Reolink is one for example https://www.reolink.com/gb/ its a HK based (Chinese) company, however they work with local network access only. So they are pretty “safe” to use if you have something like home assistant or something else that can receive their video streams locally. But so far they do not need internet access to function so you can just block their access outside.
Then you write or find some open source code to manage things like motion detection, object recognition, permanent vs temporary recording, etc, and run it off your old laptop or a raspberry pi or something.
Not the kind of problem that can be solved by individual consumer preference choices.
… which was the scope of the original question I was answering.
What you are describing is a massive systemic problem that does not have a simple solution, and arguably, doesn’t have any totally legal solution that would actually work on a long term timeline.
People are too distracted/apathetic, corporations are too powerful, governments are too horny for surveillance.
Not the kind of problem that can be solved by individual consumer preference choices.
I’m not sure you’re right about that. People might choose more private solutions if they were as easy to use. There’s other disadvantages too like proprietary IOT devices accumulating a reputation for spontaneously becoming ewaste. It might not be a total solution but I think the level of accessibility of self managed (or at least end to end encrypted) security cameras matters and is everyone’s problem.
Sorry nope, most people pick convenience and ease of use, and are then later baffled and dumbfounded when that later gets weaponized against them, ie, enshittified.
To prevent a surveillance state panopticon, you need a total solution.
Which you admit you don’t have, doesn’t exist via simply offering a different consumer product.
What it would take is a sustained, well organized and literally unrelenting campaign against the erosion of digital and physical privacy rights.
For at least 25 years, basically nowhere in the world has achieved anything close to that, at all.
You seem to think this is a technical problem, an engineering problem, a business problem.
It is not.
It is political, legal, educational and sociological problem.
Is there a … free market, for privacy rights?
Can I invest in that ETF?
Sure, go ahead, make and sell a convenient, locally contained, home surveillance solution, that is incapable of being externally networked.
What will happen is that within about a decade, you won’t be in business any more as Palantir/Amazon/Flock/Whatever will all have colluded to either acquire or destroy you… maybe even lobby governments to call your systems privacy threats, only used by terrorists and criminals.
Maybe, maybe you get lucky and are allowed to exist on the margins… but that doesn’t stop the panopticon.
Sure, go ahead, make and sell a convenient, locally contained, home surveillance solution, that is incapable of being externally networked.
Realistically it would probably have to be externally networked to have a comparable level of convenience, but that could be done with encrypted open protocols and software.
You seem to think this is a technical problem, an engineering problem, a business problem.
It is not.
It is political, legal, educational and sociological problem.
The former is not irrelevant to the latter. The whole reason encryption itself hasn’t been widely banned by now is its deep integration in a wide range of technology and its relevance to business. Whether people actually use a technology is directly relevant; they can call something criminal and ban it, but that costs political capital proportionally to the required disruption and how many people are affected. You don’t need a “total solution” to increase that cost for them, such a one and done measure is probably impossible anyway. Do you even have an idea there, or do you think it’s just hopeless and everyone might as well give up?
A central problem is that people are using these products, and the best available solution absolutely involves paying attention to why they use them and what weaknesses they have. Check out spaces such as r/homeautomation, people mostly don’t care about privacy but that doesn’t mean there isn’t any room to displace these things, they suck in a lot of ways some of which are inherent to proprietary services.
fwiw my own camera is a waterproof usb one fed through the wall and plugged into a raspberry pi. I’m sure it can be made easier for people than that.
Mine is covered as above (reolink with frigate, no internet for either) which is pretty secure and privite. And yet I still get wat others pay for !!! (Ring with cloud “service” and amazon analisys.
I very much appreciate your link so that other privacy conscious people like us can at least try in our own lives to not be part of the problem, but uh yeah, yep, societies that don’t constantly, actively and effectively fight against mass surveillance, fight for actual privacy rights… uh yep, they end in the panopticon, and… well its harder to get out of a prison after you’ve already built it and live in it, without something analgous to prison riot.
Fact of the matter is yeah, yeah, most other people paid for this, because they were distracted or busy or didn’t listen to all the warnings people have been giving for decades, or drawn in by the ‘neat convenience’ of the tech or whatever.
Its the slow blade that finds its mark, and its quite difficult to un-sever an artery.
Where foes one get local cameras?
