I understand where the author is coming from but this bends a little too far towards "recording outside your door is bad and you should feel bad because you are a horrible paranoid person" for my taste.
The reality is that a lot of societies or locales are not high-trust and it makes sense to take steps to insure oneself/family/possessions.
Installing cameras on your property does not necessarily mean you have a destructive attitude, are suspicious or paranoid, or that you are storing and cataloging events. It's a set-and-forget system that the majority of users probably don't think about on a daily basis. You install them in the hopes that you'll never have to use them.
I also reject the idea that installing a surveillance system means treating neighbors as enemies. Well-meaning people should implicitly understand that the surveillance isn't directed towards them in that way.
This is also why Amazon Ring and cloud-connected mass surveillance systems should receive scrutiny - these DO mean exposing your neighbors to third parties who may treat them with suspicion.
I would rather a more grounded argument like "_Amazon Ring_ is bad and you should feel bad, get a better surveillance system" because currently this article's reasoning is very nebulous and subjective.
I don't think I'm overly paranoid. I do still have a HomeKit compatible encrypted video doorbell that cannot talk to any outside vendor.
Once in a while it has turned out to have been good to have. Never critical, but good to have. And I don't have to give everything to [Amazon/Ring|Flock|local PD|whoever]... unless I choose to.
What does a surveillance system actually give you? Have you dealt with Police after break in & robberies?
I was a building manager for 6 years and Police took the footage over 10 times during my tenure, nothing was ever recovered by the police and recognised offenders were never bought to any sort of justice.
The surveillance system gives you the footage. If police can't do anything with it, that's unfortunate, but not the fault of the surveillance system.
In this instance I'd say the surety and closure provided by the ability to simply review the footage is an important aspect for potential victims. And if victimized by something worse than petty theft, the value only goes up.
We shouldn’t have to surrender our privacy for simple conveniences. Is there a market here?
Can someone make an open source, privacy-focused doorbell? Perhaps like the Software Conversancy’s OpenWRT One wifi router. With an open specification, addons like a flashing light or entry buzzer could be integrated. A simple iPhone/Android intercom app usable only on my LAN would be lovely. Yes, one can get a ReoLink and muck with VLan settings but that is not consumer accessible, moreover you have to use their central service or forgo remote answering
Bell wire is really thin and you can run a low voltage line around your house that is nearly invisible. That's the old school, physical option and is not to be sniffed at if it does the job.
If you want to get something safe and smart (IoT) then you have to think like an engineer. You also need to decide if you are going to do one thing - a doorbell, or if you want disco lights by the pool and the rest.
For a doorbell, you need a button at the door and a chime or whatever inside the house to indicate the button has been pushed. Already you have to potentially deal with delivering power at a place that might be hard, door frames/walls, wires, batteries, weather, positioning and lots more. Then you need to get the signal to a chime.
My previous doorbell was a chime that I wired into a switched and fused spur (I ran a 5A rated twin and earth out of a light socket into a back box with a switched socket faceplate and it has its own fuse) into the nearest lighting socket and a bell wire that ran out to the button. That was fine and simple but not too smart!
I have PoE switches and my IT gear is mostly in the attic. I put a backbox with an ethernet socket in the attic and ran solid core down through the roof/wall etc to near to where the door bell is on the inside of my house and put another backbox with ethernet face plate on it. I then run a short (3m) patchlead inside some trunking and through the front door frame and into the back of a Reolink PoE powered doorbell. I also have Home Assistant running as a VM on a Proxmox box.
Somewhere between those two setups sounds like where you want to go. I went for PoE because I also have UPS for my switches and other infra but wifi may be fine for you for comms but you still have to do power and I'm not a fan of battery powered door buttons but that might be a design decision for you.
You mention VLANs and I really recommend that you look into them. They are a core building block of networking. However, I also get that becoming a network expert is not on everyone's score card. Then again, you are hanging around on HN and probably tending towards ... nerd!
