[LastWeekendWas]

"Privacy friendly"

Time was, if a neighbour insisted on daily filming a family entering and leaving their own home, they would have been given a smack in the mouth for being a nosy bastard.

Quite how recording your neighbours has become socially acceptable I will never understand.

[NegativeK]

Due to the prevalence of porch pirates, people compromised.

I refuse to have cloud connected cameras, but I understand why my neighbors have made the choices they have.

[dfee]

Speaking of porch pirates, what are you going to do when a porch pirate strikes your house? Take down their license plate? Call the police?

I'm cynical, but I imagine it goes like this:

"Hello, this is 911, how can we help you?"

"I'd like to report a 39.99 board game stolen off my porch, license plate ZXX-1234"

"Sir, this line is for emergencies. Have you filed a claim with Amazon?"

Porch cameras drive mass paranoia. If you're not prepared to act on the information yourself, you're just feeding your own fear.

[lokar]

You post the image to Nextdoor and everyone comments on the decline of western civilization and moves on with their days.

[cameronh90]

An Amazon driver left a parcel for me and didn't ring the bell, then a few minutes later someone stole it. I ran outside, chased them down and took it back.

The police took the report, but obviously they weren't interested in coming out to take the details of the thief or help me recover the package.

The doorbells also notify you of packages that have been left outside and let you answer the door remotely, which are both useful even if you can't go Blade Runner.

[lotsofpulp]

There is a non 911 phone number for contacting local police if not in an emergency.

[IshKebab]

True, but they're still not going to do anything about your stolen package. You could have video evidence and a license plate. Doesn't matter.

[zirgs]

A thief like that doesn't steal just one package. Multiple thefts like that can easily add up to a felony amount. This is why the theft still should be reported. The cops won't look for that package specifically, but they could bust that thief for something else.

[petee]

Not always true.

Our package got nabbed, a person noticed the empty box tossed on a nearby street and called the cops. Cops got video from a near by house an image of a unique car; month later they saw the car, arrested him.

He paid for the package and got community service.

[shellfishgene]

Clearly the porch pirate problem is best solved by the delivery people not leaving stuff on porches. This does not happen in other countries.

[Null-Set]

What do the delivery people do instead?

[teddyh]

You get an email, SMS (“text message” for non-Europeans), or a paper in your (physical) mailbox informing you that you have a package waiting at such-and-such a place (within walking distance if in a city), or there’s a reference to how you can choose your pickup spot from a handful of options.

[mminer237]

That's an option in the US, but going to Walgreens to pick up every package is a much bigger hassle than just opening your door. In very high-crime areas, that's what people do (or get their own lockbox), but in most places in the US trying to prevent the crime is still more popular than trying to avoid it.

[nine_k]

In a city, porch piracy is a non-issue if you live in an apartment building with a lobby. You can open the door to the lobby remotely.

I wonder if a remotely openable porch-side "mail box" would find a market.

[IshKebab]

Leave it with a neighbour, attempt redelivery the next day, let you collect it from a delivery office, hide it in a less obvious safe place.

Usually they give you the choice of what to do.

Though having said that, I live in the UK and do occasionally just get parcels left on my very public doorstep. It's the exception though.

[userabchn]

Where I live you had to be home to receive packages. If you weren't, you had to go to a distribution centre to collect them. During the pandemic it seemed to change, so now they just leave them at your front door, and it hasn't gone back.

[at_a_remove]

Porch pirates and various vandals.

Of course, Rings are essentially worthless for vehicle identification. You would need LPC (License Plate Capture) cameras set up in two directions just for that. They aren't even particularly good for facial identification.

Really, if you wanted something actionable, you would do what I had seen someone else done, which was capture plates and have the right cameras and ... as the secret sauce, an IMEI catcher, filtering out the usuals and highlighting who just blasted past.

If it is one of the Kia Boys around here, they just get out and re-offend.

[jszymborski]

People have been idly watching their neighbors since neighbors have existed.

The problem becomes when a corporation begins filming most neighborhoods and then handing it over to the cops w/o a warrant.

As for the smacking of mouths, I'm glad certain norms have changed.

[blitzar]

> Quite how recording your neighbours has become socially acceptable I will never understand

It isnt - I consider it a blank cheque for 100k whenever I want to cash it.

