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Comment by jon-wood | Hacker News Reader

> Wireless cameras and doorbells are crucial for renters having any semblance of security.

This seems hyperbolic to me. You don’t need internet connected cameras and doorbells for your home to have a semblance of security. That’s what locks are for, and maybe a big fence behind the house.

Most people won’t ever have their home broken in to - according to a quick Google there were ~192,000 burglaries reported in 2021 in England & Wales. Extrapolate that over a typical lifetime and you’ll see 15.3 million nationwide, which for a population of about 65 million people means 76% of people never have anyone break in.

Wireless cameras and doorbells are, on the whole, products which rather than giving peace of mind leave people constantly worried that someone is going to do something, after all, we can see the constant stream of suspicious looking people setting of the motion detection.

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It should be based on households rather than population. There were 24,782,800 households in England and Wales on the last Census Day in 2021. Meaning by your other figures/logic, you have a 62% chance of being burgled at some point if you live in England or Wales. I.e, you're more likely to get burgled than not.

Good point, and does definitely push the numbers towards the risk being somewhat higher than I intuitively think of. I still won’t be fitting cameras all over my property though!

It is also making the assumption that adding cameras to your house makes you unburglable, which is far from true. Not that it doesn't reduce the likelihood.

All the camera allows you to do is point at some vaguely humanoid figures in your house to the police (who will likely not be able to do anything about it) and to your insurance (who likely would have paid out anyway)

What I'd like to know is if turning your house into a fortress makes you _more_ of a target to a specific subset of professional high-end thieves, as they know you have valuable stuff that you would like to protect.

> This seems hyperbolic to me. You don’t need internet connected cameras and doorbells for your home to have a semblance of security. That’s what locks are for, and maybe a big fence behind the house.

1. You’re correct, they don’t need to be Internet connected, they do need to be network connected. That’s how the video gets from the camera to the recording device.

2. Locks just keep an honest man honest, and are another thing you can’t change in a rental (at least in the US).

There are a lot of other precautions someone can take if they can modify the building, but pretty limited options for renters.

All that said, I take a very… American… view on this. I need /evidence/ after the fact, which is what the camera is for. I work from home and am pretty much always here, so the most likely scenario is I kill my home invader, and need that evidence for my defense. In the US, self-defense is an affirmative defense, meaning because I live in a heavily blue area, I’m guaranteed to be arrested and charged, and the camera provides evidence that the person entered uninvited.

My primary precaution against burglary and home invasion is having a tech salary that lets me afford living in an area where there are few burglaries and home invasions. The cameras are necessary for evidence after the fact, and to help with retrieving package deliveries promptly.

>That’s what locks are for

The landlord can open those locks with their keys.

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