They’re affordable and ubiquitous, but homeowners shouldn’t be able to act as vigilantes.
But it also allows Ring owners to send videos they’ve captured with their Ring video doorbell cameras and outdoor security cameras to law enforcement. (…) If a crime has been committed, law enforcement should obtain a warrant to access civilian video footage.
This is utter nonsense… Anyone is free to voluntarily provide their own pictures and video to the police. A warrant is so that police can come and take it from you against your will.
Exactly. There are legitimate concerns about whether law enforcement should be able to subpoena “third party” records (including video recordings) with a process less than a full blown warrant supported by probable cause, as determined by a neutral judge, or whether government should be able to compel the retention of records for a later after-the-fact search. That’s a discussion worth having.
But voluntarily recording and retaining video means that the person who controls those records can choose to do what they want with it. Imagine if some homeowner had these cameras, and had their own home burglarized, and tried to turn over the video evidence of the crime, but the courts were like “whoa wait did you get a warrant for that?” It doesn’t really change anything to have it be cloud hosted, or easily shared with a button, because that “share” functionality works for non-police recipients, too. Doorbell camera footage gets shared all the time on social media, sometimes because it’s funny or interesting or otherwise worth viewing.
What’s the alternative? Some China based brand? I mean seriously they did not name ANY alternatives. I’m an American and would rather be spied on by the home team.
Edit: a user corrected me that there’s a link at the bottom for recommended devices. Thank you.
As an American, surely you should be much more concerned about what the US government can do with your information than what the Chinese government can do with your information.
After Snowden’s efforts at showing what America was capable of nearly 10 years ago, I’m not at all interested in letting that country have my data
Ubiquiti, an American company.
Appreciate the response. Checking their privacy settings on the app, Ubiquity seems to be the most privacy conscious.
Ubiquity stuff is entirely on-premises, their (optional) cloud service is strictly for auth and remote access. Highly recommended, not just for the privacy conscious. Their ecosystem is also relatively affordable (compared to Aruba and Ruckus) and a joy to setup and maintain. No subscriptions or recurring fees.
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There is a link in the last paragraph to a whole article about which video doorbells they recommend if you want that.
Appreciate the response and am checking it out.
I have a Reolink doorbell. PoE or wired power, SD card local storage, onvif and rtsp support. There’s a cloud (no subscription) but you can disable it if you want. I run it fully local with Home Assistant and Frigate NVR. Works like a charm.
I think this comment was supposed to be a reply to you. Just a heads up in case you haven’t seen it since they seem to have accidentally made a top level comment instead of a direct reply to yours. Whoops!
https://kbin.social/m/technology@beehaw.org/t/230158/-/comment/991728
If you’re in the Apple ecosystem, a HomeKit camera would get you nearly all the way. Everything processed locally, no need to turn on iCloud if you don’t want. Your phone would be your peephole.
