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Is it time to ring the alarm on internet door cameras?

⁨336⁩ ⁨likes⁩

Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨jandoenermann@feddit.org⁩ to ⁨technology@lemmy.world⁩

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/feb/09/is-it-time-to-ring-the-alarm-on-internet-door-cameras?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

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Comments

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  • Telorand@reddthat.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    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.

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    • TomSelleck@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      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.

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      • f4f4f4f4f4f4f4f4@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

        Yet, somehow Google Glass was reason to beat up its nosy users.

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      • lemming741@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

        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.

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  • nick@midwest.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    I use unifi cameras that save to a local nvr which is inaccessible off my network.

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    • hydrashok@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      Yep. This is the way. G4 Pro is pretty good, too.

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    • noxypaws@pawb.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      Are there good local backup options? I have some Ubiquiti gear but their camera system seems too locked down

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      • JordanZ@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

        They released their NAS product(which is just a NAS, no apps). You can archive selected footage to it or some cloud providers. You can also back up a NAS to another NAS either at the same location or remote.

        Image

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      • ikidd@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

        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.

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      • nick@midwest.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

        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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    • MintyAnt@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      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

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      • hydrashok@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

        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.

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  • x00z@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    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.

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    • MrAlternateTape@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      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.

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      • x00z@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

        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.

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    • Pika@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      is it a “can” or a “must”? I don’t mind if it’s optional but yea it defo shouldn’t bd required

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      • x00z@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

        It’s optional yes. But they manipulate you with the default scare tactics into registering.

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    • Melvin_Ferd@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      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.

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      • Quadhammer@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

        But if they can access it they can gain control of it and delete it after they rob your car lol

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  • Septimaeus@infosec.pub ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    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

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    • Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      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. But of course, that profit isn’t enough, and they all double dip into selling their customers’ privacy.

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      • Septimaeus@infosec.pub ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

        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.

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      • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

        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.

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    • Quadhammer@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      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

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      • RaoulDook@lemmy.world ⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

        It’s not that hard, and you only need cameras and the raspberry pi.

        Pretty much any wifi camera that supports standards like RTSP or ONVIF can be made to work with open source camera stuff on the Pi. Also you can store the videos on the RPi’s storage (USB or SD)

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  • shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    If I don’t control it, I won’t install it.

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  • GhostlyPixel@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    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.

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    • michael_palmer@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      I should really switch away but haven’t had the money

      Why just not ditch the doorbell camera altogether?

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      • jdeath@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

        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.

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      • GhostlyPixel@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

        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.

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    • Monument@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      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.

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  • ThePantser@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    I use a POE doorbell can that is blocked from the Internet.

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    • Rozz@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      I use a hardwired button that makes a bell sound inside my house.

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      • DScratch@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

        I use a specialised hammer-and-anvil system that produces an audible notification whenever someone use it.

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      • merde@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

        Germany Augsburg Dom-St-Maria Door Handle

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      • Olap@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

        I’ve got a bell, spring, and pull handle. It’s genuinely amazing

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  • simplejack@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    If you are going to use a cloud camera system, look into the company and make sure that they have proper E2EE.

    And 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.

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    • Slax@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      If you’re okay with self hosted take a look at scrypted for HomeKit

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      • 4am@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

        Or HomeAssistant with Frigate

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      • Clent@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

        Anything that requires a subscription is a no-go. Especially when it’s running on my hardware.

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  • TrueStoryBob@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    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.

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    • catloaf@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      How close are the front doors? I live in a pretty dense city and I’ve never heard them go off like that.

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      • TrueStoryBob@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

        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.

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    • agent_nycto@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      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.

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      • TrueStoryBob@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

        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.

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    • lemmyman@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      Good guy landlord, remember to tip well

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      • blandfordforever@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

        Gr8 b8

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  • BowtiesAreCool@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    My favorite part is how cops will break cover or obscure doorbell cams all the time.

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  • Freefall@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    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.

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  • chemicalwonka@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    TIL that Ring has a social media platform where neighbours can communicate one each other like a civilian surveillance dystopia.

    en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neighbors_(app)

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    • mctoasterson@reddthat.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      90% of it is idiots reporting deer/coyote sightings or falsely reporting fireworks as “gunshots?!?!” at 1:00am. If have literally been woken up by stupid Ring notifications more than by the fireworks themselves.

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  • jordanlund@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    My neighbor’s camera caught someone doing a hit and run on my car, eternally grateful for that!

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    • TheFogan@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      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

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      • jordanlund@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

        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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    • Ulrich@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      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.

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  • RangerJosey@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    It was time a decade ago. And people were. But few people listened.

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  • Bosht@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    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.

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    • AA5B@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      Also for laziness. I’m not answering the door every time someone comes around to sell me solar panels or driveway seal coating, but there are people who I do want to answer for

      Plus I suppose there’s “is my dog barking for a reason, or just another dog walking by?”

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    • foenkyfjutschah@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      it’s a terrible world.

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  • RubberElectrons@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    It’s been time, dumbass

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  • Aggravationstation@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    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.

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    • ECB@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      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

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    • monotremata@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

      imgs.xkcd.com/comics/digital_data.png

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      • Aggravationstation@feddit.uk ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

        There truly is an XKCD for everything

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  • bitjunkie@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago

    What a stupid fucking headline

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