Even a simple doorbell can become pretty sodding complicated and that is why we have some people wondering what on earth all the fuss is about and others advocating to smash the looms ... sorry, doorbells.
Thank you for your thoughtful reply. I ended up running PoE and a VLan but it was expensive and time consuming. The Reolink iPhone app is invaluable if you are disabled. Often I get medications needing a signature and being able to chat with delivery person is so very helpful.
There's plenty of good arguments for not using cloud-connected video cameras, how they can share data with the government unethically or illegally, etc. I got rid of all of mine. But I still have cameras, that I own, that are only accessible to me. I didn't get them until my house was burgled. I found that experience to be traumatic. I find the cameras to be somewhat soothing.
I do think it's funny he focuses solely on the homeowner, the individual, for whom their entire life is in their home, but ignores all the cameras used by businesses, government, etc. Ask the police station take down their cameras! Ask the grocery store take down theirs! They can certainly afford to be robbed more than the guy just trying to make an honest living, and wanting to keep an eye on his stuff. But no, he focuses on the person who's likely been the victim of crime (a concept he tells you to pretend doesn't exist, because "capitalism" or whatever), to just ignore it, to just go with the flow, man. No, I don't think I will.
I have several Reolink cams around the place, including a doorbell. They are on a VLAN called SEWER. I also have a VLAN called THINGS, which is for general IoT and SEWER is for those devices that scare me the most!
SEWER and THINGS don't get to see the internet at all, except via Squid. DNS A records with ntp in them resolve to the IPs of my equipment.
It is a bit crap that you need to be a networking and IT consultant to make this stuff mostly safe. If you can't, then getting the claw hammer out seems to be indicated.
HomeKit Secure Video devices. Block the device's internet access at your router. Apple can't see the video, it doesn't go to Amazon or Flock, nothing counts against your iCloud storage.
> But what if someone steals your Amazon package off your front steps? Well, what if they do? I guess you would have to get a refund. I guess you might suffer an extremely minor inconvenience. I guess it could be an opportunity to reflect on the painful predations of poverty under capitalism, which creates economic desires, renders people unable to satisfy them, and then taunts them with constant visions of abundance in which they cannot share. True, it is a tragedy of unimaginably small proportions that someone has stolen your box of paper towels. Would you let them steal your optimism, as well?
One of the things I do actually like is not being constantly stolen from. It's a pretty nice improvement to my life to see that something has been delivered and know that it will be there when I'm home. I don't have a Ring camera or anything, but I can see why people would rather have the Christmas gifts they send each other (even if small in monetary value) than some insight about the "painful predations of poverty under capitalism". The latter might actually not be as valuable to others as it is to the author.
When I lived in India many decades ago, it was quite routine to have anything not latched down taken from you. We'd lock our bags to our train seats and so on, and if you had an expensive thing delivered you'd have to make sure you were home or you'd have to go acquire the thing and escort it home yourself, and you wouldn't do that with an expensive item at a time when people weren't around. If I'm being honest, I think I would much rather have my present life where I am confronted with such "tragedies of unimaginably small proportions" rarely at the cost of the "opportunities to reflect on the painful predations of capitalism". I actually really like not being stolen from. Here, in my wife's Taiwan, I can even forget my phone on a table and it's probably still going to be there. That's somehow even nicer, though I do admittedly reflect less often on "the painful predations of capitalism" because of it.
I don't specifically know for a fact that a Ring camera would help me achieve this goal of mine to be not stolen from at the cost of reflecting on capitalism, but it is presented in the article as if it would and that giving up reflections on capitalism for safety from theft is not useful. Given that I have found such a trade useful, I think this speaks more as an advertisement for Ring than anything else.
It feels like given that Amazon give you no agency in when the package arrives, and also no guarantee of forewarning, then they've given you no option to prevent the package remaining on your doorstep, the liability should morally lie with them.
