- cross-posted to:
- technology@zerobytes.monster
- cross-posted to:
- technology@zerobytes.monster
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In the Netherlands the police have a network where people can add their home doorbell spy devices.
It’s horrid and there’s an extreme amount of privacy issues.
So yes, please continue the fight against excessive surveillance.
Just the other day, I read an article about how much cases they are able to solve because of the footage. That is a good thing in my opinion.
The police also will ask for the footage, but you don’t have to give it. It’s entirely up to you if you want to do so.
Even so, I prefer not to be filmed at random by people’s door bells, thank you very much.
Yes, there’s always some sort of justification towards authoritarianism. The real solution is to fix underlying issues instead. For example, if there is a lot of theft, your social safety net has failed. Punishing people because they react to a problem without fixing the problem is how surveillance- and police states come to be.
We should therefor not fall into spy cameras following our every move. We have to fight them now while they are not too normalized yet. Otherwise, even if underlying problems are fixed, they will still be there, and might get used for far more sinister reasons.
Some good things to understand are the Boiling Frog Syndrome and Ratchet Effect.
Everything related to consumer IoT is more expensive and/or difficult to implement as a local-only service.
But that doesn’t make any sense. Why would cloud access make anything cheaper?
Hmmmmm
As someone who self hosts I understand the economies of scale that would allow it to be much cheaper to make products tied to cloud service. For example my servers for my house could easily support my entire extended family and more.
But of course, that profit isn’t enough, and they all double dip into selling their customers’ privacy.
I get what you’re saying, but I’m not talking about SaaS products. I’m talking about physical things on local networks that don’t need cloud access.
For example, a common wall switch may use mqtt internally, but inexplicably railroad all commands through the online Tuya platform. The device requires a beefier ESP chip as a result. It must be capable of ethernet and async workflows for client platform auth, token refresh, and so forth. It may even cease functioning when it can’t reach the servers.
By comparison, the strictly intranetwork equivalent has far simpler hardware that can run for months on a watch battery. And yet, the cloud-based product will basically always be cheaper, in spite of being more complex and requiring cloud infrastructure.
So, how come? Yes economies of scale might apply to the hardware manufacturing, but certainly not to the cloud requirement. No economy scales quite like 0.
And self hosting can also be cheaper, unless you’re a huge consumer of the service. How many people watch enough Netflix to make the sub cheaper than buying the media instead? We cancelled Disney Plus and bought the few series they like and we’ve already saved money.
Economies of scale are absolutely a thing, but I think there’s a sweet spot where self hosting can be cheaper for a lot of people.
I got a Eufy doorbell cam years ago because you can do local storage, but I think in 2022 or 23 they were called out for not being fully encrypted, iirc it was the thumbnails for push notifications that weren’t being properly encrypted.
And that somehow also turned into a realization that Eufy was using those thumbnails to build a facial database because each face had a unique ID in the metadata.
I should really switch away but haven’t had the money, hopefully soon.
I should really switch away but haven’t had the money
Why just not ditch the doorbell camera altogether?
it’s so funny to see people on lemmy who fell for cloud connected cameras. you’d think this group would be the last to fall for it, maybe not. i’ve even received them as gifts (very expensive ones) but i just threw it in the trash because that is better than anyone using it.
i’ve even received them as gifts (very expensive ones) but i just threw it in the trash
Wouldn’t it have been better to tell the gift giver that you’re really happy that they thought if you, but for security/moral reasons you don’t want to install it? At least they could have returned it and got their money back.
They also wouldn’t have noticed that they hadn’t installed it. Honesty in the best policy.
I do my own onvif cameras but I gifted a ring doorbell to my niece for her apartment. She’s non technical, I can’t support her remotely, and that safety was more important than the loss of privacy of a camera looking out onto a public street.
the loss of privacy of a camera looking out onto a public street.
The loss of privacy of a camera that records every face that enters your home and timestamps that data…
Because I still think the safety and convenience for my family and I outweighs the privacy impact, it’s a camera pointed at a public street.
it’s a camera pointed at a public street.
It’s a camera pointed at every person who comes to your house.
Same. I went with them as a “good enough” option when I needed cameras because I have had a good experience with Anker products, but they’ve slowly enshitified to the point that I’d drop them in a heartbeat if the budget was there.
If I don’t control it, I won’t install it.
My favorite part is how cops will break cover or obscure doorbell cams all the time.
Yes. In fact, it’s long past time, and it’s already been done countless times before; nobody seems to be listening. People have been pointing to growing authoritarian States for years, and yet the entire globe seems to be all-in on giving police states another try (or are so privileged they don’t care).
Time to take back your privacy yourself. Hopefully this article will reach some normies who didn’t give it any other thought.
I’ve noticed that anyone who has gotten one newly installed can’t stop looking at it for every small thing. It’s like built-in paranoia. Not to mention that every time I take a walk in my neighborhood I’m now on bunch of different people’s cameras without even knowing it.
I did that for about 6 months, mostly to see how good the detection was in frigate (new 0.15.0 release last week, fyi) when I first got it running but the novelty wore off.
