Not great, but the whole Ring™ doorbell law enforcement relationship scares me more. The "boiling frogs" way it happened, and how nobody was really up in arms about it is interesting.
Basically the definition of a chilling effect...
So, to what degree should one be private when "exposed" to the public? And how might we secure such a private boundary?
If you are in public, you appear in public. Anyone who sees you can tell anyone else that they saw you, and they are a lot less reliable than a camera recording, for now. Changing this would require amending the first amendment’s freedom of the press clause.
It's. Well. Terrifying to me that more than likely, my day-to-day is being recorded by someone, at all times. I genuinely do not like it, and I am sure that it is compounding my existing anxieties.
My family lives out in the safest burbs imaginable, with not a funny looking person for miles. 0 homeless. 0 crime. They all have these heavy security systems and door cameras.
And the absence of crime is not due to these cameras. Just a kind of fearful mindset, and a lot of extra money.
Really?
Otherwise safe neighbourhoods used to be a preferred target for burglars once, because there is a lot of valuable items to steal there. This kind of burglary is becoming less viable due to modern security systems, especially the sort that connect to a remote security service that sends a car to every alarm.
Claiming that low level of crime means that security systems are a result of fearful mindset is not unlike claiming that being in good health shows that the immune system is superfluous and not worth the metabolic investment.
In my urban neighbourhood, the crime is visible, I see people trying to steal bikes. Crack deals out in the open. I left my door unlocked for 15 minutes and had Mac stolen. And I don't think cameras would make a blink of a difference.
Semi-smart criminals with resources, driving across town to random middle class suburb to rob people of their Mircowave ovens is not really a thing. Surely it does happen, but it's a very rare event.
If you live in the Hollywood Hills, you'll want cameras everywhere, or adjacent to a serious 'problem area' likewise, but otherwise, no.
Anyway, after I wrote my first comment, I started recalling all the burglary incidents in my surroundings and among my friends. There were like 20 of them in this century, so approximately one a year, not supercommon, but not too rare either. And their common denominator was poor home security.
No one with a good door and closed windows got successfully broken into (there were failed attempts). People with subpar door/locks or leaving ground floor windows open at night OTOH definitely attracted successful criminal attention, even in better neighbourhoods.
The country I live in is fairly safe otherwise, but theft of all kinds is depressingly common.
Funnily, a friend of mine described me his own "security setup" in his old car. Two visible red LEDs on the dashboard, blinking, one of them starts to blink a little faster from time to time. Nothing else. Total cost like 2 USD. No one ever tried to steal his car. Good psychology.