(Legally, could be more cloudy depending on jurisdiction, but I'm sure their tendency to say packages will require a signature on delivery but then to leave them on the doorstep with the driver's signature alone probably does them no favours)
Amazon leaves the package on your doorstep because it's slightly more convenient for you and WAY more cost effective for them than the old-style "we missed you; come pick it up at our location in a day or so" note. No physical location in expensive areas, no repeat deliveries, no hauling & managing packages coming back on trucks. When you buy something from Amazon they have not delivered it by throwing it on your doorstep. Ironically we never would have taken delivery of expensive purchases like this back in the day when the world was so much "safer"...
If you have video evidence showing that Amazon just left your package out in the open then someone came up and nabbed it I'm sure Amazon would just send you a replacement if only to keep you happy as a customer.
Does amazon ask for evidence? Serious question. I’ve never had a package lifted off my doorstep, but every other issue i’ve had has been auto approved with no need for photo/video evidence.
> But what if someone steals your Amazon package off your front steps? Well, what if they do? I guess you would have to get a refund. I guess you might suffer an extremely minor inconvenience. I guess it could be an opportunity to reflect on the painful predations of poverty under capitalism, which creates economic desires, renders people unable to satisfy them, and then taunts them with constant visions of abundance in which they cannot share. True, it is a tragedy of unimaginably small proportions that someone has stolen your box of paper towels. Would you let them steal your optimism, as well?
This kind of rhetoric is counterproductive. Telling people that package thieves are just misunderstood, is going to get people to do the opposite of what you suggest.
Those people were going to do the opposite already. They are already doing the opposite. If you have some better rhetoric that will convince them otherwise then in all honesty I look forward to reading your blog post.
I believe the rhetoric is intentional; that the author had no plan to convert that audience from whom you will pry their ring doorbell out of their cold, dead hands.
I understand where the author is coming from but this bends a little too far towards "recording outside your door is bad and you should feel bad because you are a horrible paranoid person" for my taste.
The reality is that a lot of societies or locales are not high-trust and it makes sense to take steps to insure oneself/family/possessions.
Installing cameras on your property does not necessarily mean you have a destructive attitude, are suspicious or paranoid, or that you are storing and cataloging events. It's a set-and-forget system that the majority of users probably don't think about on a daily basis. You install them in the hopes that you'll never have to use them.
I also reject the idea that installing a surveillance system means treating neighbors as enemies. Well-meaning people should implicitly understand that the surveillance isn't directed towards them in that way.
This is also why Amazon Ring and cloud-connected mass surveillance systems should receive scrutiny - these DO mean exposing your neighbors to third parties who may treat them with suspicion.
I would rather a more grounded argument like "_Amazon Ring_ is bad and you should feel bad, get a better surveillance system" because currently this article's reasoning is very nebulous and subjective.
I don't think I'm overly paranoid. I do still have a HomeKit compatible encrypted video doorbell that cannot talk to any outside vendor.
Once in a while it has turned out to have been good to have. Never critical, but good to have. And I don't have to give everything to [Amazon/Ring|Flock|local PD|whoever]... unless I choose to.
What does a surveillance system actually give you? Have you dealt with Police after break in & robberies?
I was a building manager for 6 years and Police took the footage over 10 times during my tenure, nothing was ever recovered by the police and recognised offenders were never bought to any sort of justice.
The surveillance system gives you the footage. If police can't do anything with it, that's unfortunate, but not the fault of the surveillance system.
In this instance I'd say the surety and closure provided by the ability to simply review the footage is an important aspect for potential victims. And if victimized by something worse than petty theft, the value only goes up.
We shouldn’t have to surrender our privacy for simple conveniences. Is there a market here?
Can someone make an open source, privacy-focused doorbell? Perhaps like the Software Conversancy’s OpenWRT One wifi router. With an open specification, addons like a flashing light or entry buzzer could be integrated. A simple iPhone/Android intercom app usable only on my LAN would be lovely. Yes, one can get a ReoLink and muck with VLan settings but that is not consumer accessible, moreover you have to use their central service or forgo remote answering
Bell wire is really thin and you can run a low voltage line around your house that is nearly invisible. That's the old school, physical option and is not to be sniffed at if it does the job.
