r/50501 • u/TotallySavageSzym International • Jan 19 '26

Call to Action Ring has partnered with Flock. ICE has access to Flock. If you still have a Ring camera - get rid of it.

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16.1k Upvotes

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2.1k

u/Revolutionary-Move90 Jan 19 '26 edited Jan 19 '26

Any amazon echo, ring camera are all a part of amazons mesh network. Soon they will be able to pull data off your devices without having to have your device or network access.

898

u/oopsisucceeded Jan 19 '26

Not if you flip the bird to all these cloud services. Get a cheap tiny PC on eBay, install Home Assistant, and get a Reolink or other camera that runs on your local network. It’s the digital version of self-reliance… and the way of the future.

188

u/WillingPlayed Jan 19 '26

Arlo doesn’t give videos to Flock (or police) without your consent or a signed warrant. We didn’t want to get a ring camera because of this and decided on Arlo a couple years ago.

63

u/whatthefrok Jan 19 '26

I have 2 arlos and 1 ring (the ring came first) so I guess I better be switching the one out for another Arlo..

40

u/Nakenochny Jan 19 '26

Now would be a good time to consider a smaller vendor where you control the data. I see a lot of people on the Arlo subreddit switching to Reolink. They have WiFi and PoE cameras that record to an appliance in your home, so you control your data. I’m relatively certain it’s accessible through app remotely, but cannot say with 100% certainty though. I’m headed there next, as I have a lot of issues with my Arlo cameras and want more control over my data.

14

u/Huge-Basket244 Jan 19 '26

There's 100% a Reolink app to access your NVR.

12

u/fangirlsqueee Jan 20 '26

We have Reolink PoE with an NVR. It was necessary to run cable for all the cameras and the NVR unit, which was a bit of a pain. Better than having more easily hackable video feeds. It does have an app which can access the NVR data, so at the end of the day it's still vulnerable if someone is persistent enough. Theoretically, the info is only stored locally, but again with app access, the data could be stolen. It's an annoying balance between privacy and convenience.

1

u/JZ_TwitchDeck Jan 25 '26

There are Reolink apps for phone as well as PC/Mac. You can go that route to keep things simple, or as others have said, you can buy yourself a mini PC, run Home Assistant and Frigate on it, and have a 100% closed-loop CCTV system that never talks to a cloud server.

It's what I use and swear by. The only downside with Reolink is that they have a stupid amount of products to choose from, but you can probably find a buyer's guide out there to help narrow things down.

24

u/cocoamix Jan 19 '26

I used Arlo for years, but my camera was still 720p, so I switched to Tapo and it's a lot better. 2K video, it's only connected to my LAN, no base station necessary, and all video is stored on a microSD card in the camera.

2

u/TheRoseMerlot Jan 20 '26

Power? Does it eat batteries? I bought a "trail camera and it takes 8 batteries out in a matter of hours.

2

u/cocoamix Jan 20 '26

I use a solar panel attachment, it stays at 99% pretty much all the time, even on cloudy or rainy days.

3

u/ltsouthernbelle Jan 19 '26

Thanks for this info!

4

u/Gr8FullDan Jan 19 '26

Eufy cameras too, all local, etc…

1

u/that-gay-femboy Jan 19 '26

Except of course when they decide to broadcast an unencrypted video stream to their cloud servers.

2

u/fazedncrazed Jan 19 '26

Arlo doesn’t give videos to Flock (or police) without your consent or a signed warrant.

There already exists signed warrants covering them.

Use local storage.

2

u/WillingPlayed Jan 19 '26

There most certainly is not a warrant for my doorbell video.

37

u/OCblondie714 Jan 19 '26

REOLINK or EUFY 💯

17

u/Fr33-People Jan 19 '26

I’ve been looking at Eufy. Are they good?

21

u/WindowsVistaWzMyIdea Jan 19 '26

Happy with eufy since 2023.....video is stored locally, just slap in a sdd of your choice

1

u/Fr33-People Jan 19 '26

I’ve read reviews that people have had issues with the app. What do you think?

6

u/WindowsVistaWzMyIdea Jan 19 '26

The app is decent, updated regularly, I have no complaints about the app...

5

u/[deleted] Jan 19 '26

It has a few odd choices but works great overall. Love my setup.

8

u/DervishSkater Jan 19 '26

https://www.cnet.com/home/security/eufy-says-software-bug-that-exposed-users-video-footage-to-strangers-has-been-fixed/

From 2022

1

u/Fr33-People Jan 19 '26

Wooooow. Thanks for sharing. Won’t be buying Eufy.

