Privacy v. Convenience

Keeping an eye on your home is a convenience everyone could use for one reason or another. Seeing who’s at the door or whether the kids are safe in the back yard can put your mind at ease. But cameras are on the front lines of Big Tech infiltrating our homes and it’s important to understand the privacy trade-offs that come with cheap tech from big companies with a keen interest in your data.

Ring is among the most controversial due to its cooperation with a growing number of police departments and its practice of allowing access to user footage without the consent (or even knowledge) of the cameras’ owner. Google, on the other hand, uses facial recognition to ostensibly alert users to precisely who is coming and going, but it’s easy to see how this sort of tracking, when deployed systematically can quickly paint a very detailed picture of people’s whereabouts that they might not be comfortable with.

Ultimately there’s no such thing as a cheap camera. You’re just splitting the bill with another user who likely has different goals in mind as to the use of the footage and the activities they capture.

Plenty of users might see a $25 price tag and say, “Well what do I have to hide?” And perhaps this is a rational stance to take. But even if your camera doesn’t catch you counterfeiting money in your garage, the growing ability to map your routines and track your whereabouts is trade-off that’s often explored philisophically without realizing how much of that infrastructure exists and just how quickly we’re contributing to it with each purchase.

The good news is that you can still reap the benefits of surveillance without contributing to privacy crisis and also without forking over a huge stack of cash! My system of choice is UniFi Protect by Ubiquiti. It ticks the most privacy and convenience boxes:

  • Local video storage that’s easily accessible via an App

  • End-to-end encryption

  • Quick user-friendly interface for reviewing old footage and exporting video clips

  • Wide variety of camera styles starting at $29

  • Door station with LED display for automatic messages (like, “leave package”)

  • Person & Vehicle detection (it can’t tell it’s me, but it can tell I’m not a Llama)

With options like this I think that the downsides of eschewing Big Tech’s subsidized solutions are minimal to non-existent. You’re still free to hand over footage of criminal activities if you so choose and you can browse snapshots of every car and person that comes within the view of your camera, but you won’t find advertisements in your Instagram feed for a pest control company whose van drove by your house and there’s some small comfort in what little anonymity we have left.

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