. I have never met the fellow and haven’t read his books & so have no idea of how well he’s doing sales-wise and whether the books are any good. But I was impressed by this little audio book sample. It’s well read and well written and creepy, with nice sound effects. Check it out. And check out his website, there’s some other cool stuff there.

I also note with interest his blog posting about how this year print-on-demand titles outnumbered traditionally published titles. Wow. And then consider, there are lots of self-published books, like mine, that are not POD. (Mine are traditional offset books.) Things sure are changing in the publishing world. And so it goes and so it goes and so it goes, as the man said, but where it’s going, no one knows. . .

Painful Kindlization

John May 19, 2009 February 25, 2013My Thoughts Exactly, Writing

Well, with the help of my esteemed collaborator and amanuensis the bon vivant man-about-town Gary Gray, I’ve put up a kindle book version of The Pains over on the website of ~~the borg~~ Amazon.com. IMHO the kindle version is not as cool as the paper version–among other lossage, the illustrations are all gray scale, not luminous color (or colour, as Sir Cheeseburge Brown, the illustrator, would have it) but on the other hand, at $4 a pop it’s not a bad deal.

If you have a kindle and are feeling flush, why not buy a copy? You’ll help a struggling (and I do mean struggling) genius, and also get a fun book, for less than the price of whatever you can get for $4.01.

Check it out here.

Book Review: Eric Klinenberg's Fighting For Air

Harold January 9, 2007 January 9, 2007General, Tales of the Sausage Factory

Today marks the release of Eric Klinenberg’s Fighting for Air: The Battle To Control America’s Media. Timed for release with the National Conference on Media Reform, I expect attendees can pick up a copy there. Those of you who must, for whatever unfortunate reason, miss the big media ‘do in Memphis can order it from Amazon. (I have no idea if mainstream bookstores will carry it.)

Anyone who wants to understand the media reform movement should buy this book. More importantly, this is the book to give your friends and relatives so that they can understand why the media reform movement matters, and why it will succeed in transforming the media landscape despite the multi-billion dollar forces arrayed against it.

Review below . . . .

There's funny “ha ha” and there's funny “patheticly lame” . . . .

Harold July 24, 2006 February 24, 2013Tales of the Sausage Factory

As anyone who watches television or movies knows, some things are outrageously funny because they hit the comedy bone just right. Other things are unintentionally funny. They come accross as so lame, so sad, so pathetic, that you can’t help but laugh.

Net Neutrality has produced some fine examples of both. No doubt I show my biases by finding many more examples of genuinely funny stuff in the pro-NN camp and many more examples of pathetically lame in the anti-NN camp. But two recent examplars absolutely stand out.

It's beginning to look a lot like Winter Gift Exchange Pretext, and everywhere you go. . .

John December 7, 2005 February 24, 2013General, My Thoughts Exactly

Hello-hoh-hoh my little friends! Well it’s that “Happy Holidays” time of year, when folks of good cheer put up the Happy Holidays tree and light the Happy Holidays menorah and go shopping for gifts appropriate to the the function of acknowledging and cementing social relationships that are primarily based on kinship or affection! I love this time of year! Why, just this past weekend my own dear spouse and offspring unit #3 spent two solid days baking Happy Holidays cookies while I dug out the boxes of pagan light-capturing-and-reflecting baubles from their storage spot under the stairs ! Talk abut a cozy scene! And then yesterday it snowed. “I’m dreaming of a White Winter Gift Exchange Pretext” indeed!

In that spirit, let me do a little “Santa’s helper” bit and be so bold as to point out that nothing will brighten up your favorite technoparanoiac’s Winter Gift Exchange Pretext morning more than gift-wrapped, signed copies (more is better than fewer) of my famous , astounding, ultimate hacker, bioparanoid, did I say geeky novel Acts of the Apostles and the metafictional marvel Cheap Complex Devices? You can purchase them from Amazon — but Amazon’s supply is running low and might not be replenished in time for Flying Spahetti Monster day, (or whatever day you celebrate in your house). Why not be sure and order directly from me? (Besides, I make more money this way).

Of if you want to skip the books for whatever reason and just give me a gift to express your gratitude for my hosting Tales of the Sausage Factory, Inventing the Future, and random stuff from the rest of the wetmachiners, include our own Cowboy Neal, Gary Gray, why, just click on the “Give Me Money” button to the left. Or put a check in the mail! That works too. Please understand that selling my books is the way I pay for hosting this site, so if you dig wetmachine I would certainly appreciate the help — not to mention that the books are actually good.

And I’ll be there for Winter Gift Exchange Pretext, if only in my dreams.