Recording people in public spaces is generally legal. Should it be unlawful to record your front porch? That'd implicate Ring and a whole bunch of other products. How about setting up a camera on your windowsill pointing out towards the street?
What about setting up a camera on your roof aimed at your neighbor's bedroom window, and livestreaming it online? What about secretly recording the conversation that you're having with someone in a restaurant? What about recording the comings and goings of the people who enter or leave a gay bar, or a mosque?
The million (almost 2 million) dollar toilet comes to mind.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/24/us/san-francisco-toilet.h...
Its even worse in some places. I see schools, colleges, libraries are getting installed on public land. I mean where are we gonna end up with this.
it won't be cost effective to repair the cameras, so they'll go away.
If the right to privacy arrived at from this discussion kills a product line or a business, oh well. Human rights > profits, broadly speaking.
"Just because you can, doesn't mean you should."
It’s the difference between recording and monitoring. You’re allowed to record in a public space, but you’re not allowed to monitor it.
In the US. In much of the world it is.
But again, enforcement of this is terribly weak. It is virtually impossible to verify, and even if the government somehow did, it is trivial to circumvent as you just have to tilt the camera a few degrees or slightly change the block-out zones on the camera, and you can't really see the difference from the outside. On top of the police having a vested interest in the breaking of this rule because it helps them tremendously during investigations.