The reason I run one is because of other people that have access to my living area, as in the landlord, maintenance guy, property management company etc. They seem to think that possession of a key entitles them to whatever they want.

At multiple locations and every area of the price spectrum, from indies to bigcorps, I have had my rights and privacy violated. So I keep a camera so I can know about it.

At 2 locations now I have used footage to break my lease early with zero penalty. Never got actual charges pressed against anyone but just with that it has paid for itself multiple times over.

That works! The other thing nobody talks about is how cameras can be used for blackmail or for leverage. It could be a matter of catching someone doing something out of line, or more sinister, extorting money from a cheating neighbor. These are some of the reasons I find ubiquitous camera surveillance so insidious. There is infinite potential for petty abuse and chicanery. In a residential setting, they give busybodies and petty rule enforcers a very powerful weapon.

I'm pretty sure doing that to people is illegal or at least bad faith. In both my cases I never made threats but simply brought it to court. This also has the benefit of making the offending party pay a lot of legal fees.

> This whole camera craze is built on a bunch of hot air. Ditch the cameras and stop living in fear.

Living in the inner city where property crime is rampant might make you change your mind. A dashcam was the star of a legal case I was in, and our outdoor cameras have caught multiple yard prowlers. Police don't do anything about it, of course, but at least I can notify my neighbors with actual evidence.

Dash cams are a totally different case as auto insurance companies can take action on the footage.

but saying it’s worth having cameras just so your neighbors believe you isn’t really justifying them. If anything, you further proved how pointless and ineffectual they are. I’d rather save that money.

It might sound a little 'out there', but I can recommend keeping a couple of geese (if you have space in the city). They go absolutely nuts and honk like a car alarm if strangers come around.

Geese (and roosters) are specifically illegal to keep in my city, precisely because they're so noisy.

That would be far from the most ridiculous thing that happens in my neighborhood of Seattle. Although I am not sure that geese can be "kept" from my experiences with them both out here and in the Midwest...

A dog can do this.

> Nobody seems to be asking whether/why you need cameras in the first place.

Oh, come on. Go install a Nest or Ring for a week and see how much you come to rely on it. "Do I need to answer the door or is it just girl scouts selling cookies?" "Do I have time for coffee or should I head home to grab the package?" You can chat with the folks at the door! You can say thank you to the Grubhub driver as they drop the meal. You can see what the neighbor's cats are doing on your doorstep in the middle of the night. You can point one into your backyard trivially and see if it's the rabbits eating your leeks.

I mean, no, you don't "need" this, just like you don't need a dishwasher. But don't pretend it's just about paranoia, it's a fun tool for the modern era.

(Conversely, the folks here arguing about the terrible abuses possible with third party access to this data about girl scouts and cats are the ones who seem maybe a little paranoid.)

I wonder if this is one of those signs that I’m getting old. I can understand the benefits of all this smart home tech, but I just want any of it or feel like it would improve my life?

I’d probably like finer control over my air con so that it automates to on when the solar is producing enough electricity to cover it, but otherwise I just don’t really get it.

I'm in my 50's, FWIW. For me the defining characteristics of whether I embrace tech is whether it helps me do things I'm already doing or whether it represents a new activity I'm supposed to engage in. Resistance to the latter is, indeed, getting stiffer and stiffer as I age. I don't TikTok, I don't Instagram, I mostly just don't understand the culture. Alexa never did it for me as I'm almost never far from a keyboard. Obviously I'm way out of the market demo for Bumble. Those aren't my thing and probably never will be.

But I still have a front door to interact with the rest of society, and automating (even partially) my interaction with all the junk and people that need to use it straight up saves me time. It's great.

I am only in my mid 30s; but I feel like this smart home stuff might have excited me 15 years ago when now it doesn’t.

The doorbell and security camera stuff do seem to be a cultural difference between the US and where I live though; I don’t have strangers routinely come to my front door and don’t really have security concerns that aren’t solved by locking my front door.

A couple of my friends have smart doorbells but none that I know of use security cameras at home.

Smart doorbells are the (currently) acceptible version of a constanly twitching lace curtain.

curtain twitcher

someone who is very interested in what their neighbours (= people who live near them) are doing and tries to find out by looking out of the window without being seen:

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/curtain-...