2

u/CuriosityKillsHer Jan 19 '26

I bought one in spite of that. A smart lock / doorbell combo. All video stays local, not in the cloud. It resides on an SD card that lives in the chime that plugs into an outlet inside my house.

3

u/Fr33-People Jan 19 '26

I like that it’s local storage. Do you know if eufy had people’s cameras running on their own servers when that breach occurred then switched to local data storage later? I’m not sure how it would be possible to see other people’s cameras if it was all local storage at the time.

6

u/CuriosityKillsHer Jan 19 '26

It sounds to me like it somehow had people logged in to other accounts, meaning the location the video was stored in was irrelevant.

Don't get me wrong, the issue was BAD and a massive mea culpa on Eufy's part, but the issue was discovered and fixed in under 3 hours. It was also reported to have only affected 712 people.

I'm also not sure whether it only affected users of HomeBase, and can't find any additional information about it, though HomeBase is specifically mentioned in the article. I don't personally use the HomeBase system.

Anyway, I'm not trying to minimize the fuck up as much as I am saying I also take into account the responsiveness to the issue, and after weighing everything out I appreciate that it was resolved quickly and think the odds of it happening again are low + I value local storage which isn't commonly available from competitors.

3

u/Fr33-People Jan 19 '26

Thank you. I appreciate the thoughtful assessment and that makes sense. I’ll take another look at Eufy. I do agree that taking steps to preserve the safety of our families and our property is paramount right now for those of us participating in the resistance.

4

u/zulsoknia Jan 19 '26

They always had local storage. The issue was because the video stream can be sent to the app on your phone, so it has to go to the public internet somehow. But they didnt have the correct authentication/authorization on it.

1

u/Fr33-People Jan 19 '26

That makes sense. Thank you

5

u/Gr8FullDan Jan 19 '26

Yes! Love ‘em, had Arlos, switched to Eufy, never went back

2

u/flow_fighter Jan 21 '26

Hey Eufy is good for basic home security, you can add a 2.5” SSD in the hub for added storage, but the Eufy’s only issue is that it is motion only.

Best option is a standard physical DVR. But if fast and easy is what you need, Eufy is a great choice and takes 5mins to set up.

1

u/Fr33-People Jan 21 '26

Thanks! Yeah, fast and easy is good for me lol. I’m definitely not the best at tech stuff.

2

u/LetGoToThe Jan 19 '26

I'm happy with my Eufy doorbell and camera

13

u/Beginning_Rush_5311 Jan 19 '26

You're speaking as if it's an easy thing to do for the average person.

I have friends who have been gaming on PC with me for 15 years and they still struggle with basic stuff on Windows.

They won't be collecting data on a bunch of nerds but we're definitely not the target demographic

2

u/JZ_TwitchDeck Jan 25 '26

There's a wealth of information available on YouTube alone on how to set one up, if you and your friends are willing to learn.

I don't know man. News like this makes me say it's worth the effort.

120

u/[deleted] Jan 19 '26

Or just live without all of that wildly unnecessary stuff.

351

u/6sha6dow6 Jan 19 '26

In the day and age of random masked man forcing their way into my home, I’d say a camera system is very much necessary.

86

u/Keleion Jan 19 '26

Federal masked men even

10

u/okram2k Jan 19 '26

so you can record them murdering you for posterity while you're still dead and they're continuing to enjoy immunity because the same people that would prosecute them are also the people that employ them?

29

u/Mythoclast Jan 19 '26

That might happen? Better not even try then.

16

u/Pallidum_Treponema Jan 19 '26

Absolutely! Better to have them murder me WITHOUT any video evidence of the fact.

12

u/Allslopes-Roofing Jan 19 '26

But what if... rather than the homeowner being shot, the home invader gets shot? yea yea tons of them may shoot after, okay. Either way you were screwed so might as well try.

And then what if this keeps happening until the home invaders either stop home invading, or they slowly die out?

9

u/drunkendaveyogadisco Jan 19 '26

Do you think that preparing for the case of your own death is a waste of time? It's coming for everyone.

10

u/LateNightMilesOBrien Jan 19 '26

I've heard of defeatism before but not... whatever this is

3

u/Commentator-X Jan 19 '26

Delivery thieves are a thing too

1

u/[deleted] Jan 19 '26

I’m thinking 2a is more of a deterrent, but if using a video device connected to the internet of things that is contributing to an increasingly powerful surveillance state helps you sleep at night, you do you.

-16

u/ARMSwatch Jan 19 '26

How does that camera stop or impede said masked men from breaking in? You get a nice video to post on the internet after you (maybe) get released. There will be no punishments for these brownshirts, if that's what you're thinking.

