More Police Are Using Your Cameras for Video Evidence
More Police Are Using Your Cameras for Video Evidence
Police “nerve centers” are blurring the line between public and private surveillance.
Private security footage is nothing new to criminal investigations, but two factors are rapidly changing the landscape: huge growth in the number of devices with cameras, and the fact that footage usually lands in a cloud server, rather than on a tape.
When a third party maintains the footage on the cloud, it gives police the ability to seek the images directly from the storage company, rather than from the resident or business owner who controls the recording device. In 2022, the Ring security company, owned by Amazon, admitted that it had provided audio and video from customer doorbells to police without user consent at least 11 times. The company cited “exigent circumstances.”
I love technology but I don’t ever see myself installing a camera in my house that connects to the internet like this. It’s literally big brother…
I give my cam access to the internet when I travel. Outside of that it's LAN only.
Luckily most NAS's have software that can capture it and you can back it up to the cloud encrypted.
Someone set off a bomb close to my house. Police asked me questions about it (time, what it sounded like, etc). They noticed I had security cameras and inquired what I had. The dumbfounded look when I said Ubiquiti (they've never heard of it) and that all footage was recorded locally on a hard drive. Like they didn't understand what that meant - obviously they were looking for an answer such as "google" or "amazon" so they could just circumvent me.
I have their routers and stuff! It's way overkill but I was having such major issues with the all in one routers one usually gets.
Obligatory reminder that just getting into a car (or walking past one) is considered by pretty much every car manufacturer to be acceptance of their privacy policy:
It's supported by the famous first principle of Descartes: I think, therefore I accept the terms of service
Should there be an expectation of privacy in public? Definitely wrong for footage to be able to wirelessly, without the owners consent, leave a car.
Said it in the other thread but: that isn’t legal.
You're right but it reminds me of that cop that killed that fumigator guy in Arizona. Total cold blood murder and that was illegal as well. I used to always tell me dad "no they can't do that" and he would look at me serious as fuck and say "They are the government they can do whatever the fuck they want" its the same idea with rich companies they steal wages and kill workers through incompetence or lax safety practices all the time and sure its illegal but that doesnt matter when you can do it and face no repurcusions anyway.
I had one of those Vivent door to door folks walk up to me one day, garage open. I was polite enough but explained I had no interest in storing a video feed of my house on their servers as I'd like to do illegal things if I want. They assured me it was stored with "aes256 encryption" - which they expect most laymen to be wowed by - but what good is encryption if they own the keys and crumble to government requests?
A lesson for people that think proprietary internet connected cameras are a good idea. You can literally make open source cameras with a SBC like raspberry pi as the controller. And then using a VPN, you can connect to it from the outside.
You can also use proprietary cameras but put them on a separate network segment or otherwise restrict their access so they can't get out of your local network.
Not ideal to use proprietary cameras at all, but if you are doing then that's the way to do it.
Sadly the average person buying such proprietary cameras does not possess the technical know how for that. Also the average person buying those ultimately also does not care about privacy, unfortunately. They definitely should, but they usually don't.
Compare this to the setup for a Google camera: Plug it in, scan a QR code from the Home app, and that's it. I understand there are security implications, but I'm not particular concerned about privacy in my backyard.
You should always assume any camera to be hostile, unless you have full and complete control over all related software and connections.
Basically, the people who supplied the device will always have more control over it than you do. And big tech just looooves to abuse that and/or cave in to pressure from governments and police agencies.
Sadly there’s little option for some stuff. Robot vacuums have become super useful, even if they are arguably the biggest security risk that exists. And that will never change, no matter how capable the products get
There are open source solutions for robot vaccums provided you get a compatible robot
Unfortunately it's not something the average person's going to undertake.
But they still won't catch the delivery packages thieves.
The perks of being an electronic security installer and wiring up your own house with a real system with a dozen PoE cameras and a local NVR under your control only...😋
Stay away from the Harry Homeowner cloud-connected lick-and-stick BestBuy bullshit.
Does anyone have a rec for something you can buy and selfhost beyond a pi setup?
Any closed circuit security systems, ones that aren't cloud based will come with an NVR (like a DVR) that hosts your recordings locally. Most are wired but some support wireless as well. Generally more expensive but in my opinion worth it.
My mom bought a simple setup for I think 3 or 400 dollars at Costco.
INAL but law enforcement can still request or subpoena your video if they suspect a crime has been witnessed by your cameras AFAIK. But at least you'll know about it.
Thanks! Very helpful to start looking!
For "commercial but free" There is AxxonOne (was AxxonNext) But free only allows 4 cameras. However this is better than all the FOSS choices in terms of what it can do (and so it should, more than 4 cameras or face detection, fire etc costs money).
For FOSS there is:
- Frigate
- Shinobi
- Zoneminder
- iSpy
- Viseron
- Moonfire NVR
- motionEyeOS
Lots of options but you will need some baremetal or a decently powered server and hypervisor to run in a VM.
Set up two 4 cameras