I see people in line at the grocery store watching their family watch TV in their living room. That’s creepy to me.
Yet, somehow Google Glass was reason to beat up its nosy users.
I use unifi cameras that save to a local nvr which is inaccessible off my network.
Been eyeing this. I have older unifi internet equipment, and with a recent wifi radio purchase, I realize one seems to need their cloud key or gateway products now
I think you only need the controller or phone app for setup or config changes. Though it is easier, in my opinion, to just run a controller. You can (at least last time I checked) still self host one if you like. If you’re just doing network config and monitoring, you don’t need much in terms of performance.
Yep. This is the way. G4 Pro is pretty good, too.
Are there good local backup options? I have some Ubiquiti gear but their camera system seems too locked down
Unifi released their NAS product(just a NAS, no apps). You can archive selected footage to it or some cloud providers. You can also back up a Unifi NAS to another Unifi NAS either at the same location or remote.
Edit: Just to clarify Protect allows archiving to any CIFS/SMB share. It’s not automatic though. You have to manually export the clips you want.
Blue Iris will use pretty Much any cameras including Ubiquiti, has a mobile app for viewing and alerts, and has self hosted AI object recognition using code project. Its entirely off the grid if you want it to be. I know it just saves to folders that you could backup, but it will also do ftp, etc out of the box
Hm. I’m not sure.
I know they expose rtsp or rstp or whatever protocol, so maybe you could wire something up to record off the stream.
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If you are going to use a cloud camera system, look into the company and make sure that they have proper E2EE.
An NVR is probably the best bet, but if you want a dumb consumer cloud cam, HomeKit Secure cameras like Eve are a reasonable solution. It’s all encrypted in iCloud, which cops still hate, which is a good sign.
If you’re okay with self hosted take a look at scrypted for HomeKit
Anything that requires a subscription is a no-go. Especially when it’s running on my hardware.
Or HomeAssistant with Frigate
Some of my neighbors have them and I hate walking down the street. I know it’s a public sidewalk, but hearing all the little pings and “some one is at the front door” it creeps me out. I live in a single party consent state so there’s not like anything I can do but now there’s a database with a record of when I go to/come back from work. I don’t like that. Thankfully, when signing the lease, my landlord forbid in the contact the installation on those. He also owns the houses on either side of mine… a little strip of privacy in a sea of surveillance.
I don’t think single party technically would cover that. The neighbors would have to be involved in the interaction to give themselves permission to record it.
From what I’m given to understand of my state’s laws, this would be covered under the same kind of thing as the surveillance cameras at a convenience store or shopping center parking lot and the expectations a person would have for their privacy… it just sucks.
How close are the front doors? I live in a pretty dense city and I’ve never heard them go off like that.
Some are like six feet away and others are set farther back. It’s not all of the ring came 5 that go off. I know there’s a setting where the user can create a like a bounding box so that they don’t go off unless someone is actually at the door… these folks simply haven’t done that, don’t know to do that, or are watching the sidewalk intentionally. At any rate, my street doesn’t have much traffic so I usually just walk in the road.
Good guy landlord, remember to tip well
Gr8 b8
TIL that Ring has a social media platform where neighbors can communicate and share with each other videos/photos that Ring systems collect just like a civilian surveillance dystopia.
90% of it is idiots reporting deer/coyote sightings or falsely reporting fireworks as “gunshots?!?!” at 1:00am. I have literally been woken up by stupid Ring notifications more than by the fireworks themselves.
I use a POE doorbell camera that is blocked from the Internet.
I use a hardwired button that makes a bell sound inside my house.
I’ve got a bell, spring, and pull handle. It’s genuinely amazing
I use a specialised hammer-and-anvil system that produces an audible notification whenever someone use it.
I get stakeholders in the me-visiting community to self-empower their activity through user induced notification media
I tie a toy chicken to a wall that when honked, creates an audible sound.
I have a sign that says “Shout to enter”.
My neighbor’s camera caught someone doing a hit and run on my car, eternally grateful for that!
Except they can do the same thing without opted into a massive surveillance system that tracks your comings and goings and hands it over to the government to be used against you.
Which I agree with… IE I like the system of “your camera catches a hit and run”, you can go knock on their door, ask them to share the footage with you… and you give it to your lawyer, cops or insurance adjusters as you see fit.
What people like me don’t like is the idea that the cops decide to search your permission, use your footage to prosecute a crime you wouldn’t want to. Imagine the same scenerio… except instead of a hit and run… lets say it was say someone delivering pot… or a hispanic person just going home for the day, and ICE was looking for someone to bother, etc…
Point is we’re all happy to be witnesses to crimes that hurt people. but we also know you give cops too much power… and you’ll find horrible things happening
Well, after we put in our cameras, the cops did come knocking to investigate a shooting across the street.
As I explained to the cops: “The cameras trigger on motion, not sound, and they’re only pointed at our property, not across the street. No records.”
Cops left after that.
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@jandoenermann “Always has been”