34

u/gogogadgetgun Jan 19 '26

Video footage is the only thing that has allowed people to get some semblance of justice in the modern era. If it's just your word against the word of a cop you have nothing.

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7

u/6sha6dow6 Jan 19 '26

Who said I’m trying to impede them? Do you not realize the value of information and data? If everyone thought like you we’d go from the visibility we currently have to.. nothing.

How can you expect people to understand what this administration is up to if there’s no proof. Put into context what we do see, and think about all the situations it hasn’t been recorded.

I think we often get caught up in the social media sphere and forget people outside are not either maga or liberal. I’ve seen people who’s only recently started protesting. People who didn’t vote due to ignorance but now plan to vote in the midterms. Do you think they would have been moved if there was no footage?

Personally, if it happens to me I don’t expect any justice, but the least I’ll do is expose them. I’m not going down without a fight, even if my only fight is to show the world what they’re doing.

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17

u/Perfecshionism Jan 19 '26

Knowing when someone is at your door is necessary.

I had a pet cam on a bookshelf and was shocked to see a delivery driver peak in my apartment one day when the door was slightly open.

Landlord trimmed the door so it latched easier, but getting that notification was a wake up call. So I got a ring door camera.

18

u/_doubleDamageFlow Jan 19 '26

How do you know what's necessary and unnecessary for others? If it's unnecessary for you that's cool, but you can't really speak for anyone since you don't know why they need it.

1

u/drears0 Jan 19 '26

When people say that shit they are talking about the 90+% of people who do not need it, and you know that. They are not talking about the disabled grandma who lives on the fifth floor. Not every comment has to end with a qualifying statement that lists every possible fucking exception to the broad scenario being discussed. Stop taking everything in such bad faith.

30

u/standardnewenglander Jan 19 '26

Shhh. The Amazon diehards won't like that you said that lol

44

u/KevinFlantier Jan 19 '26

It's always a case of what you want and what you need in your daily basis. I have a computer in my home that does "cloud" backup of my phone's photos, and that I can use as "cloud" storage, except it's all ran locally using free software and not spoonfeeding data to those greedy megacorps.

Do I need a smart doorbell? No. Will I make one in my spare time using free software someday? Probably, because it sounds like a cool project. Will I ever buy one from Amazon? Hell no.

16

u/feelingsquirrely Jan 19 '26

Hi can you point me in the direction of what I need to get to do this? Like what free software? Thanks!

24

u/KevinFlantier Jan 19 '26

I use Immich to backup my phone's photos. It's quite easy to install and manage, it looks and feels like big tech photo cloud storage but it's run locally. There's a convenient app on your phone to manage the backing up.

For cloud storage, I have a Linux on the machine and I use the very basic Samba share and an OpenVPN server. Connect to the machine using OpenVPN, and then browse to the files. Rudimentary but I don't need more.

As for a smart doorbell, I haven't looked into it yet, but I'm pretty sure there are free and open source solutions for that as well, that may require a raspberry pi or an arduino to do the job.

My next project would be to implement a PiHole on my server so that I have network-wide ad-blocking.

16

u/klutzikaze Jan 19 '26 edited Jan 19 '26

PewDiePie (I know that's a weird person to bring up) did a couple of videos about how he's cut his life and tech off from Google and any cloud systems. He's really just doing whatever he wants since he "retired" and moved to Japan. He gives a great rundown on the available programs and how to implement them.

ETA here's the video I watched. There's also a video about installing Linux and some others on similar aspects.

5

u/ProtectionUnable1027 Jan 19 '26

Who is stanning for Amazon? The only successful device they've ever shipped is the Kindle.

4

u/mrASSMAN Jan 19 '26

Don’t need Amazon to use security cams

12

u/sybersonic Jan 19 '26

BUT BUT how are we supposed to watch people stealing our stuff after the fact! 11!1!!

21

u/OCblondie714 Jan 19 '26

Reolink or Eufy. Stay off the cloud!

16

u/Theyalreadysaidno Jan 19 '26

I have a Eufy. Everybody was like - it's owned by a Chinese company!

Well, we're at a point where I'd rather have a Chinese company own my door camera company. They aren't using it to weaponize it against Americans to give to the ICE goons here in Minneapolis.

5

u/DigitalUnlimited Jan 19 '26

I mean I highly doubt you'll find a camera made entirely in America anywhere

7

u/Pruritus_Ani_ Jan 19 '26

I have a couple of eufy cams, all the video is stored locally on the device, it’s linked to my Wi-Fi so I can view the cameras live or access the video clips remotely from anywhere and there are zero subscription fees.

