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Comment by derelicta | Hacker News Reader

24/7 surveillance of individuals is just becoming culturally accepted. A terrible example, but a real one, is my grandma: she lives alone back in Colombia, and due to the fact most of her family is abroad, her grandchildren decided to pay a company to install cameras in every room of the house (except the bathroom) as to make sure we can all monitor her, "just in case". My attempts at convincing them a simple fall detection bracelet was sufficient were in vain, and my whole family doesn't see the issue, for it is "only for her own safety".

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You are very correct. The slippery bathroom is also the place you want an alarm system ...

24/7 surveillance except where/when you need it to the most sums up so much of our world today.

I always thought that the compromise, vis a vis CCTV surveillance of public places, was to have the camera record to an encrypted storage that is only unlocked with a judicial warrant, just like a regular physical search needs a warrant.

You get the security of knowing criminals have their actions recorded, but you avoid the privacy catastrophe of being recorded 24/7 no matter where you go.

Almost every solution I've seen in this space can be decrypted fairly easily because of a similar issue found years ago with SSL compression.

I think it was the CRIME attack on SSL iirc. Same issue is found across most consumer-based systems (including drones), pretty much anything that uses compression can run into this issue if care is not taken to pad. At least from what I recall about it.

I hope she is aware of this surveillance and agreed to it?

> I hope she is aware of this surveillance and agreed to it?

Or how easy this footage could be sold or leaked?

This is only really a problem if she was patronized and/or coerced into this. The line is sometimes hard to draw, but this is where the problem begins.

> My attempts at convincing them a simple fall detection bracelet was sufficient were in vain,

Not making a pro-surveillance point, but fall detection bracelets are not sufficient monitoring for elders living alone. The fun starts when dementia rears its ugly head.

Choking, kitchen fires, gas leaks (no getting out of bed, so no falling), dementia compelling them to disassemble the house, dementia-induced hallucinations of intruders, dementia-induced claims of theft by neighbors and other helpers, and quick ability to verify/dismiss false positive alerts are huge selling points for cameras you'll wish you had if/when these shenanigans start.

Someone in such a state doesn't need cameras, they need a care taker. That kind of state you're worried about them hurting themselves or even properly eating. Cameras don't fix that.

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