A new neighbor moved in and is really advocating for them, but I think most people in the HOA are split. It’s come up after some recent thefts after someone left a garage door open. I’m thinking of organizing my arguments like this:
- Even with a camera capturing a thief’s face, police are unlikely to actually catch the person or retreive the stolen property.
- Invasion of personal privacy, I don’t like being tracked and my whereabouts being monitored
- Surrendering biometric data without my consent
- Police / ICE using the data without permission to harass our residents
How does this sound? It’s so exhausting fighting against this. Does anyone have any other good points or articles that can provide support? Many thanks in advance
Go talk to your local police department. They’ll likely have some suggestions on how to place to the cameras to be most useful in an investigation.
You may also be surprised to find out they’ll just ignore the video evidence unless the thief holds up their driver’s license and 6 other forms of valid ID in front of the camera. In other words, you might find out there will be no investigation regardless of how much video footage you present.Yeah, I’m pretty sure this is the case. I have to believe that the police have much more pressing work than these small time thefts. I’m just trying to find some article attesting to that, not just anecdotes. But all my research turns up is stuff from camera companies pushing their products lol
Maybe simply point out that people should remember to secure their belongings. Close and lock your garage door
Sounds good to me. Not sure what will convince HOA.
How is the neighbor advocating for them? Like, are they making a rational case, or is it just vibes? I’m curious what problems they think they’re solving and how these cameras would solve them.
They’ve had property stolen, and I’m pretty sure they don’t trust the rest of the residents of the HOA
Love this whole thread.
I would politely suggest a weekly thread like this one. Talking to {no common sense about tech} about {tech thing} in a way where they come to understand the problem, plainly and accurately.
How many places are there where you can see that in a way that real actual humans can understand, without getting yelled at by the poster? Not enough, that’s how many.
I’d reinforce point one with consideration of cost/benefits. Purchase, install, maintenance, replacement, and compliance with legal requirements are all going to have a cost. Most people don’t feel like they’re getting their money’s worth out of having an HOA in the first place, much less want to pay more for essentially no benefit. Since the primary benefit of security cameras (if not being professionally monitored) is deterrence, maybe you could get the benefit without the invasion or cost with some dummy cams. <10% of the cost for 99% of the benefit.
And if the thefts keep occurring despite dummy cameras, you know it’s someone from the HOA. Maybe the new neighbour themselves!
Money is better spent on (name anything around the premises that needs repair or upgrade)
Ugh I would have said this too, but the resident pushing for the cameras is offering to pay out of pocket
Sure, initially. What about upkeep and future replacements?
Say nothing and break the cameras. Keep doing it until they decide it’s too expensive.
Maybe start asking for details about who will have access to them, will they be monitored, how long will footage be kept, etc. I bet most folks have a neighbor that they don’t want having access.
And once the people real they don’t want Karen the HOE president having full access, it means you’ll have to pay a security firm. Hammer them on the costs for this vs having individuals set up their own security on their properties.
Cameras allow the HOA to monitor residents, whether or not they’re technically allowed to
This is a good one, and perhaps, depending on your jurisdiction, it could open the HOA to potential civil litigation for privacy violations. There may also be requirements for reporting or retention if law enforcement or a court requests it, and that’s additional overhead.
Does the HOA restrict individual residents from putting them on their own property?
If they’re in shared common areas it affects all residents indiscriminately so it makes sense, to me at least, that unanimous agreement should be needed.
However, why not propose an alternative whereby this particular resident can add them to their property.
It took me 4 years but this is why I got our HOA disbanded.
Cheap cameras often have bad side effects.
Amazon cameras stream everything to Amazon. There was a story where a delivery guy heard the camera wrong and reported it to Amazon, then Amazon disabled their Amazon account and it disabled their entire smart home. Amazon also gives all the footage to police, even when nothing wrong has happened.
Arlo cameras were sold as “local” but still uploaded to their cloud, and everyone has access by guessing the URL, there was no password or anything.
Lots of these cheaper cameras have so many flaws.
I have 2 camera systems. Offline local system that just records if anything happens, no internet at all.
I have another system that I have cameras in specific places (like the driveway) and I can get notifications of any movement.
It’s really, really hard to find a good one, thats also secure. Also does it have to be online?
sounds like the states
Ask about retention and privacy policies: who can access them, and how can we confirm that? How often will that access policy be reviewed? Which primary and secondary person is responsible for confirming access and access lists? The risk of lawsuits could require insurance;nor will the contingency fund be paying for lawsuits brought by privacy violations that could arrive a decade after a violation? Where are the recordings stored, and for how long? Which member and secondary is responsible for reporting the status and size of held recordings, confirm they’re being rotated and deleted, and confirm their storage medium is secure and private? Will passwords be rotated, and who is responsible for doing that, and who else is responsible for checking it’s been changed in the atrata meetings? Is this an outsourcing thing, and which committee picks the company managing your backed up recordings, and is this the same group which will report on security compliance (advertised and tested randomly) where your likenesses will be stored?
Need more? Storing someone’s likeness for any length of time requires a LOT of boxes checked, repeatedly, and this is often too much for most organizations, especially if they need to outsource the tech work. Asking periodically to have tapes remove your likeness and confirm it’s removed will swamp an FTE, but suggest everyone do this to confirm their movements and ensure accuracy.
Recommend ALL this not be taken from contingency fund.
I’m willing to bet that over the years, most of the theft and damage in the building has been to cars in the garage. Cameras placed there would also have caught the culprit as they entered. Rather than place them everywhere, maybe at least restrict them to the garage.
From the context of the post, I’m assuming it is personal garages attached to houses, and the theft was from specific neighbors that left the garage door open, not from a parking garage building.
Reads to me more like there’s a shared garage and the new neighbor had something stolen from their vehicle when another resident left the garage door open. Or possibly the whole garage area isn’t gated and someone left the building entrance door from the garage open, so the theft was from a lobby. If the “common areas” are out on the street, wouldn’t the new resident have to have left his own garage open? In which case he has only himself to blame.
The neighbor leaving their own garage open and having only themself to blame is exactly how I read it. I was assuming the HOA was planning to put surveillance cameras around the entire neighborhood, partially because I’ve only heard HOA as referring to suburban residential communities, and usually have heard “board” or “committee” being used for building or townhome setups.