It sounds like you have a lot of people who come to your door, which I'd expect is abnormal for most people.

I keep change in two (usually) unlocked cars as bait. If the change is gone, someone has been going through the cars. A while back the change was gone. If I had video footage of that, would the cops pursue the case? Hell no. If I received a notification from a camera/sensor, would I confront or possibly shoot (legal in this jurisdiction) a petty thief? Hell no. Anyone who is stealing loose change out of cars is desperate to the point that they do not care anymore.

Around the time the bait disappeared, the police were pursuing a suspect from house to house at 2am. If it was the same person, and I had proof, stealing from parked cars would be the least of anyone's concern.

What are the odds your local police are going to take your package theft footage and actually pursue the thief? Even for more serious crimes, it's questionable whether they will seek (or use) camera evidence, or be successful if they do. I know of an armed robbery attempt that occurred close to home, and to my knowledge no inquiries were made regarding camera evidence (I was a witness).

I can think of plenty of concrete uses for surveillance cameras, sure, but I'd say the costs vastly outweigh the benefits for most people using them today.

Check out some online social (fearmongering) sites like Nextdoor some time - it's nothing but busybodies speculating that the person parked on the street is casing their house or stealing packages. Quick, report them to the cops.

Oops. The local cops no longer accept 'suspicious person or vehicle' reports unless there is a crime in progress.

In your scenario, the costs seem to outweigh the benefits because police and/or the courts are dropping the ball on prosecuting thieves.

> I keep change in two (usually) unlocked cars as bait.

Round these parts you would return to your car and the window would be smashed.

> Check out ... sites like Nextdoor some time

Highly reccomended - but dont go alone, take a support person with you to pull you back to reality after a few minutes, it is a truly horrific place.

Nah fuck thieves. Burglary is not a human right.

The only camera I have in a living space is my father's house far away; the house is empty most of the time and the camera in the living room is showing if anyone broke in via any door or window. When anyone goes there, that camera is physically disconnected for the entire duration.

Another case that is valid is for very old people that share the video with their family. A few months ago a very old (~ 100) lady that I know died and her only daughter, one continent away, found out by checking the camera. The alternative would be for neighbors to call the police days later for not seeing her, but that is undesirable.

This. There’s no need for all the cameras, and there’s certainly no need to keep the footage forever. Or offsite (cloud).

I used to think the same thing until I caught a 40 year old man stalking my teen daughter and continually trying to peer into her bedroom windows on camera. So while it feels good to be ignorant, it doesn't make everything go away. Also, the people commiting crime seem the most concerned with people having cameras. Hmm, wonder why.

The irony is that you wouldn't know if your neighbors were using their own cameras to observe your daughter. Or you for that matter.

Your use case would have been fine with external cameras, right?

I believe that was the intent of the GP's question: Why have indoor cameras?

The indoor camera thing is pretty freaky. Setting them up to keep an eye on things when you are gone would probably be a good idea - but all the time?

We have a few rescue cats that each have... quirks. We have two indoor cameras set up in our basement: one on the feeding area, and one on the potty area.

Sometimes they fight over food (automated feeder) and one doesn't get fed. But it's hard to tell if they're meowing at us because they were bullied out of food, or because they know we are softies and will feed them if they meow enough. We can check the feeder footage and see who got fed.

One of them is potty-shy, and about once every 3-6 months stops using the litter box and starts using obscure corners of the basement until we can coax him back to using the litter box. We check the footage every couple days to make sure he's using litter boxes.

For a software-oriented site, I'm baffled at how obtuse users can be. A lot of the negativity I'm seeing is along the lines of "I have no use for an indoor camera, therefor anyone who uses them is dumb." There are lots of legit uses (if you think about it for more than 2 seconds), and not all of us want provide the police with indoor footage of our cats shitting.

Farms use cameras extensively for similar purposes. It makes sense. I think these kinds of specific, limited applications are very different from just setting them up everywhere because you are afraid and leaving them on all the time. I'd say the same if someone had a stalker or a deranged family member who might show up at any time. There are definitely good uses for networked surveillance cameras.

He specifically mentioned street facing cameras, so I don't think it's just indoor cameras.

Many people use them as baby monitors or nanny cams.