I have local cameras and a local NVR running Scrypted that does facial recognition. I get notifications when the kids get home from school or my MIL comes over. No cloud component. The cameras can capture incidental views of the street but are primarily looking at my property.

I'm sure if I wanted to I could find a person and figure out when they walk their dog every day. Am I violating their privacy? Do I need to turn it off? They didn't opt-in to my system.

I think there's a distinction between potentially networked use of mass surveillance and an individual user doing it on their property.

If you're using Ring, and Ring could isolate all your data and not share it, is that acceptable? Is the issue that this data resides on a company's server and not an individual's?

I totally get not wanting to be an unwilling part of mass surveillance, but people err on "all cameras are mass surveillance" when it's not true.