After a spy camera designed to look like a towel hook was purchased on Amazon and illegally used for months to capture photos of a minor in her private bathroom, Amazon was sued.
The plaintiff—a former Brazilian foreign exchange student then living in West Virginia—argued that Amazon had inspected the camera three times and its safety team had failed to prevent allegedly severe, foreseeable harms still affecting her today.
Amazon hoped the court would dismiss the suit, arguing that the platform wasn’t responsible for the alleged criminal conduct harming the minor. But after nearly eight months deliberating, a judge recently largely denied the tech giant’s motion to dismiss.
Amazon’s biggest problem persuading the judge was seemingly the product descriptions that the platform approved. An amended complaint included a photo from Amazon’s product listing that showed bathroom towels hanging on hooks that disguised the hidden camera. Text on that product image promoted the spycams, boasting that they “won’t attract attention” because each hook appears to be “a very ordinary hook.”
In what reality is there any need for a door-hook camera except to spy on someone who has not given consent???
Jayzuz. That was some poor mind gymnastics right there.
Watching the babysitter if you think she’s abusing your kids.
Monitoring your office if you’re a politician afraid of poisoning.
Making an OnlyFans of Grandma pooping.
Lots of legitimate uses if you’re creative enough.
Watching the babysitter if you think she’s abusing your kids. In the bathroom? Cause that’s where towel hooks are.
Monitoring your office if you’re a politician afraid of poisoning. See above
My jokes aside, I absolutely have towel hooks in non bathrooms. It’s turns out there also capable of holding jackets and other things, despite the name.
And also, the bathroom seems like a prime location for a child abuser to corner a victim.
Huh. I’m actually swinging very slightly back toward Amazon’s side on this. Only very slightly, though. This is a tricky case.
If you think the baby sitter is abusing your kid, your a moron, why even hire him/her.
And now you are also recording the babysitter going to the bathroom.
Yeah but what am I going to do with all my coat hooks? Hang towels on them!?
Are you some kind of anarchist?
Couldn’t that as easily be a coat hanger or something to hang your keys or bag on? A hook is a hook.
And why could that hallway not be covered by a regular security cam instead?
Valid point
but once you advertise it as a surreptitious towel hook and show pictures of it being used as a surreptitious towel hook, it becomes not just any kind of hook. one of the use cases proposed by the manufacturer has become manufacturing illegal pornography by setting up a hidden cam in the bathroom.
they advertised it as a towel hook AND if they used it to hang hats or whatever it could block the camera. I think its fair to say this is a very creepy camera.
And what about grandma’s onlyfans? Checkmate
Deterrence is always preferable. Clear monitoring may stop crimes in addition to capturing wanton disregard. A disguised bathroom cam is clearly designed to capture illegal footage. It isn’t a deterrent to crime, it’s a tool to commit it. Spy cams in general are sleazy and disgusting.
Even a nanny cam, despite the clearly just intentions, allow a crime to happen more so than clear security cameras and can be used for less lawful things due to their design.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-08-15/irvine-man-hidden-camera-wife-drano-allegations
Deterrence stops people from doing bad things in front of the camera. Useful if you have physical choke points that funnel people to the camera itself of course. But if you put up an obvious nanny cam in one room, all you guarantee is that the abuse happens in another.
You had me in the first half, not gonna lie.
What? Grandma consented! It’s her kink.
maybe for when the police illegally raid, eat your lemon pound cake, steal your money and fuck up your visible cameras?
just because YOU can’t think of any use other than creepy doesn’t mean the rest of us are so afflicted.
For anyone not in the know, Afroman, famous for the songs Crazy Rap (Colt 45) and Because I got High had his house raided by police. He got most of the raid on film and made the video into a music video.
None of the police actually ate Afroman’s lemon pound cake, just one stared longingly at it for an awkwardly long amount of time, lol. Let’s not muddy the waters by accusing those police of something they didn’t do, and focus on the blatantly provable (lack of real probable cause, intentionally sabotaging his cameras) and the alleged but highly plausible (“miscounting” some of his cash into their own pockets).
He could’ve used literally any other example, but of course he chose the creepy one. Could’ve stood on the stance that businesses would need them for shoplifting ffs.
Except any place where it would make sense to place one within a business would be illegal. You are not allowed to place cameras hidden or not in places where one could have an expectation of privacy.
Not only that, anywhere that a business is allowed to use cameras, they would want to have big, obvious cameras to try to prevent shoplifting.
I feel like this quote was intended to be sarcastic, but idk, Poe’s law after all.
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For what little it’s worth… consent is not needed if there’s no expectation of privacy… if your visiting somebody else’s house… Bathrooms- yes, bedrooms (where you’re sleeping,) yes…
But a hidden camera in, say, the hallway outside, is perfectly legal. Now if the person is a resident (or, like Airbnb,) they have much higher expectations of privacy.
Also… I would suggest that cameras inside residences generally serve no real purpose at all- and are almost universally employed by creeps. (Exception being apartment entryways… if peephole cameras on the apartment door are not allowed.)
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the camera’s position isn’t itself illegal… and they don’t have to ask for consent for it to be recording. at least, not in the US.
now, that doesn’t mean they’re not breaking other laws- and that’s really going to come down on jurisdiction. ultimately, it’s likely going to come down to what happens with those recordings; and if there’s laws specifically against taking such images/recordings in the first place; and if your state considers that act breaking normal expectations of privacy.
definitely not saying it’s right- its wrong and creepy- but private property owners have never had to inform people that there were cameras recording… all those “CCTV” warning signs weren’t about consent. It was a foolishly misguided system of deterring shoplifting… a hyper-passive-aggressive “WE’RE WATCHING YOU!!!” that actually informed the would-be thieves… they’re not actually… watching…
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Hypothetically….
… yeah I got nothing.
Maybe if it was designed to look like a book or something, you could argue it has legitimate uses for home surveillance. But towel hooks are almost exclusively found in bathrooms.
Now, maybe I’m making assumptions here, but I don’t think most people keep valuables in their bathrooms, so that leaves exactly one use case this could have, and it’s not home protection.
As a counterpoint, I have clothes hooks in my front foyer. So that’s one place that it would make a lot of sense to use one of these.
I still don’t see why I’d want to hide a camera in something that’s explicitly designed to have clothing draped over it, though. Seems like there are better things in my foyer to disguise a camera in.
precisely. there’s no legitimate/legal use case for this.
It’s for when someone breaks into your bathroom.
A regular security cam would be fine. Most spy cams aren’t going to alert anything. They just record.
The fucked up part is there’s a whole industry for this