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this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2025
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I was just thinking about this the other day. Cameras can be a powerful tool, but in the same way as an axe is a powerful tool. It's all about whose hands wield them, and to what end. I'm loathe to prohibit them as often they are the most reliable witness to events, but I also don't trust essentially anyone to wield their power on a day to day basis. Companies want to use them to collect data for marketing purposes. Governments want to use them to suppress dissent. People want them because they are marketed as making you safer, but most people would probably get as much benefit from a fake security camera as from the most expensive real camera. The systems can become harmful themselves without careful setup and maintenance due to malicious actors. (mirai) How do you empower beneficial uses without empowering malicious ones? I don't really have an answer. I just recognize it as another facet in the larger question of proliferation of powerful tools.
I think a good way to enable beneficial use while minimizing the possibility of harm is to avoid cloud based services as much as possible. Especially for residential use. If companies made a convenient method of plug and play self hosted cameras, it'd be a hit. But you cant beat the convenienceand price of another mega corp cheap cloud based security camera
I like the idea but I won't rate it as likely. 'Plug n play' and 'self-hosted' are generally not compatible concepts, especially for consumer-type users, much less with 'affordable' tossed into the mix. Even just self-hosted by itself is a bit of a reach for most people.
Perhaps self hosted wasn't the right term. What I was going for was locally hosted. It woulf be a single device with OS and drives all installed. It would not be affordable, but it's the only way to make it convenient
Ah, okay. I see now. I've seen things that were essentially that, easy to set up DVR/NVRs for use with compatible cameras.
I still doubt its usefulness for residences though. It won't prevent you from being a victim any better than dummy cameras and a fake security system sign. Its value as an evidentiary tool is based on your local police, so everyone's experience will vary there.
If I understand correctly, you're saying you wouldn't be able to catch them live? I understood basically all cameras to be primarily for evidence. There would be a level of deterence to some extent, but the cameras themselves wouldn't physically stop a break in. Even if you got a notification and the police came, theres still nothing stopping them from getting away before the police get there. My understanding of the average persons camera setup is not to have a 3rd party monitoring service call the police, or for them to be able to call the police, but rather to have footage of the event.