With violent criminals running the government, yeah, I kinda do. You can’t trust police body cams to work when they come knocking. Also useful for package thieves and people that deface your anti-nazi sign.
95 percent of the folks I’ve known literally get them as a ‘oh my Amazon package is here’ device, not for security. Granted security is a bonus, but if you actually wanted security you’d get perimeter cams, not a doorbell with a very limited FoV.
I agree with the sentiment of this article and warranted suspicion of connected cameras but its weird that the writer just jumps to food delivery apps part way through and then straight back to doorbell cameras.
Also, what’s this part supposed to mean?
…images that have been forwarded so many times they have the weary sheen of photocopies.
The number of times a digital image is forwarded won’t affect it’s appearance.
It depends how you forward images. I assume they are referring to how many/most services (like whatsapp/discord/telegram etc) don’t just send the original file, but do some compression to save data. Do this a bunch of times and you end up with a photo that starts to show noticeable artifacts/pixellation.
That’s my take at least
It was time a decade ago. And people were. But few people listened.
It’s been time, dumbass
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.
How sweet would it be if cops did their job though. Like if they actually used the images to arrest the guy breaking into people’s cars at night.
But if they can access it they can gain control of it and delete it after they rob your car lol
is it a “can” or a “must”? I don’t mind if it’s optional but yea it defo shouldn’t be required
It’s optional yes. But they manipulate you with the default scare tactics into registering.
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.
But also these cameras also solve a problem much faster and just seems like common sense whereas trying to fix some abstract core Zeitgeist that may or may not solve the issue isnt much to sink our teeth into. It’s like someone asking you to fix their toilet and you’re like “well what is a toilet and maybe the issue is you don’t earn enough money to pay a plumber” like great, you’re right in one regard, but the toilet is broken and you could fix it
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
Yeah I was thinking of doing my own cctv instead of paying someone to have access to my ring cameras. Okay now I need a raspberry pi, new cameras, a server, compatible software and some gumption. Havent got around to it
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.
mqtt
Doesn’t mqtt need a broker? (A server?) For me, putting mosquito in a docker or a pi isn’t a problem but that’s not plug and play for a regular person. Because once you introduce a server like that, it needs security patches and becomes a point of failure out of control of the iot vendor. I know I wouldn’t want to take the tech support call when the iot device doesn’t work and have to walk them through debugging a pi.
Yes, I only used mqtt because it’s a common low-level protocol in smart appliances that’s comparatively simple. A more accessible example might have been Smart TVs being half the price of dumb ones (if you can even find them now) since the principle is the same.
I agree that support is one of the main things cloud legitimately makes easier. Support personnel have more reliable case data, more robust central control, and so forth.
And I think you’ll agree many smart home folks already have/had hubs and bridges (servers) floating around that obfuscate most of that complexity without the need for always-on WAN access. Remote maintenance (patches, firmware updates, etc) don’t necessarily preclude a plug and play experience.
Whether this accounts for the cost and complexity differential consumers experience can be debated, but my point was simpler. Cloud-based products are artificially subsidized in at least two ways. The first is that they’re a loss leader facilitating platform lock-in, but the second is that rich usage data from intimate user contexts is quite valuable to the endless parade of marketing voyeurs.
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.
If I don’t control it, I won’t install it.
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.
Recycle or upcycle. Trash is one of the dumbest uses. I understand the total logic it’s just not the best case scenario.
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.
not really in that situation
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.
Convenience? Ok. But safety? Are door viewers unsafe?
Actually - yes, some models are really unsafe. There are “reverse peephole viewers” out there that allow people to, well, view into your apartement. And some models are just screwed together, so a burglar can unscrew them from the outside and then try to push down your handle via the hole.
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.
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.
Yep. This is the way. G4 Pro is pretty good, too.
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.
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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My favorite part is how cops will break cover or obscure doorbell cams all the time.
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.
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.
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.
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.
