Hacker News Reader

Comment by delichon | Hacker News Reader

There is pressure on both sides of the issue. A lot of people prioritize security over privacy. My subdivision has a single entrance. I've been lobbying the HOA members to support installing a prominent camera there to dissuade thieves. It's less important to me that it works then that it is visible. (I have one at my driveway entrance; the one at the subdivision entrance would help the whole community.)

I would certainly not support a Flock camera wired into their network, but do support a camera limited to HOA control. It would make me feel a little easier about trips away. The potential loss of privacy in my comings and goings seems like a reasonable price to me.

View on HN

If they put up a fake camera, what happens when an incident occurs and the footage is requested? Does it just become an internal secret that it’s not a real camera?

On the other hand, installing a real camera means costs associated with monitoring so you also need to convince everyone it’s worth that cost.

I think of it as a scarecrow.

When my wife and I moved into our previous house (in a bit of a rough neighborhood), the owners before us had an ADT security system installed. We didn't re-up the contract, but we kept the sign.

If you didn't know - depending on the contract (who owns the hardware), plus the specific type of hardware it is, you can often move the monitoring to a different company and/or self-monitoring. There are national independent monitoring companies that will help you set this up.

(it feels weird to be advocating a different centralized surveillance solution in a thread about Flock. So I'll just add Fuck Flock!)

> I've been lobbying the HOA members to support installing a prominent camera there to dissuade thieves.

Do you actually get thieves or have you worked yourself up over nothing?

Congratulations if you've never been burgled. I've been hit by it three big times and dozens of small ones, mostly in suburbia. If you haven't I can see why you would put a higher priority on privacy.

Mostly because we have almost no proof that cameras actually deter anything, it's just intuition.

If I had to guess, burglary happens due to economic factors. How rich are you compared to the people around you. If you're extremely rich and everyone else poor, then yeah, you're gonna be robbed. If Elon Musk moved into my neighborhood and built a 100 million dollar mega mansion, he will be ransacked. He'd have to put up fences and have armed security. That's why he doesn't live in my neighborhood.

In the worst case, you're paying the privacy cost for... nothing. You prevent nothing.

In the best case, you prevent some thieving.

So, I don't know where it lies. We need controlled studies on this for sure, not just intuition.

My neighbor caught a burglar on a game cam. The responding deputy recognized him, got my neighbor's property back, and the thief did jail time. That's exactly the result I'm hoping for.

Is your community experiencing an epidemic of theft that needs dissuading? So much that you feel unsafe taking trips away from your home?

You get burglarized a lot?

A little. In the last one the culprit was caught on a game cam, the property was recovered, and the burglar did some jail time.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com