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/

The area I was in was like the Korean DMZ with regard to flock cameras. I had one at the only entrance to my neighborhood. A trip to the grocery store would put me in their database 12 times at last count.

I still have to worry about the standardized fleet of cameras at Home Depot and a few other retailers, but it's not nearly as bad out here. Location is a big part of the dystopia. It is not evenly distributed. Fighting back at the municipal and HOA level can make a massive difference. Some areas seem hopeless though. You're better off finding something that already mostly works and trying hard to keep it that way.

The general fear level of the local population seems to be the biggest factor in all of this. I went from a place where people would do the quadruple check car lock routine when walking into the grocery store, to a place where many leave their unlocked vehicles idling in the parking lot. I don't even think about locking my doors at home now. It almost feels silly to do it around here. It's amazing the difference that ~65 miles can make.

0: https://store.ui.com/us/en/category/cameras-doorbells/collec...

I was always suspicious of Ring and never understood the people using it.

https://ring.com/support/articles/7e3lk/using-video-end-to-e...

That's just being a realistic technology user in 2025.

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.

Not sure how YC sees this.

Is it as secure as a cloud service? Depends on what you consider secure. I closely monitor access logs and use strong passwords, Amazon has billions to spend on encryption, apps, and datacenters but they also have thousands of employees that can access your data at any time for any reason.

I would love it if some commercial host-it-yourself product were released but that goes against the pay to play model that has been chosen for all modern tech.

Sadly it is only going to get much worse before it gets better.

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.

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.

Some people have the setting on where it starts announcing stuff any time it sees a person, which it does all the way to the sidewalk. So you go on a walk and get yelled at through a super shitty speaker several times.

And it’s about as dystopian as you can imagine with people posting recordings constantly on the neighborhood Facebook group and arguing.

I swapped to HomeKit secure video because of no additional subscription, included in the iCloud one I’m paying anyway. Allegedly end to end encrypted too.

I'm usually against these types of "smart" devices, but only bought it because my house got burgled as a student (whilst I was asleep!), so I got pretty shaken up and got the cheapest thing I could find. Currently, I do have it connected to a local HA instance, but I'm pretty sure that relies on Ring's online services to access it, unless I'm mistaken.

Reality has become more stupid than even visionaries could have predicted.

https://techcrunch.com/2024/12/06/a16z-backed-toka-wants-to-...

This is a little misleading. Flock is primarily an ALPR that can identify make/model/color/identifying-feature of vehicles. It's not facial recognition. It doesn't itself have a racial component. The modal "proactive" Flock intervention (as opposed to investigative searches after crimes) is to flag a moving vehicle as stolen.

But in practice, the outcomes of deploying Flock are racialized, because the hot lists states keep of stolen vehicles aren't accurate enough for real-time enforcement, so recovered vehicles stay on the lists and false-positive. You're disproportionately likely to have a vehicle on a hot list if you live in a low-income neighborhood.

Even then: it's not clear how any of this is apposite to a Ring/Flock partnership. You can't use a Ring camera to do realtime ALPR flagging of cars. Presumably, this supports Flock's "single pane of glass" product; they just want police going to Flock for all their video needs. Police already canvass Ring and Nest cameras during investigations.

Wonder if that helps any.

https://ring.com/support/articles/7e3lk/using-video-end-to-e...

I had to buy a surveillance camera recently, but I made sure mine doesn’t connect to the internet in any way.

This is us against the oligarchs, not us against each other. And something makes me worried that there is an impending recession/depression and that these surveillance devices will be use to quell any dissent. (I say this because of the insane rise in the price of gold)

I, for one, am canceling my Amazon Prime account and avoiding amazon as much as I can in this dystopia where it is the only place you can buy many goods anymore.

I am stricken with fear over the control and manipulation by the Chinese state. A dominance over people without respect or regard, a self certainty and pomp that denies life & possibility.

But what the West is letting happen here, the limitless post-state open-for-anyone surveillance Flock & others are offering has seemingly even less bounds, less respect, less purpose, less direction. These people, this enterprise is clearly the worst possible thing we could do, the most awful accrual & misuse of the world against its people's. To spy on everyone & to without regard sell that days to everyone is a crime against all.

Flock is truly the #HostisHumaniGeneris. Woe & (all too expectable) disappointment to see Amazon giving up all their data to fascist pro ICE losers who, were we a descent society, we would run out of the world.