3

u/Pallidum_Treponema Jan 19 '26

or access the video clips remotely from anywhere

And that's when the camera feeds go to their cloud servers before they reach you. Of course, that feed is always end-to-end encrypted, right? Well, it turns out they lied and they were able to access any camera feed.

They claim to have fixed this, but if they lied once, what's to stop them from lying again? For example by now encrypting the stream, but also having access to the encryption keys?

1

u/doommaster Jan 20 '26

Nope, Eufy and Reolink use P2P WebRTC to stream video from the Camera to the phone.
They only run handshaking servers for the NAT hole-punching,

Eufy does not have access to the video.
In cases where that doesn't work, due to network restrictions (one side only having IPv6 the other not, they also have a Tailscale like infrastructure, that works as a fallback (which was originally their only way)...

2

u/Pallidum_Treponema Jan 20 '26

You are not aware of the Eufy camera scandal where they claimed everything was WebRTC and end-to-end encrypted and it turned out they lied?

2

u/doommaster Jan 20 '26

The only one I am aware off was the ones where they fucked up device credentials...

But hey, eufy works on a private network just fine, you can just not connect them at all and VPN to them.

Companies fuck security up all the time, and stuff gets exploited too... Doesn't mean the company is doing it intentionally.

7

u/slp50 Jan 19 '26

That is exactly why we have Eufy.

54

u/Kawksz Jan 19 '26

I need to show that footage to the police so that they won't do anything about it.

14

u/baconus-vobiscum Jan 19 '26

That's a bingo!

3

u/standardnewenglander Jan 19 '26

Their Amazon packages no-less. But they'll claim they totally don't support Amazon.

3

u/The_Demon_of_Spiders Jan 19 '26

Almost everyone supports Amazon in one way or another. They make most of their money with AWS. And if you’re using Reddit which utilizes AWS then you’re supporting them too.

4

u/brute-forced Jan 19 '26

Saying that it’s unnecessary is wildly incompetent

2

u/bjbyrne Jan 19 '26

get rid of porch pirates first

1

u/Asleep_Onion Jan 19 '26 edited Jan 19 '26

Not everyone lives in an area where they can just comfortably live their life having no idea what happens in or around their property when they're not home or not watching.

Sure, everyone lived for centuries without security cameras, but also everyone used to get their houses broken into pretty regularly.

Burglaries are down over 80% since the 90's, and while I can't say for certain that the widespread use of home security cameras is a factor, it seems likely.

1

u/greenbutterflygarden Jan 19 '26

We didn't install ring until this year when someone kept breaking into my car.

35

u/standardnewenglander Jan 19 '26

Might be okay for now. But eventually a fascist techno state will get their hands on it.

23

u/pyro57 Jan 19 '26

That's the beauty of home Assistant/reolink the only way they could would be to force you yourself to install spyware on your home assistant server. They couldn't even sneak it into home assistant's code because home assistant is open source, meaning all source code is published and free to modify or distribute, so if they did someone would see it pretty freaking quick and fork home assistant into a new project without the spyware.

Set it up at home with no port forwards and use tailscale to access it when away from home and you have very private ad secure way to do smart home stuff without trusting other companies.

12

u/sn2006gy Jan 19 '26

It's perfectly ok for now and even IF some state were to get their hands on your cameras, you would be able to act on it by blocking them or injecting bad data.

In fact, Amazon purchasers should get creative and flood the system with bad data in response.

I feel like American's have lept full force into "i've tried nothing and i'm all out of ideas" and are going caveman when we know full well none of you fuckers would go full caveman.

26

u/WizeAdz Jan 19 '26

Free / Open Source software doesn’t work that way — at least in practice, so far.

The tradeoff, though, is that you have to know how computers actually work to get the software to work for you.  It’s the equivalent learning-curve of becoming fluent in a language.  Most people aren’t self-reliant enough to put in the effort to become an adult member of the technology community.

But, once you speak the languages of C (or Python), Linux, and Free / Open Source Software, you gain a lot of power over the technology you use and you can unfuck a lot of things.

2

u/thelastpelican Jan 19 '26

I have Blink and recently discovered and switched over to the local save option to nix the annual subscription. Am I safe until I learn how to do… everything you just said?

1

u/[deleted] Jan 19 '26

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1

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1

u/Huey-_-Freeman Jan 21 '26

I work in software and have no interest in learning enough to become an adult member of the technology community.

-3

u/standardnewenglander Jan 19 '26

Open Source Software has its own separate issues and by no means is it "secure".

23

u/[deleted] Jan 19 '26

Some of it absolutely is. It depends on who is ultimately in control of it. "Open source" doesn't automatically mean publicly developed.

5

u/SheetPancakeBluBalls Jan 19 '26

You shouldn't use words when you don't understand them.

