Protect Privacy
Privacy isn’t so much a double-edged sword as a pointy mace without a handle that’s very hard to pick up. In the modern era, you have to consider your own privacy and whether you’re invading other people’s. You also need to think about whether police or government agents will have an interest in what you’re recording—live or archived.
In this chapter, I look at these three issues: your privacy, that of others, and the surveillance state and your role in it.
Keep Your Cameras and Video Private
Video is intimate, even when you’re fully clothed and reading Bleak House on a couch in your living room. It’s worse if you have children or other people who live with you who are vulnerable or naïve.
The basis of installing any home security camera system, whether it points outward or inward or both, is that you must be able to control who has access to it and prevent everyone else from viewing it.
You will have noticed that throughout this book so far, I have emphasized features that let you understand how, where, and how securely your video is accessible, transmitted, and stored. Before we move on, let me summarize those points here, before we move into the other topics of the chapter. Here’s what you should demand and configure to ensure the privacy of your cameras and video captured from themwhat you should demand and configure to ensure the privacy of your cameras and video captured from them:
Limit access to the device and account. This includes:
A strong password is required (or at least allowed) for all accounts and direct device access.
There is no configuration access to the device or account without knowing the password (and account name, if required).
Cameras should reject all unnecessary connections or let you make a settings change to turn them all off—that is, any inbound networking attempt except for desired remote access.
Devices that can only send video continuously or as clips to a proprietary service shouldn’t allow any inbound access, and they should include a mechanism (typically cryptographically based) to ensure they can’t be fooled into streaming video elsewhere.
Limit access to the video. Only authorized parties can view live video or stored video, whether through a direct connection to the camera, a locally based NVR, or cloud storage of any kind.
Encryption must always be used. The surest way for your video to be accessible is by it passing over a local network (even one with a Wi-Fi password) or over the broader internet. Encryption aids privacy by an extraordinarily large degree.
All changes to access must be approved. Some camera makers have changed their privacy rules since their introduction. Each of these changes should be opt-in, and allow you to maintain your previous personal privacy stance.
Deleting video. You should have the ability to know when your stored video is deleted and the right to insist all video is deleted if you cancel an account. Optionally, you may want or be able to purge video manually from a cloud-based or local storage system.
Consider these points in what system you buy, how a company changes its software and options over time, and how you configure hardware you already own.
There’s one more subject that I want to call out separately, which is the right for your stored video and remote access to your cameras to be protected by the legal policies and legal counsel of the company that makes your cameras, depending on the features of the camera or a broader system that you use.
Companies can take a variety of stances about how readily they cooperate with law enforcement and government agencies who make a request or demand, or who follow procedures (which vary by country) for a compulsory demand, such as a subpoena in the United States and many other nations.
We saw a few years ago that cellular network operators seemed to feel as if it were fine for them to share, in a super-accessible form, location data about our cell phones—with no court or other oversight—with any valid law-enforcement party who asked for it. Sprint even created a self-serve portal and bragged about it at a conference.
Contrast that with, say, Twitter, which has spent millions of dollars in court defending its right to not disclose information about its users, including a parody account named @DevinNunesCow that tweaks that House member from California.
Respect Other People’s Privacy
We can’t talk privacy by just focusing on our own. If we install cameras, we’re also always potentially infringing on the privacy of others. You should consider how you inform others about your cameras, the placement of them, and how you share video.
Is It Legal to Record Video?
I’m not a lawyer and this book decidedly is not legal advice. But I can tell you that the legality of audio and video recording in the United States almost entirely depends on regulations in the state in which you’re located.
Generally, states consider it legal to record on private property, both inside and outside, as well as views that include places in which people don’t have a general expectation of privacy, such as walking down a city street or standing in their front lawn where anyone can see them from a public street.
And recording for security reasons may be specifically allowed in some states. That means it has to be for personal use, not for broadcast or dissemination. You can grab video from your house pointing at the street, but potentially not post it on YouTube.
However, aiming a camera so that you’re recording private areas in someone’s house or yard you can see from your vantage point and which are reasonably considered private could be illegal or actionable: you might be subject to criminal charges or a lawsuit.
In those cases, too, even if the recording by itself were somehow legal, it’s possible making live streaming access available or posting video could put in jeopardy.
If you’re concerned about the particulars of your recording setup, consult the laws of your municipality, a privacy-rights group, or even a lawyer.
Protect Visitors and Hired Help’s Privacy
There’s typically a dual purpose for interior cameras: to produce an alarm or capture video of someone unwanted in your home, and to monitor contractors, tradespeople, nannies, and babysitters—and sometimes to keep an eye on teens and parents or grandparents.
A trespasser has no per se rights over being recorded on your private property. (See Is Video Admissible in Criminal Cases? for more on how that kind of video can be used.) But other people do have rights.
The main guidelines appear to be whether you are recording video for a reasonable purpose while also protecting reasonable expectations of indoor privacy. This includes recording to capture theft or mistreatment of your children, for instance.
For children, they may have no such expectation from parents, even if—by the time they’re teens, say—they may find it distasteful.
But for people you invite into your home for social or professional purposes, or whom you hire, like a nanny or contractor, you typically have a legal obligation to honor their privacy. That means no cameras in bathrooms, in spaces in which someone is allowed and may close the door for private functions, which could include a bedroom or other space in which they are changing clothes or having a private conversation. If you have live-in help, their private areas would be off limits, too.
This would also be true for parents or others that may have a cognitive decline or impairment. But a camera might be recorded in a bedroom for safety or health purposes, if deemed reasonable, such as ensuring someone didn’t fall out of bed.