Reolink is one for example https://www.reolink.com/gb/ its a HK based (Chinese) company, however they work with local network access only. So they are pretty “safe” to use if you have something like home assistant or something else that can receive their video streams locally. But so far they do not need internet access to function so you can just block their access outside.
They are typically called ‘webcams’.
Then you write or find some open source code to manage things like motion detection, object recognition, permanent vs temporary recording, etc, and run it off your old laptop or a raspberry pi or something.
Unfortunately, that is far beyond most people’s understanding/ability.
Writing it is, but finding an existing project that works isn’t.
I hear https://frigate.video/ is good.
Well then most people get what they pay for.
The problem is that also means the rest of us get centrally surveilled, and those people don’t necessarily have to care
Yep, that is indeed a problem.
Not the kind of problem that can be solved by individual consumer preference choices.
… which was the scope of the original question I was answering.
What you are describing is a massive systemic problem that does not have a simple solution, and arguably, doesn’t have any totally legal solution that would actually work on a long term timeline.
People are too distracted/apathetic, corporations are too powerful, governments are too horny for surveillance.
I’m not sure you’re right about that. People might choose more private solutions if they were as easy to use. There’s other disadvantages too like proprietary IOT devices accumulating a reputation for spontaneously becoming ewaste. It might not be a total solution but I think the level of accessibility of self managed (or at least end to end encrypted) security cameras matters and is everyone’s problem.
Sorry nope, most people pick convenience and ease of use, and are then later baffled and dumbfounded when that later gets weaponized against them, ie, enshittified.
To prevent a surveillance state panopticon, you need a total solution.
Which you admit you don’t have, doesn’t exist via simply offering a different consumer product.
What it would take is a sustained, well organized and literally unrelenting campaign against the erosion of digital and physical privacy rights.
For at least 25 years, basically nowhere in the world has achieved anything close to that, at all.
You seem to think this is a technical problem, an engineering problem, a business problem.
It is not.
It is political, legal, educational and sociological problem.
Is there a … free market, for privacy rights?
Can I invest in that ETF?
Sure, go ahead, make and sell a convenient, locally contained, home surveillance solution, that is incapable of being externally networked.
What will happen is that within about a decade, you won’t be in business any more as Palantir/Amazon/Flock/Whatever will all have colluded to either acquire or destroy you… maybe even lobby governments to call your systems privacy threats, only used by terrorists and criminals.
Maybe, maybe you get lucky and are allowed to exist on the margins… but that doesn’t stop the panopticon.
Realistically it would probably have to be externally networked to have a comparable level of convenience, but that could be done with encrypted open protocols and software.
The former is not irrelevant to the latter. The whole reason encryption itself hasn’t been widely banned by now is its deep integration in a wide range of technology and its relevance to business. Whether people actually use a technology is directly relevant; they can call something criminal and ban it, but that costs political capital proportionally to the required disruption and how many people are affected. You don’t need a “total solution” to increase that cost for them, such a one and done measure is probably impossible anyway. Do you even have an idea there, or do you think it’s just hopeless and everyone might as well give up?
A central problem is that people are using these products, and the best available solution absolutely involves paying attention to why they use them and what weaknesses they have. Check out spaces such as r/homeautomation, people mostly don’t care about privacy but that doesn’t mean there isn’t any room to displace these things, they suck in a lot of ways some of which are inherent to proprietary services.
fwiw my own camera is a waterproof usb one fed through the wall and plugged into a raspberry pi. I’m sure it can be made easier for people than that.
Mine is covered as above (reolink with frigate, no internet for either) which is pretty secure and privite. And yet I still get wat others pay for !!! (Ring with cloud “service” and amazon analisys.
I very much appreciate your link so that other privacy conscious people like us can at least try in our own lives to not be part of the problem, but uh yeah, yep, societies that don’t constantly, actively and effectively fight against mass surveillance, fight for actual privacy rights… uh yep, they end in the panopticon, and… well its harder to get out of a prison after you’ve already built it and live in it, without something analgous to prison riot.
Fact of the matter is yeah, yeah, most other people paid for this, because they were distracted or busy or didn’t listen to all the warnings people have been giving for decades, or drawn in by the ‘neat convenience’ of the tech or whatever.
Its the slow blade that finds its mark, and its quite difficult to un-sever an artery.