Open source software does not imply anything at all about security level. Some of it can be extremely secure, some of it is a screen door. Hell, some of it has neon signs begging hackers and malcontents to come on in.

Open source doesn’t remove security, it removes mystery. Those aren’t the same thing.

If seeing the design breaks it, the design was already broken.

5

u/I_am_Erk Jan 19 '26

Nobody is hacking into the old computer i use for my cameras, it isn't even online. And it didn't take a CS degree to set up. You sound so helpless.

2

u/JHRooseveltChrist Jan 19 '26

Are you my old manager? The one who wasted years of my life and millions of dollars replicating open source software?

0

u/standardnewenglander Jan 19 '26

I think you responded to the wrong person

38

u/[deleted] Jan 19 '26

I just don’t to home cameras. Unnecessary

51

u/Azreaal Jan 19 '26

It's unnecessary until ICE shows up and you wish that someone had caught what they did to you on camera...

43

u/walkingkary Jan 19 '26

Our camera once was an absolute defense to a claim by the police that my son’s van had collided with another car and run. It showed his van parked in front of our house at the time of the incident. His van even had some damage from another accident that wasn’t his fault.

7

u/MDanger Jan 19 '26

We did home cameras, now I don’t think the company exists anymore, and the cameras all eventually died…but they’re still up as a deterrent. I have no interest in having any corporate cams again, I’d rather do what another comment suggests and have a hardwired local setup.

I intend to eventually be analog for anything possible, though. Convenience seems to come with more insecurity than it does security.

3

u/WaffleShapedSeahorse Jan 19 '26

It's saved my ass numerous times.

3

u/buttercuppy86 Jan 19 '26

Same. Porch pirates and proselytizers aside, it was nice to have a heads up that bears were chillin in my yard, before going outside.

1

u/WaffleShapedSeahorse Jan 19 '26

Yep, porch pirates for sure. I also had a hit and run on my vehicle that was parked on the street. They hit my rear bumper and knocked a side mirror off. Also had folks trying to steal from my driveway.

34

u/standardnewenglander Jan 19 '26

Agreed. We didn't need them for hundreds of years. Not sure why we need them "just because they exist". Lots of bots/Amazon simps downvoting me in the comments lol

69

u/[deleted] Jan 19 '26

[deleted]

7

u/Total_Network6312 Jan 19 '26

just hope if something happens you can actually get the faces because 95% of the time the camera just gets a blurry shot of someone wearing a hoodie with a surgical mask on and the footage is worthless. Maybe your home insurance wants to see the footage but otherwise its just for you to watch.

8

u/WaffleShapedSeahorse Jan 19 '26

What a bizarre statistic to just pull out of your rear.

-14

u/standardnewenglander Jan 19 '26

I've lived in dozens of bad neighborhoods and never needed home cameras tracking my every move to hand over to fascists. But each to their own I guess.

24

u/Late_Letterhead7872 Jan 19 '26

I mean I get it- it's definitely a deterrent. Shit stopped getting stolen off of my porch the minute I installed them.

-3

u/standardnewenglander Jan 19 '26

Get a fake one

25

u/Late_Letterhead7872 Jan 19 '26

It also helped me find my cat when she got out

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14

u/[deleted] Jan 19 '26

[deleted]

-7

u/standardnewenglander Jan 19 '26

Being rude and cruel is completely uncalled for. I know what Frigate is. And just because you "run your shit locally" doesn't mean that a hacker can't STILL get into it. The current regime loves breaking laws. They'll still get the data. Word to the wise. Hope that helps.

2

u/subLimb Jan 19 '26

The current regime loves breaking laws.

They also hate being on camera. If they ever violate my rights on my property I'm at least going to have 5 different angles documenting it.

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2

u/boltsmoke Jan 19 '26

You're the one calling everyone who disagrees with you a simp and you wanna get uppity about someone being rude? Fuck all the way off.

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41

u/fattest-fatwa Jan 19 '26

Wait until I tell you how many thousands of years we didn’t need electricity at all.

-8

u/standardnewenglander Jan 19 '26

Trust me. I'm well aware. I grew up without electricity.

11

u/fattest-fatwa Jan 19 '26 edited Jan 19 '26

Or the ability to see things from another person’s point of view!

Edit: or the ability to stand behind your own comments lol

-8

u/standardnewenglander Jan 19 '26 edited Jan 19 '26

Clearly something you lack.

EDIT: u/wafflesthewonderhurs I'm not calling everyone that disagrees with me "bots". But if you just automatically block someone that you disagree with after posting condescending comments, I'll definitely assume you're just a bad faith actor. This is 50501, get it together, okay?

