Ask HN: Security Cameras Inside Houses?

19 points by chiefofgxbxl 4 years ago | 18 comments

I recently received a promotional offer in the mail for a home security system. It boasts both a camera doorbell, but also cameras for the sole purpose of monitoring rooms inside your house. The ad shows an example of monitoring your living room on your phone [0].

In the past month I've been to a few homes of family and friends, and was disturbed to see some of them have cameras monitoring the kitchen, dining room, living room, etc. An extended family member even noticed one of the cameras in the corner, pointed to it, and exclaimed jovially, "Don't run around naked!", to which other people laughed.

I have so many questions...

  - Are people really buying into this?
  - How pervasive is this?
  - How does the general public express outrage over privacy incidents (e.g. Facebook revelations) but not make the connection to installing 24/7 monitoring in their own home opening them up to that risk?
  - Do people not consider the ability for hackers or even state-agents to maliciously use this?
  - What sort of chilling effects will our future hold where governments can shut down any sign of disagreement, without you even having to step out into a public forum?
  - Is there a good way for me to discuss my concerns with family members without overstepping my bounds (*don't come in my house and tell me how to live*)
  - Is privacy dead beyond resuscitation?
  - Is the future really leaving me behind, where people like myself must become digital hermits against their own will, because "if you don't want to be on camera, don't come into my house"

[0] https://i.postimg.cc/QxxHp9yC/security-system.jpg

hindsightbias 4 years ago |

The average HN’er would probably not have a problem with:

- video of kids birth

- video of incubator

- video/audio of crib

- video of play area

- video of all rooms when baby sitter present

- video of lawn, pool

- video of day care facility

- video of public playgrounds, pools

- monitoring of smartphone, tablet, computer usage

- gps tracking by phone

many will probably not have issues with elementary or other school coverage. Halls, gyms, etc.

And yet, bizarrely, the average HN’er think their and other people’s kids will grow up to be super privacy advocates/voters like they imagine themselves to be. It’s like the 18 wheeler of cognitive dissonance in the tech community.

We’ve met panopticon, and it’s mommy and daddy.

heavyset_go 4 years ago |

> - What sort of chilling effects will our future hold where governments can shut down any sign of disagreement, without you even having to step out into a public forum?

After being harassed for daring to jog around my neighborhood at night after some busybody saw me on their Ring camera and called the cops, I'm much more cautious about when and how I walk. I tend to not jog or walk at night anymore, and I'm cautious about not walking near cars in a way that might look like I am looking to steal from them.

I do not like thinking or acting this way, but I also don't like having the cops called on me for existing outside in the neighborhood I live in. I don't like knowing that even if I feel like I'm alone, there's probably someone watching me through a camera system that assumes everyone seen by it is nefarious or a criminal. I can't imagine what that'll be like with the systems pointing to the inside of private homes, now.

codegeek 4 years ago | |

Unfortunately, a few bad apples ruin it for the good ones. In our neighborhood recently, there has been a series of car break ins/thefts especially at night and quite a few perps have been caught due to cameras like ring etc on a neighbor's home. In fact, Ring has this whole thing where you can see people reporting suspect behavior all the time. Sometimes, they are false positives for sure and it is unfortunate but honestly, as a homeowner myself, I would rather have those cameras than not in today's world. A price we have to pay for safety.

Comevius 4 years ago |

It would not bother me in someone else's house, I would just treat it as public space as always, but I would not ever have cameras installed in mine. The possibility of being watched would affect me negatively. I'm not paranoid, just need privacy to thrive.

People don't care about privacy incidents because they don't affect their lives in an obvious way. It's not a priority for them.

giantg2 4 years ago | |

Agreed. I'll add that many people have bigger problems in life than to prioritize this.

LinuxBender 4 years ago |

The following are my own opinions and feelings on this matter.

Security cameras on the property, good. Pushing said content to a cloud without end-to-end encryption, not so good. To each their own I guess.

How does the general public express outrage over privacy

For some it may be a trade-off of convenience and accepting the risk. For some it may be a matter of following the masses. People seem to fear being different. There are probably a smaller sub-group of people that secretly want to expose themselves without fear of being seen doing it on purpose. There may also be some that like watching their kids get undressed or letting friends and strangers watch. I would bet that is a thing given how often cameras are publicly listed and how trivial it would be to secure this data.

What sort of chilling effects will our future hold where governments can shut down any sign of disagreement

The agencies you mention may chime in here but we are steadily marching towards what used to be considered a dystopian world. I suspect that younger generations are conditioned into seeing it as progress rather than technology that is configured to be abused by design. I suppose we can study these people and publish scientific papers on it for posterity sake. There will be a documentary on this some day. Maybe you and I can be like Statler and Waldorf providing grumpy commentary in the background.

