George Orwell really never could have imagined that people would flock to purchase or otherwise use the methods of their own surveillance. (smart phones, social media, smart cameras, modern cars, etc) I think it paints government surveillance policies in something of a different light. There is definitely a constituency which believes that the evil central government is pushing for surveillance in a purely unilateral way.
I'm not really pro-government, but modern surveillance capitalism really pushes against this view. Put to their own devices, the public will generally (and apparently) flock towards mass surveillance all on their own, and I think one possible implication is that the government surveillance policies are more popular then some folks in HN circles would suspect.
These are mappable in OpenStreetMap with the tags surveillance:type=camera + camera:mount=doorbell
Data query around the Netherlands shows about a hundred are mapped so far as specifically doorbell cameras: https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/2dQw (the tag does not yet seem established in the USA). There are also many thousands of cameras mapped that are either not doorbell-mounted, or simply not tagged to such detail. This is a convenient map to see all of them: https://sunders.intri.cat/
In most of EU doorbell cameras that point to public places are not covered by GDPR's household exception so if you use them you would be classified as data controller which come with it's own set of duties, responsibilities & limits. Is that not the case in Netherlands?
And this is why my setup will be using Reolink cameras integrated locally via HomeAssistant and Frigate. Detection runs locally on cameras and/or in Frigate, HA manages events and UI, and the only way to access any of it remotely is via VPN, no "cloud" anything.
If the authorities come knocking with a warrant, or frankly, even a nicely-worded sensible request, sure, have at it. But ain't nobody accessing the footage unnoticed and without my approval.
When you take this info and combine it with the ability of Wifi7 routers to "see" where people are in their house, you realize that the recent demo of Anduril's helmet that gives an information display that the soldier/cop wearing it can use to "see who is in the house" or "see around corners" etc. is not sci-fi but instead, something they can do today.
Stop paying companies to put spyware in your house. Don't connect your smart TV to the network, don't buy cloud cameras, and above all don't run a phone with an OS that they phone company gives you.
Keep voting for politicians that spend our money on weapons and violence, this is the stuff we'll keep getting. This applies to both major political parties in the US.
This is the logical conclusion to the state of irrational fear that Americans perpetually live in, that causes them to feel they need 24/7 surveillance of their homes, no matter the consequences.
So, rather than Big Brother being government-imposed monitoring paid for by all taxpayers, the concerned citizenry is flipping the bill for the devices, network connectivity and electricity. Fascinating.
That's just capitalism vs socialism. In communist countries, the state provides the surveillance. In capitalist America, the consumers pay for state surveillance.
People need devices that will protect them from this mass surveillance. Plausible deniability needs to be restored.
Some sort of jamming tech or scrambling tech. There’s no reason to lock everyone into a surveillance state when we should be fighting it. Fighting through legislation isn’t tenable anymore.
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 78.8 ms ] threadI'm not really pro-government, but modern surveillance capitalism really pushes against this view. Put to their own devices, the public will generally (and apparently) flock towards mass surveillance all on their own, and I think one possible implication is that the government surveillance policies are more popular then some folks in HN circles would suspect.
Data query around the Netherlands shows about a hundred are mapped so far as specifically doorbell cameras: https://overpass-turbo.eu/s/2dQw (the tag does not yet seem established in the USA). There are also many thousands of cameras mapped that are either not doorbell-mounted, or simply not tagged to such detail. This is a convenient map to see all of them: https://sunders.intri.cat/
If the authorities come knocking with a warrant, or frankly, even a nicely-worded sensible request, sure, have at it. But ain't nobody accessing the footage unnoticed and without my approval.
I was always suspicious of Ring and never understood the people using it.
I buy their mice. They've been good mice and I'm increasingly unhappy with Logitech.
Occasionally I buy some cables. I think that's it.
Sadly it is only going to get much worse before it gets better.
Not sure how YC sees this.
In case you haven't noticed, the surveillance state is 100% YC adjacent.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45382434 (discussion from 2025-09-26)
Some sort of jamming tech or scrambling tech. There’s no reason to lock everyone into a surveillance state when we should be fighting it. Fighting through legislation isn’t tenable anymore.