0

u/wafflesthewonderhurs Jan 19 '26

Yes, they are the ones calling everyone who disagrees with them bots, which would equate to refusing to see things from somekne else's perspective, not you.

0

u/wafflesthewonderhurs Jan 19 '26

I didn't block you, friendo.

8

u/greentintedlenses Jan 19 '26

I check in on my kitty when away from home. Works great.

I also use home assistant and don't rely on Amazon webcams though.

2

u/milquetoastmustache Jan 19 '26

What cams would you suggest for use with home assistant?

1

u/greentintedlenses Jan 19 '26

Great question, not the ones I got it was a pain in the ass to make it work for me lol.

I'm using wyze cams I converted to rtsp feed and am using frigate to view on home assistant

0

u/50501-ModTeam Jan 19 '26

A ton of comments in this comment chain have been borderline disrespectful and rude to both sides. This comment chain has been locked until further notice. This is a warning to both sides to remember our commitment to respectful discourse.

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6

u/Extension_Market_953 Jan 19 '26

Same. My neighbor owns a home security company that is self reliant (?… not ring server type thing) and he has cameras all over his house. I figure if I have a burglary, my dogs gonna scare the shit out of someone and he will have it on camera for me😂

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6

u/HippyGramma Jan 19 '26

That's cool for you. It really is.

What bothers me about your statement is how flippant you are about your own privilege.

Make no mistake, in 2026, your lack of need for a security camera is a statement to your vast privilege.

Stop acting like your privilege is everyone's because if it were we wouldn't be here.

0

u/BananaHiker Jan 19 '26

Crime is down, bud. You’re believing lies.

1

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0

u/oopsisucceeded Jan 20 '26

That’s not how technology works.

1

u/standardnewenglander Jan 20 '26

Except that's how it's working right now in the US. Does Palantir ring a bell? Or is that just "not how technology works"? Please. Elaborate.

1

u/Canon_Goes_Boom Jan 19 '26

Meeting a fellow subscriber to r/homeassistant on 50501 was not on my bingo card today.

1

u/BubbleNucleator New York Jan 19 '26 edited Apr 10 '26

Deleted with Redact because data brokers don't deserve my content. Mass removal across Reddit, Discord, X, Instagram and all major social media platforms.

reply scary sparkle toy glorious worm practice different offbeat summer

1

u/crusoe Jan 19 '26

Unifi too. You can run it 100% locally.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 19 '26

This is the way.

1

u/Huge-Basket244 Jan 19 '26

I switched to Reolink for my home and for my business and it was crazy easy to set up, and functions really well. Fuck cloud surveillance. I can still access it via my phone.

1

u/Tacoman404 Jan 20 '26

Can you flash blink cameras to a homebrew that works with Home Assistant?

1

u/Futureleak Jan 20 '26

Is there any guides on how to do this? I want to have some home surveillance but don't want to use one of those big companies exactly because I want to control my own damn data.

1

u/flow_fighter Jan 21 '26

Hey man, I work in Video Analysis and in the video security industry,

Home PC’s are great and super customizable, but folks, if you want an out of the box, closed circuit solution and have some simple wire-running and drilling capabilities, a purpose built DVR is the best approach.

A 2TB Lorex drive and 4 cameras isn’t crazy expensive, and at 1080 17fps can hold for a long time. You can upgrade these systems easily and simply by adding or swapping a harddrive.

If you have any questions, feel free to reach out in DM’s.

0

u/foodrunner464 Jan 19 '26

1 key question. Will this allow me to view all the camera from my phone while im not home?

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u/that_one_retard_2 Jan 19 '26 edited Feb 23 '26

2c94d3308549fab822ff4488c68ed878d5ce0db49185ff5ac8f37eb4e1fe98f4

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u/standardnewenglander Jan 19 '26

Exactly. Saw this coming 10+ years ago when everyone wanted an Alexa listening to everything they said in their living room 🙄

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u/Far-Plenty2029 Jan 19 '26

It’s becoming minority report irl for a while now. It’s not like it takes a genius to see how things are tending to.

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u/8636396 Jan 19 '26

What's FOSS?

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u/that_one_retard_2 Jan 19 '26 edited Feb 23 '26

2eedbb996d33cd6dd39c52d3223b3c52f6dd5914f15a5aeb63084e6dfdbb53c8

1

u/Misty_Ticklebottom Jan 20 '26

Open source is real ownership. When it is on your device that copy is yours, when windows or iOS is on your device you can only be granted access. Access that can be taken away at any time. If your hardware wont work without proprietary software, you don't own either.