Is privacy dead beyond resuscitation

I think that is up to you assuming you can move some place where other surveillance systems are not able to watch inside your home. What you install in your home is for now at least up to you. Sadly it is harder to take batteries out of the newer cell phones but metal boxes are cheap. Finding dumb TV's that don't greyhat their way into internet access is also a challenge.

...where people like myself must become digital hermits

I choose to have fun with it and my friends know better than to invite me over or have me on zoom as a result. Alexa has ordered a lot of toilet paper and added many fun and disturbing items to shopping lists of anyone Amazon can listen to.

muzani 4 years ago |

My late dad has had one for over 20 years. It was there to monitor the babysitter, but it's still monitoring our house. We had a break in once and the camera didn't do a damn thing. The footage was valid reason to fire a couple of babysitters, though. We've caught family members stealing on camera, and we've caught monkeys stealing too. The footage is useful for fairly differentiating the two.

Maybe because I grew up with it in a high crime area, I don't see it as a problem. The living room is not a private place, it's a semi-public space like the backyard. Private places were things like bedrooms and bathrooms. The maid and babysitter works in the living room and would act like someone would in an office with people in it.

Privacy has a price. Since we live in a fairly high crime area (where crimes were committed by people who lived there), it was an acceptable cost to lose privacy of a large area of our home. I'm not okay with FB selling my personal info, because I don't get enough in exchange. But I pay the privacy toll to WhatsApp because they're part of the communications infrastructure.

cm2012 4 years ago | |

Facebook doesn't sell your info.

muzani 4 years ago | | |

Ads. There's no difference to me if FB gave my email to a sleazy marketer than if they show me sleazy ads because I'm a single male in a certain age group. At least I can block the email.

mikewarot 4 years ago |

Given how quickly I got used to having Amazon listen to every word uttered in the house, I extrapolate that this is something that people will eventually do and get used to.

Privacy is dead, unless we win the war for general purpose computing, then it might be possible to resurrect it. You certainly can't have privacy with devices you don't actually own in your home.

donkarma 4 years ago | |

privacy will never die for as long as you care enough

mthoms 4 years ago |

A bit of a tangent but: my wife has a seizure disorder. Having the indoor cameras (which I can view remotely), coupled with an Apple-watch seizure alert app have been a godsend for us.

Absent that, I don't think I'd be comfortable with indoor cameras for the reasons you mention.

abakker 4 years ago |

I have spoken to some of my relatives about this. They asked whether I thought it was a good idea, and I asked them how many times their passwords have been compromised from other sites on the internet. Most responded with >1. I then asked them about what value those credentials represented. Most thought the answer was very little. I asked what value criminals could derive from knowing if you were home, and knowing what you did in your house.

In then end, that line of questioning shuts down most desire to have this stuff.

OTOH, I know that in non-residence settings - think construction sites, etc, these can be good to have. I think you have to approach it from a risk/rewards standpoint as well as expectations vs guarantees of privacy.

vgeek 4 years ago |

You're not alone. I can't even take the dog on a 1 mile walk around the neighborhood without being on at least 5 Ring cameras. I don't get the draw. I'm sure through gait analysis, data marketplaces and triangulation, Amazon (and by proxy whoever they gift this data too) now knows that a pasty internet nerd is walking his dog every day at 5pm. Toss in Clearview type tools and eventually you won't be able to have any anonymity, even in sparsely traveled public areas.

kleer001 4 years ago |

many people already have audio surveillance tools in their house and helping to raise their children, video is only a small step away from that

shmoe 4 years ago | |

I will never regret my baby monitor choice thanks to this. But this the only indoor camera exception for me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWGFMFeg5zc

watermelon0 4 years ago | | |

People shouldn't forget that old school (non-WLAN) baby monitors usually don't have any encryption, and can be easily intercepted.

WiFi baby monitors at least have WPA2 encryption over the stream, but firmware (and any cloud software if you are using such features) can be quite sketchy, if you are not using reputable brands (and even that is not a guarantee.)

jonwest 4 years ago |

I have local-only RTSP cameras in the house that record when we’re not in the house, set up via nodered and room assistant for presence detection (of us, to know when to stop recording) to BlueIris.

Those feeds are encrypted and uploaded to Backblaze on 15m intervals and cleared every week unless marked.

I wouldn’t feel comfortable having externally accessible cameras on the interior of the house.