[nixgeek]

How? I’m curious if you can share any case precedent, particularly examples of such a high amount being awarded?

In most U.S. jurisdictions, including WA (which has some of the more stringent law regulating recording), if you’re stood on their property or even on the street, surveillance of you is legal. About the only obligation you may have is to post signage.

Recording audio conversations is a bit trickier. In WA, they have RCW 9.73.110 [1] which does make provision for any cameras “within [the] building” recording audio — it’s therefore generally best for exterior cameras to *not* record audio given WA is a two-party consent state (with a few exceptions).

Edit: Looks like the person making this ESP32-based solution is in Ireland, which has its own peculiarities but with a bit of effort, it seems like you’d have no issues there either [2].

[1] https://app.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=9.73.110

[2] https://smartzone.ie/are-home-cctv-systems-legal-in-ireland-...

[blitzar]

I am referring to surveillence of myself on my property.

UK: https://www.brettwilson.co.uk/blog/neighbour-cctv-harassment...

https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Fairhurs...

Previously - Scotland: https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=854e9b90-2dab...

Daily Mail on the issue: Could EVERY doorbell camera owner face £100,000 fine after landmark ruling? How inadvertently filming neighbours and storing footage breaches their privacy under new data protection laws https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10087671/EVERY-Ring...

Depending on the specific circumstances, the domestic use of CCTV could be challenged if its use amounted to harassment under the Protection from Harassment Act 1997.

[nixgeek]

“Up to £100k”, damages don’t appear to have been decided in that case based on a Google? It’s also a case which has some egregious aspects to it, which the Daily Mail is ignoring in their haste to write another sensationalist headline.

Some of the analysis away from the front pages has been interesting [1] though:

“During the hearing, some of the main issues under investigation related to:

the field and depth of view of each camera, in particular whether they couldn't ‘see’ Dr Fairhurst or her visitors entering and leaving her property, her car, or the car park;

the sensitivity of their microphones;

the extent to which the devices activated themselves automatically, or were triggered, to capture, transmit or record video images and/or associated audio from the field of view;

whether Mr Woodard consulted neighbours sufficiently before installation or provided adequate notices or warnings after installation of the equipment; and

how and for what purpose Mr Woodard stored and processed the data produced by his devices.”

It looks like neighbor tried to solve this without a court case and he was perhaps not receptive to that approach.

[1] https://www.traverssmith.com/knowledge/knowledge-container/f...

[eternityforest]

That's kind of awful if someone trying to make themself safer with no intention to harass can be sued for that much.

This is exactly why I mostly like privacy laws but think they go slightly too far.

[tjoff]

Which is why this is illegal in a lot of jurisdictions (if you can see outside of your own yard).

[vetinari]

In some jurisdictions even worse: not just outside your own yard, but also publicly-available parts of your own yard (i.e. in front of a gate or fence, or specifically separated areas available to wandering members of public).

[turtlebits]

If it's publicly available, it isn't part of your yard.

[zo1]

This is all done by government to effectively disempower the citizens from doing things themselves or in any sort of cooperative manner (even if provably safe etc etc). Oddly enough they turn around and then refuse to protect the citizens from such petty crime.

I'm starting to think it's all a giant "bullshit" test to see how far they can push people's obedience. Or they end up conveniently filtering out the people they don't act obedient to the level of filter they've set with their stupid laws and non-enforcement of existing ones like theft.

[tjoff]

Uh? Is privacy really such a strange concept?

[eternityforest]

They're banning technology mostly because someone could use it for evil, or they believe that's a likely use, or because some people want to create a new level of expectation of privacy that didn't previously seem to exist, at least not that I noticed. CCTV was everywhere for years, and it didn't seem like most of the general public had any issues.

It's not like people want to put up telescope cams into your bathroom, I think most people would be very against that.

Meanwhile they try to take encryption and anonymity tech away from citizens, in those same exact places.

[bityard]

Which jurisdictions? In the US, at least, you can legally film anything and anyone from your own property, and from public property like roads, sidewalks, parks, etc.

[vetinari]

EU (see comment above).

[XorNot]

A guy advocates assault and then wonders why people are filming everything.