If you want to get something safe and smart (IoT) then you have to think like an engineer. You also need to decide if you are going to do one thing - a doorbell, or if you want disco lights by the pool and the rest.
For a doorbell, you need a button at the door and a chime or whatever inside the house to indicate the button has been pushed. Already you have to potentially deal with delivering power at a place that might be hard, door frames/walls, wires, batteries, weather, positioning and lots more. Then you need to get the signal to a chime.
My previous doorbell was a chime that I wired into a switched and fused spur (I ran a 5A rated twin and earth out of a light socket into a back box with a switched socket faceplate and it has its own fuse) into the nearest lighting socket and a bell wire that ran out to the button. That was fine and simple but not too smart!
I have PoE switches and my IT gear is mostly in the attic. I put a backbox with an ethernet socket in the attic and ran solid core down through the roof/wall etc to near to where the door bell is on the inside of my house and put another backbox with ethernet face plate on it. I then run a short (3m) patchlead inside some trunking and through the front door frame and into the back of a Reolink PoE powered doorbell. I also have Home Assistant running as a VM on a Proxmox box.
Somewhere between those two setups sounds like where you want to go. I went for PoE because I also have UPS for my switches and other infra but wifi may be fine for you for comms but you still have to do power and I'm not a fan of battery powered door buttons but that might be a design decision for you.
You mention VLANs and I really recommend that you look into them. They are a core building block of networking. However, I also get that becoming a network expert is not on everyone's score card. Then again, you are hanging around on HN and probably tending towards ... nerd!
Even a simple doorbell can become pretty sodding complicated and that is why we have some people wondering what on earth all the fuss is about and others advocating to smash the looms ... sorry, doorbells.
Thank you for your thoughtful reply. I ended up running PoE and a VLan but it was expensive and time consuming. The Reolink iPhone app is invaluable if you are disabled. Often I get medications needing a signature and being able to chat with delivery person is so very helpful.
I have a Unifi doorbell and it takes great photos of the local badgers, foxes, and other wildlife. They are stored locally. Love it.
Do you store them all in the same pen, or do you have to keep them separated?
Still trying to catch them. They keep drinking my cider and eating my chickens.
A lid is a must.
There's plenty of good arguments for not using cloud-connected video cameras, how they can share data with the government unethically or illegally, etc. I got rid of all of mine. But I still have cameras, that I own, that are only accessible to me. I didn't get them until my house was burgled. I found that experience to be traumatic. I find the cameras to be somewhat soothing.
I do think it's funny he focuses solely on the homeowner, the individual, for whom their entire life is in their home, but ignores all the cameras used by businesses, government, etc. Ask the police station take down their cameras! Ask the grocery store take down theirs! They can certainly afford to be robbed more than the guy just trying to make an honest living, and wanting to keep an eye on his stuff. But no, he focuses on the person who's likely been the victim of crime (a concept he tells you to pretend doesn't exist, because "capitalism" or whatever), to just ignore it, to just go with the flow, man. No, I don't think I will.
I have several Reolink cams around the place, including a doorbell. They are on a VLAN called SEWER. I also have a VLAN called THINGS, which is for general IoT and SEWER is for those devices that scare me the most!
SEWER and THINGS don't get to see the internet at all, except via Squid. DNS A records with ntp in them resolve to the IPs of my equipment.
It is a bit crap that you need to be a networking and IT consultant to make this stuff mostly safe. If you can't, then getting the claw hammer out seems to be indicated.
HomeKit Secure Video devices. Block the device's internet access at your router. Apple can't see the video, it doesn't go to Amazon or Flock, nothing counts against your iCloud storage.
Easy Button option for us lazy folks.
> But what if someone steals your Amazon package off your front steps? Well, what if they do? I guess you would have to get a refund. I guess you might suffer an extremely minor inconvenience. I guess it could be an opportunity to reflect on the painful predations of poverty under capitalism, which creates economic desires, renders people unable to satisfy them, and then taunts them with constant visions of abundance in which they cannot share. True, it is a tragedy of unimaginably small proportions that someone has stolen your box of paper towels. Would you let them steal your optimism, as well?
