Technology

They could look to argue those, but I'd suspect they just say 'get a warrant' now rather than allowing for the 3rd party records requests, which by all accounts warrants are pretty rubber stamp. From my non-lawyer recollection there's never been a mandate to get a warrant for records in possession of a 3rd party outside of things protected by other laws like banking or HIPPA. So a provider can hand out lists of all your convos, locations, etc if they want. Some do without question, and after a long record of complying with police requests I have a hard time believing Amazon will suddenly change their tune without force. Path of least resistance and all that.

I’ve considered building some kind of laser to destroy the sensors in these cameras. I think it’s absolutely fucked my neighbors can have a camera pointed at my front door 24/7.

It's a long shot, but you could have a chat with the building manager and/or landlord and voice these concerns. I don't know if they'll do anything, but you never know.

Thing is. Good chance your neighbour was probably a victim of crime. A few nights in a row I was making supper and someone was trying to get in my place by trying the handle. My packages also started to go missing and a few years ago someone walked into my apartment while I was trying to wrangle my cat because the fire alarm was going off, pretty sure they wanted to rob my place because they left without saying anything and got freaked out when they saw me still there. It's nice having it because I can see who is at my door Without putting myself in the line of fire, and it deters people from pulling any bullshit while I'm not home.

It's understandable that it's a bit annoying it's pointed right at your door. Mine doesn't face anyone's door. Just the hallway, you could ask your neighbour to install an angled adapter so it's not facing your door. Personally I treat my building hallways like I would treat any public place, and always assume there's a camera somewhere. There's also a very good chance there is CCTV in your building already if it's a larger building.

Time to carry an umbrella so you can keep yourself off camera.

I still remember watching unsecured cameras through a site I’d feel uncomfortable posting. All five minutes of it was eye opening. As an aside, more external security cameras are connected to the internet than I had originally thought.

You mean running my own VPN phone to house, right? Not a paid VPN.

The problem was unsecured connections when accessing your footage through their web portal.

They've since fixed the issue, but they inform people that screenshots are held in the cloud for a limited time in order to serve certain types of push notifications.

I may also be trying to cope with the fact that I bought an expensive system before learning about their issues.

The detectives tried getting footage from google after my neighbor was shot on his ride on mower. One of my cameras faces directly at their paddock they were in when shot. No cigar.... At the time i had let my subscription lapse and only had a 3 hour limit to view events before they were deleted. After 3 hours it's all gone bye bye

Ring says they support E2EE. It looks like it’s off by default. Yikes.

https://ring.com/support/articles/mt13j/How-to-Set-Up-Video-End-to-End-Encryption-E2EE

As for other cameras, when I was looking at systems for my house, I saw that Arlo supports it.

HomeKit Secure Video cameras are also another good E2EE solution if you’re in Apple’s ecosystem. I love that HSV can bypass shitty third party apps, and the camera hardware can connect direct to a HomeKit hub, buuut HSV tops out at 1080p.