Protect Renters and Tenants’ Privacy
Stories now abound of people checking into an Airbnb room stay, and discovering cameras within the residence. Sometimes, they’re obvious and in appropriate places, such as general gathering areas or an entryway. Other times, they are very creepily hidden and in private locations, like a bedroom, bathroom, or WC.
If you’re renting out your space or house, you might already have cameras deployed. Or, you might decide it makes sense to monitor activities—particularly comings and goings—to protect yourself and have evidence if you have a dispute with a renter or tenant.
Some Airbnb and VRBO listings, for instance, state that absolutely no one but the parties listed in the rental may enter the premises.
But the flip side is that people like to expect privacy when they are in a private place, whether it’s their home, a tent, a hotel room, or a room for the night.
As noted earlier, this is not legal advice, but I can offer some general insight and ways to find more information.
Here’s what you should keep in mind as someone who is bringing people into a room in your home or an entire property (like a house or apartment) for anything from a one-night rental to a multi-year lease:
It’s generally legal for you to place cameras facing entrances and exterior spaces and in interior public and common spaces. As a tenant rights lawyer noted on his blog, “The law favors a property owner’s right to record because they have a duty to provide tenants with security. Common areas include laundry or trash rooms, hallways, and shared entryways.”
You generally need to inform a tenant, even an overnight renter, that cameras are in place in public locations. This might be a posted notice or a disclosure along with a rental agreement.
It’s generally illegal to have hidden or nondisclosed cameras in places were people expect privacy, such as in a home, apartment, or single room in a boarding house or home-rental property.
It may be legal to have cameras in some areas of a private home with full disclosure to the tenant or renter, especially if you’re renting out a room or floor and not the entire home.
It’s generally illegal to place cameras in bathrooms and bedrooms in private residences, regardless of what portion you’re making available to someone else.
To avoid violating someone’s privacy and violating the law, check guidelines issued by your municipality (cities usually have tighter rules than states), talk to other landlords or hosts or join a group of them, and—as always—consider consulting an attorney.
Airbnb upgraded its existing rules in 2018 to make disclosures very specific:
…we require hosts to disclose all security cameras and other recording devices in their listings, and we prohibit any security cameras and other recording devices that are in or that observe the interior of certain private spaces (such as bedrooms and bathrooms), regardless of whether they’ve been disclosed.
When you create a listing on Airbnb, you have to provide information about where each camera is what space it’s recording.
Are You Part of the Surveillance State?
I am writing this book not long after it was revealed by Gizmodo and other news sources that police routinely gain access, with permission, to Amazon’s Ring brand of doorbell cameras.
While homeowners and business owners have often provided video willingly, when a warrant was issued, or under subpoena, it’s a different matter when police have the ability to access video without going through an oversight process.
It gets to the heart of whether law enforcement (and national security) should be hyper-vigilant and sweep everyone into constant surveillance, or whether it should be in place to deter crime and other threats, react to it, and use non-discriminatory predictive models scoped to involve the fewest number of false positives.
By owning a camera at all, you may unintentionally add to the surveillance state. But you may want to consider whether or not you voluntarily contribute to it, too.
Consider Unintended Uses
Video may help lead to solving burglaries, harassment—even murders. But there’s always a double-edged sword where privacy and law-enforcement meet.
Consider the rise of genealogical crime fighting. That’s the technique of using DNA recovered at a crime scene and matching it in online databases to close relatives based on identifiably shared traits. A number of long-dormant cases in the last two years, some involving murders and sexual assaults, have resulted in arrests and a few convictions. Families and communities can be at ease after sometimes decades of having no leads and no suspect.
But this is the best-case scenario. What if police decide that extending this from murder and rape to vandalism, petty theft, and shoplifting? If DNA testing becomes so simple and databases so huge, a network of relatives could pinpoint the least crime? The amount of investigative work in a murder is huge, and the resources devoted are often large; with minor theft, not so much.
It’s a reasonable slippery-slope question to pose. If you install cameras that point outwards, you may capture an alleged crime, and then be part of the process of exposing it. It may put you in danger from someone upset that your video led to consequences for them, or it might place you in relationship to your government in a way you find uncomfortable.
Even if you don’t offer the video up, you may be compelled to provide through a perfectly legal process. If you use a cloud-based camera service or even your own remote servers or cloud storage, the provider or host could be forced to give up the video.
You may be able to avoid this complications by ensuring your cameras don’t point anywhere off your property, by relying on services or software that automatically dumps video or clips after short periods of time, or by purging video yourself after a period you deem worthwhile to retain it.
Consider Intended Uses
Some of us also live in neighbors in which occasional or regular crimes occur and we want to contribute for our sake or as private citizens to the reduction in such crime.
Ring is the most active on this front. Using the Ring Neighbors system, you can share video that obscures your exact location with people in the vicinity of your home, which can include law enforcement for the entire region you’re in. Law enforcement can also send a request associated with an active investigation to you for clips in a narrowly defined area and time.
Police may also more generally ask for video to help solve a crime or improve the odds of conviction in a variety of ways:
Posting a request on NextDoor or other social media. Many services invite the police to be regular participants to pass on safety tips, answer questions about individual neighborhoods, or share crime information and statistics.
Sending an appeal out through media, especially for heinous crimes.
Knocking on doors. While it might be alarming to have an officer appear on your doorstep, if they are looking for footage around a scene, they may ask you directly and give you information about how to provide it.
In some locales, police allow people and businesses to register their cameras’ locations; this is especially the case in business districts. They can use this to contact owners to ask them to review footage and then go through the correct procedure to obtain it.