The Doorbell Camera and Your Privacy

Experts wonder if these gadgets are making us too complacent with being surveilled.

My girlfriend got a Ring doorbell camera for the front door of our new house, so any time someone approaches we get an alert on our phones and we can watch a video of whatever they are doing, which will be stored if we should wish to view it later.

I was having a difficult time articulating to her why I was so opposed to this product. It was giving me anxiety and I saw it as a violation of my privacy, but I had to look at the trade-off.

Recently two ratchet-ass drug addicts who were living in their car in front of our house had stolen some property from our garage, and when I confronted them, the male half of this power couple made some threatening comments to me. I then became extremely concerned, not about a physical scuffle with this methed-out loser during daylight hours, but of them knowing where we slept and breaking into the house while in a drug-induced state of psychosis. At once I came full circle, and was grateful for the doorbell camera, and we also installed one on the side of the house.

The problem is that we live in a reasonably high-trafficked area with neighbors and stray cats walking by on a consistent basis. Twice every hour I was getting a chiming alert that someone was at the front door. Worried it might be the druggies, I would pull my phone out to see a possum sniffing the doormat. This was going on at all hours of the night and I was losing sleep. I wondered if I’d rather just take my chances with being murdered as this was really no way to live. I didn’t feel any more at peace. I actually got a worst-case-scenario rush of worry every time I got an alert. I thought maybe I’d be happier just not knowing what was lurking outside my front door.

Then one morning the heavens opened, and the crackhead couple were gone from living on our street. I believe their car finally broke down and they moved into a tent in a new neighborhood where they are still happily stealing people’s property and spreading monkeypox.

I almost immediately silenced the alerts on my phone and I rarely think about the doorbell camera anymore, except for every time I enter my house and am reminded that I’m being surveilled.

Yes, my girlfriend can see whenever I come and go. Even if she was out of town on business, she could see me returning home from the bar with a thirty pack of Budweiser, several questionable biker chicks, a kiddy pool, and three liters of baby oil.

I’m not doing any of that. But I really do not like the fact that, if I was, I know I’d get a text saying, “WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON!!!!” It bothers me. I feel like part of the purpose of having a house is that it is, or was, by nature, private. My biggest fear is actually returning home and the camera picking up that I’m carrying a giant bag of Taco Bell and then later hearing “Aren’t you trying to watch your blood pressure? Do you know how much sodium is in that?”

My phone’s view of the Ring cameras.

Basically, I just don’t like the feeling of being monitored. I can sense many readers thinking, “Well if you’re not doing anything wrong, what do you have to worry about?” It’s interesting because that’s the same way people justify the government illegally spying on its citizens through programs like PRISM, and how lawmakers justified the Patriot Act in the first place. It’s not a good argument because there is a massive potential for abuse, and that is exactly what has happened.

It seems like the home surveillance trend happened overnight, and nobody ever discussed it much. Suddenly we’d inched closer to Back to the Future.

I was staying at a friend’s house not long ago, and he has cats. For that reason, I noticed that he had a camera set up in the TV room where the cats hang out, I guess to make sure they were still alive while he was at work. But I didn’t notice this camera for the first three days I was staying with him. I could have been practicing yoga naked or doing any number of activities that I would not especially want to be recorded. People now have their children’s rooms on surveillance. It would seem like common sense that these kids’ knowledge of being surveilled will affect them in some way. I think the lack of privacy will make them jittery and that they’ll be less sociable, I mean, wouldn’t you be less impressed with the presence of another person if you figure one has been watching you all day anyway? It’s less of an occasion when someone drops by.

Uber drivers have dashboard cams. Businesses have them. Cities. Soon most houses will be armed with cameras. And of course, many police now have body cameras so they can document themselves abusing their authority.

We have suddenly found ourselves at the point that if you don’t want to be surveilled, your only option is to drive deep into nature or sail pretty far out into the ocean.

We don’t even know how this is going to change people, even epigenetically. Maybe it will cut down on crime, although crime is accelerating.

I can remember a time, not long ago, when I was growing up in Alaska and I was pretty much never monitored by cameras. I knew this. Or I didn’t know that I wasn’t. Everything felt normal in this regard, like it had been for the previous hundred-thousand years of civilization. I could go where I wanted. Nobody knew. There was no app for my parents to track my vehicle’s movements. I could do what I wanted behind closed doors. I could walk down the street without that gnawing awareness that I was being watched. Not that I was doing anything wrong. It’s the principle. The same reason I do not support the NSA in its (illegal) clandestine efforts. It seems like an invasion, and it is. Where did I even consent to being monitored on a train platform or in a department store? It’s starting to bug me.

That’s not to say I think all of this is bad, although I do hate the doorbell camera. I feel like the knowledge you’re being watched will make people more distant and closed-off, in that it will have the effect of basically muting people. Making them more subservient. More boring, is what I mean. They’ll be more concerned about punishment for whatever behavior they think they may not get away with. They’ll be less fun. I don’t just mean nefarious things. The’ll be less likely to sing, because they’ll be concerned that someone might hear them. I also get the feeling that being accepting of a lack of privacy might make people much more likely to give up what they have left, because what does it matter. I wonder if that might explain the Supreme Court’s behavior.

I’m going to have to lobby my girlfriend to remove the Ring camera. It might be a good safety feature, and she’d be right in arguing that. But at this point I feel like my house might be the one place I have left to get away with going unnoticed. I think I’m willing to sacrifice my safety for my freedom on this one.