<story><title>Ring Gave Police Stats About Users Who Said No to Law Enforcement Requests</title><url>https://gizmodo.com/ring-gave-police-stats-about-users-who-said-no-to-law-e-1837713840</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>lilyball</author><text>The best way to increase your odds of getting shot is to own a gun. Owning guns is dangerous. Occasionally for some people it will turn out to be a positive, but in general, owning a gun is a negative.</text></item><item><author>jboggan</author><text>A firearm, like a fire extinguisher, is one of those items which is completely pointless to have until it&amp;#x27;s the only thing in the world that matters.&lt;p&gt;In my experience it wasn&amp;#x27;t a horde - just one man - but I needed it all the same.</text></item><item><author>scarface74</author><text>Isn’t that the same scare tactics that gun manufacturers use? They act as if anyone is dumb if they don’t carry around an automatic weapon to protect themselves against the lawless hordes roaming the streets of suburban America.</text></item><item><author>maximente</author><text>of course they did! Ring&amp;#x27;s PR strategy heavily involves law enforcement: they feed LE juicy surveillance in order to get softball quotes that play on people&amp;#x27;s insecurity about how infrequent crime actually is, thus increasing their incentive to buy Ring stuff, increasing Ring&amp;#x27;s market share, surveillance collection potential, and making law enforcement more and more supportive.&lt;p&gt;getting a permanently funded government agency as an advocate for your thing is a great startup play: you&amp;#x27;ll easily crush competitors and roll your way into an enshrined monopoly because &amp;quot;we cannot possibly lose this valuable tool against criminals everywhere&amp;quot;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pacala</author><text>Do you have data? This is an interesting case-study where political expediency may brush over confounding variables:&lt;p&gt;* Own a gun and kill oneself with it. The primary risk factor being depression, not the gun.&lt;p&gt;* Own a gun and be part of a criminal organization. The primary risk factor being rival criminal organizations, not the gun.</text></comment>
<story><title>Ring Gave Police Stats About Users Who Said No to Law Enforcement Requests</title><url>https://gizmodo.com/ring-gave-police-stats-about-users-who-said-no-to-law-e-1837713840</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>lilyball</author><text>The best way to increase your odds of getting shot is to own a gun. Owning guns is dangerous. Occasionally for some people it will turn out to be a positive, but in general, owning a gun is a negative.</text></item><item><author>jboggan</author><text>A firearm, like a fire extinguisher, is one of those items which is completely pointless to have until it&amp;#x27;s the only thing in the world that matters.&lt;p&gt;In my experience it wasn&amp;#x27;t a horde - just one man - but I needed it all the same.</text></item><item><author>scarface74</author><text>Isn’t that the same scare tactics that gun manufacturers use? They act as if anyone is dumb if they don’t carry around an automatic weapon to protect themselves against the lawless hordes roaming the streets of suburban America.</text></item><item><author>maximente</author><text>of course they did! Ring&amp;#x27;s PR strategy heavily involves law enforcement: they feed LE juicy surveillance in order to get softball quotes that play on people&amp;#x27;s insecurity about how infrequent crime actually is, thus increasing their incentive to buy Ring stuff, increasing Ring&amp;#x27;s market share, surveillance collection potential, and making law enforcement more and more supportive.&lt;p&gt;getting a permanently funded government agency as an advocate for your thing is a great startup play: you&amp;#x27;ll easily crush competitors and roll your way into an enshrined monopoly because &amp;quot;we cannot possibly lose this valuable tool against criminals everywhere&amp;quot;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>vturner</author><text>Replace &amp;quot;gun&amp;quot; in your sentence with  say &amp;quot;power tool.&amp;quot; Any powerful piece of technology in careless hands is dangerous. Goodness, even computers are dangerous in the hands of narcissistic hackers! That doesn&amp;#x27;t mean they are not perfectly safe useful tools in the responsible hands.</text></comment>