Amazon’s Ring to partner with Flock, a network of AI cameras used by ICE, feds, and police
Hot take : almost no one actually needs security cameras in their home.
For the very few who do, visible fake cameras do 95% of the job of real cameras with none of the drawbacks.
EDIT : I’ll go even further and say an official looking sticker / plaque that says something like “this house has cameras” does at least 50% of the work already.
If you can discourage people from breaking in with a fake camera, you live in a country with a lot of idiots,
How would an intruder ever know the difference ? Just set up a defective camera that you can get for a fraction of the price of a working one.
There is absolutely no way to tell whether the camera actually works or not. It does the same “scarecrow” job a real one would, but doesn’t need any of the infrastructure or upkeep.
Raspberry pi + pi camera + camera case connected to wifi is way better anyway and doesn‘t steal your data
But they let me see who is at the door without coming up from the basement.
you could use a periscope
But what if they smack it so it spins around and hits me like in a cartoon? Not sure I can take that risk.
The only drawbacks to having actual security cameras is when you trust your data to a 3rd party known to use your data for evil.
If you record things locally, there’s really zero drawbacks.
Hypothetically the police could come with a warrant and force you to hand over the footage you recorded. It’s a higher barrier than if footage is being uploaded to the cloud, but it can still happen.
And even if the cameras are not uploading their footage to the cloud, it still wouldn’t sit well with me if every other house has a camera pointed at the public street
Where I live it is technically illegal to record the public street with an automated camera, but it’s not really being enforced. So there is Ring cameras everywhere.
Alexa isn’t much better. Pretty sure Spanish can be easily distinguished.
Unfortunately I recently purchased a couple of ring cameras. Are there any alternatives? One with an app and data base with a similar subscription?
This looked like the most solid path, when I researched about 10 months ago.
Open-source Firmware for Ingenic SoC IP Cameras
Reolink is what I use. Fairly similar in utility and options. Prices are ok but they go on sale pretty often. Poe, solar, and battery options for power.
Friendly reminder that Reolink cameras need to be denied internet access / isolated on the network because they constantly reach out to a bunch of Chinese IP addresses.
I read this a while back and am already taking action to replace my Ring cams and doorbell with locally controlled Reolink cameras. I already have them set up and working on my desk, just need to finish the actual install. I am currently trying to figure out why I’m getting <12v on my doorbell circuit.