One of the things I do actually like is not being constantly stolen from. It's a pretty nice improvement to my life to see that something has been delivered and know that it will be there when I'm home. I don't have a Ring camera or anything, but I can see why people would rather have the Christmas gifts they send each other (even if small in monetary value) than some insight about the "painful predations of poverty under capitalism". The latter might actually not be as valuable to others as it is to the author.
When I lived in India many decades ago, it was quite routine to have anything not latched down taken from you. We'd lock our bags to our train seats and so on, and if you had an expensive thing delivered you'd have to make sure you were home or you'd have to go acquire the thing and escort it home yourself, and you wouldn't do that with an expensive item at a time when people weren't around. If I'm being honest, I think I would much rather have my present life where I am confronted with such "tragedies of unimaginably small proportions" rarely at the cost of the "opportunities to reflect on the painful predations of capitalism". I actually really like not being stolen from. Here, in my wife's Taiwan, I can even forget my phone on a table and it's probably still going to be there. That's somehow even nicer, though I do admittedly reflect less often on "the painful predations of capitalism" because of it.
I don't specifically know for a fact that a Ring camera would help me achieve this goal of mine to be not stolen from at the cost of reflecting on capitalism, but it is presented in the article as if it would and that giving up reflections on capitalism for safety from theft is not useful. Given that I have found such a trade useful, I think this speaks more as an advertisement for Ring than anything else.
I use my non-ring, local-only front door camera to track the local cats.
This is just curiosity, no sides, the refund bit
If Amazon did their part, put the package on your door, it was stolen, is that their fault?
It feels like given that Amazon give you no agency in when the package arrives, and also no guarantee of forewarning, then they've given you no option to prevent the package remaining on your doorstep, the liability should morally lie with them.
(Legally, could be more cloudy depending on jurisdiction, but I'm sure their tendency to say packages will require a signature on delivery but then to leave them on the doorstep with the driver's signature alone probably does them no favours)
Amazon gives you the choice to deliver on a specific delivery day. Sadly, they often deliver earlier… and proclaim it as a good deed.
Amazon leaves the package on your doorstep because it's slightly more convenient for you and WAY more cost effective for them than the old-style "we missed you; come pick it up at our location in a day or so" note. No physical location in expensive areas, no repeat deliveries, no hauling & managing packages coming back on trucks. When you buy something from Amazon they have not delivered it by throwing it on your doorstep. Ironically we never would have taken delivery of expensive purchases like this back in the day when the world was so much "safer"...
If you have video evidence showing that Amazon just left your package out in the open then someone came up and nabbed it I'm sure Amazon would just send you a replacement if only to keep you happy as a customer.
Does amazon ask for evidence? Serious question. I’ve never had a package lifted off my doorstep, but every other issue i’ve had has been auto approved with no need for photo/video evidence.
> But what if someone steals your Amazon package off your front steps? Well, what if they do? I guess you would have to get a refund. I guess you might suffer an extremely minor inconvenience. I guess it could be an opportunity to reflect on the painful predations of poverty under capitalism, which creates economic desires, renders people unable to satisfy them, and then taunts them with constant visions of abundance in which they cannot share. True, it is a tragedy of unimaginably small proportions that someone has stolen your box of paper towels. Would you let them steal your optimism, as well?
This kind of rhetoric is counterproductive. Telling people that package thieves are just misunderstood, is going to get people to do the opposite of what you suggest.
Those people were going to do the opposite already. They are already doing the opposite. If you have some better rhetoric that will convince them otherwise then in all honesty I look forward to reading your blog post.
I believe the rhetoric is intentional; that the author had no plan to convert that audience from whom you will pry their ring doorbell out of their cold, dead hands.
Ring or any corpo-cloud-controlled cameras are shit, but I want to know what happens around my house when I'm not watching.
What types of things do you want to be able to see?
It mostly just sits there.
If it's that important, you should watch then.