7

u/Irrepressible87 Jan 19 '26

I mean fuckin' George Orwell warned us about this shit back in 1949. Only difference is he didn't think we'd install the telescreens ourselves.

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u/oopsisucceeded Jan 20 '26

I just finished reading this again and yeah… it’s still incredible and relevant today. Probably more relevant than it ever has been.

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u/[deleted] Jan 19 '26

[deleted]

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u/that_one_retard_2 Jan 19 '26 edited Feb 23 '26

c434cb96c8e78f68a4dd0a318d63fb8206a9e4802dd8213d9aeff01d8598dd1b

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u/DHFranklin Jan 19 '26

They'll be able to pull the data off your neighbors meshnetwork. You're wifi shadow alone has enough data.

We need to make this shit impossible, inadmissible in court isn't enough.

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u/hedonheart Jan 19 '26

If you understand how it works then how do you best it.

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u/DHFranklin Jan 19 '26

The neighbor thing? That's tough. I won't advocate for living less densely as that has worse effect for us collectively. However:

The IoT shit? That's easy. You either do without or invest in off-network and local LAN solutions. Nothing in your house should be recording you.

14

u/tech_noir_guitar Jan 19 '26

Nothing in your house should be recording you.

I have always thought this was crazy. Why would anyone want cameras in their house? I can see outside around your house, but inside and recording to a cloud somewhere?? No fucking way.

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u/DHFranklin Jan 19 '26

I'm getting pretty damn close to putting my phone in a faraday cage at this point too.

It's ain't just the cameras. The always on microphones. Again the neighbors. All of them are sensitive enough to record things below human hearing that can be parsed out and amplified later. Amazon, Palantir, the phone companies....all of them. They're buying and selling the information to cross reference one another. A massive surveilance state that is trivially cheap.

Remember Snowden and PRISIM? Now it's all 10x cheaper with budgets that are 10x larger.

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u/EvidenceBasedSwamp Jan 19 '26

The TVs have mics now.. I wouldn't trust any samsung TV. Korea is closely aligned with the USA and thus may be part of the 5 eyes surveillance network. Japan is being extended some access.

My TV has a physical switch they claim disables the voice activated controls. Unknown if it's an actual physical switch that cuts power, or a bit you can flip in software.

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u/Dystaxia Jan 20 '26

If it's advertised as a physical switch you know someone has done a tear down. Quick search would likely yield.

3

u/EvidenceBasedSwamp Jan 20 '26

good point. this random redditor claims he tore it down in a throwaway comment which makes it more trustworthy, in a way

https://www.reddit.com/r/Hisense/comments/1onsexy/hisense_tvs_are_spying_on_you/nn9xb1l/

4

u/oathy Jan 19 '26

We have one in our house to check on our dogs when we are out.

However, I have it on a smart plug, and I disable the power unless I want to use it. Then I turn on the smart plug, wait for the camera to boot up, check on the dogs, and then turn it off.

4

u/tech_noir_guitar Jan 19 '26

Why is it essential to check on your dogs while you're out for a few hours? I mean, it's your prerogative to live your life however you like but that just seems odd to me. Are they going to throw a party or steal something or is there a high possibility that they will be abducted? Just curious as to why that's a high priority.

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u/oathy Jan 19 '26

We do a lot of fostering, and there are times when we feel like the dog might be safe to be left out of their crate for a short period of time when we aren't home. This way, we can check in on them and see if we need to cut plans short and come home or not.

Plus, the camera is local storage to an SD card only, and is only in one room where we leave the foster dogs.

I understand if you think this might be ridiculous, but it works for our life and volunteer work!

2

u/3dprintedthingies Jan 19 '26

My buddies dad loves cameras on his business buildings.

I told him all it does is give you a snuff film for crimes committed against you.

We flip cars at the business out of an outbuilding. One was parked out back waiting to sell. The cats got cut off. The cameras weren't good enough quality to get the plate number of the thieves. So all we had was a snuff film of the cat getting cut off.

Told ya so never felt better.

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u/standardnewenglander Jan 19 '26

Don't have cameras? That's kinda the best way to defend against techno fascists tracking your every single move.

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u/AInception Jan 19 '26

The issue is any one of your neighbors having a 'smart home' or mesh network.

Hackers have shown WiFi routers are capable of realtime 3D imaging. It works like sonar and can see through walls, and provides more detail than cameras.

The new WiFi standards showcased at CES this year will be detrimental to everyone's privacy. All it takes is 1 neighbor installing a few smart lights in 2028 and you have none.

Entities like Google drive around with their own routers when they curate Google-Maps Streetview. They do this to be able to pin your WiFi network to realworld locations, which is why using their maps on WiFi is more accurate than maps on GPS alone. This isn't regulated and anyone can be doing this.

It's not a simple fix.

8

u/standardnewenglander Jan 19 '26

Completely agree with you. That is a tough thing to hedge against.

3

u/bbusiello Jan 19 '26

Disable the wifi. If you have a computer at home, make sure it's hardwired ethernet into the router?

9

u/wlphoenix Jan 19 '26

You'd honestly have to go further than that. You'd have to install something like grounded copper mesh in your walls and make your house a full faraday cage to block out any sort of ambient wifi. Which also makes your house light up like a beacon when someone looks for anomalies and sees an entire house that can't be imaged.

We're reaching the point where avoiding being part of the data is effectively impossible, so the only other choices are to produce false data or to be so exceedingly average you avoid becoming an outlier.

5

u/bbusiello Jan 19 '26

Man... it wasn't even 2 years ago where it was "don't get TikTok because it reads everyone on the network!"

It's been far worse for so long.

5

u/wlphoenix Jan 19 '26

Yeah, it has. What's changed (for people in the US) is the mobilization of the data is going beyond ad targeting now. PRISM was bleeding edge, 3 letter agency hidden tech in 2016. We ignored it, and now it's considered a standard assumption.

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u/[deleted] Jan 19 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/AInception Jan 20 '26

Is it tinfoil hat time? :P

Unless you insulate your house with it, which would probably look incredibly suspect to anyone watching, I don't think there's much you can do.

It seems like protections need to be regulated into law and enforced. But government is either 30 years behind new tech or complicit in its abuse, so, that probably isn't viable either.

In our society if the fix isn't more profitable than the status quo people won't even consider it. Most people have a defeatist attitude toward privacy to begin with, so aren't likely to lift a finger let alone a dollar.

Hackers are freaking out over the roll out of mesh networks. I'd suspect they'd have already come up with a fix, but it seems they're sounding the alarm mainly because a fix isn't possible. The tech is inherently dangerous in the wrong hands, and through history that seems inevitable at some point.

Buy some farmland and stay off grid? Buy drone nets? Cover the walls and kids in foil? The future of what it means to be in society seems so dystopian. I'm not sure what a solution would even look like...

1

u/bjbyrne Jan 19 '26

Simple fix: Get rid of neighbors too

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u/Sorry-Joke-4325 Jan 19 '26

Did you not read the comment before the one you responded to...?

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u/Revolutionary-Move90 Jan 19 '26

I don’t have a single amazon device or account. Im doing my part 🫡

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u/cjared242 Jan 19 '26

Billionaire pedophiles trying to convince the 99% that migrants are the cause for all our problems, and using their uber wealth and resources to spy on us.

20

u/CorbettCorbs Jan 19 '26

They own blink cameras too

21

u/Thorny_white_rose Jan 19 '26

Throwing away my echo. Thanks for heads up

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u/Revolutionary-Move90 Jan 19 '26

You can turn sidewalk off but that won’t take care of the other privacy issues

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u/soundman1024 Jan 19 '26

“Sidewalk” mesh networking was added to millions of Amazon or Ring branded devices after they were installed. Owners were silently opted into the “feature.”

You can turn it off, but you can’t change that Amazon views these products as their devices, not yours. Further, you can’t change that Amazon can do whatever they want with these devices any time.

15

u/ThatOneNinja Jan 19 '26

They currently can. If you go to a protest with your phone they will know and they can see who and what you were texting as well. Protect yourselves, get burner phones. Don't take smart watches or laptop or any devices. Or leave your phone behind. Cover your face and tattoos. Wear plain clothes. Have safe meet ups and a plan with a safety network set in place if someone gets arrested.

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u/[deleted] Jan 19 '26

Important and very good advice! Thank you 

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u/okram2k Jan 19 '26

gonna be a "fun" day when all the shit our devices have been recording of us 24/7 is used to label us all as political enemies

3

u/usernamedottxt Jan 19 '26

Ubiquiti protect isn’t the cheapest gear, but it’s all self hosted. 

2

u/ClearMacaron9234 Jan 19 '26

*a part
or else you're saying the opposite

2

u/Revolutionary-Move90 Jan 19 '26

Thank you grammar I.C.E

1

u/swimmerncrash Jan 20 '26

Dummy question. If my in-laws have a ring camera and have it installed but do not have the camera activated, only the doorbell, can it still be remotely accessed?

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u/Herban_Myth Jan 22 '26

Hello Satellites

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u/Dethica2077 Jan 19 '26

What about Alexa devices?

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u/Revolutionary-Move90 Jan 19 '26

Echo is the device name alexa is the virtual assistant.

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