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Teardown shows Nest Cam is always on even when you think it’s off

arstechnica.com

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Re: Teardown shows Nest Cam is always on even when you think it’s off

#11

Post by fredley »

listic wrote: post #8
fredley wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently built one with my raspberry pi and the camera module. It was stupidly easy, all the difficult parts (motion detection, saving short video recordings) are all done for you. I upload everything to s3, and set notifications on the bucket to my phone. If motion is detected, I get an email within a few seconds. If you're serious about not being spied on, the only reasonable thing to do is to build it yourself.…

How can you be sure you cannot be spied on, if you upload to the cloud?

If I was that paranoid, I'd encrypt the files. However I trust Amazon not to look at the contents of S3 buckets (being caught doing so would severely damage their business).

Re: Teardown shows Nest Cam is always on even when you think it’s off

#13

Post by rasz_pl »

listic wrote: post #3

I don't like paying money for devices and services that are able to steal my data and/or spy on me. I would like a security camera that is not able to connect to the outside world (when I'm back, it would allow me to see what was happening when I was out). I guess it should be allowed to the local network. Does anyone have a recommendation for a good one?

>I would like a security camera that is not able to connect to the outside world

The whole point is to have offsite backup. Very first thing more sophisticated thugs do is disable and steal your DVR setup:

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/08/the-chut...

Re: Teardown shows Nest Cam is always on even when you think it’s off

#15

Post by ocdtrekkie »

rasz_pl wrote: post #13
listic wrote: post #3

I don't like paying money for devices and services that are able to steal my data and/or spy on me. I would like a security camera that is not able to connect to the outside world (when I'm back, it would allow me to see what was happening when I was out). I guess it should be allowed to the local network. Does anyone have a recommendation for a good one?

>I would like a security camera that is not able to connect to the outside world The whole point is to have offsite backup. Very first thing more sophisticated thugs do is disable and steal your DVR setup: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/08/the-chut...

Sure, but the product and the service should be separate, so that you are free to choose your storage provider, and so that you can be sure the service can't do anything nasty with your product. Allowing products and services to be converged is bad for consumers.

Re: Teardown shows Nest Cam is always on even when you think it’s off

#16

Post by gruez »

listic wrote: post #8
fredley wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently built one with my raspberry pi and the camera module. It was stupidly easy, all the difficult parts (motion detection, saving short video recordings) are all done for you. I upload everything to s3, and set notifications on the bucket to my phone. If motion is detected, I get an email within a few seconds. If you're serious about not being spied on, the only reasonable thing to do is to build it yourself.…

How can you be sure you cannot be spied on, if you upload to the cloud?

If you're paranoid, you can always encrypt before uploading.

Re: Teardown shows Nest Cam is always on even when you think it’s off

#18

Post by dmd »

PeterStuer wrote: post #6
CM30 wrote: post #2

Take it as you will, but some of the comments in the article are saying that the only things left active are the wifi functionality to remotely switch the device on again, and that the 'camera' part is completely disabled as you'd expect. So at the moment, it's a bit less ominous than the title suggests. That said, I do find it irritating how many devices seem to want to be on permanent 'standby' nowadays, especially…

It says it stops transmitting the video to the cloud service. It doesn't say it turns of the camera part. In fact, from the power draw and the ABI article it seems the only things being turned of are the camera indicator led and the motion detection. Recording seems to continue at 1080p.

> Recording seems to continue

It has no on-board storage. Where exactly do you think it's recording to, if it's not transmitting?

Re: Teardown shows Nest Cam is always on even when you think it’s off

#19

Post by rplnt »

dmd wrote: post #18
PeterStuer wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It says it stops transmitting the video to the cloud service. It doesn't say it turns of the camera part. In fact, from the power draw and the ABI article it seems the only things being turned of are the camera indicator led and the motion detection. Recording seems to continue at 1080p.

> Recording seems to continue It has no on-board storage. Where exactly do you think it's recording to, if it's not transmitting?

It doesn't have to store the video to process it?

Re: Teardown shows Nest Cam is always on even when you think it’s off

#20

Post by ausjke »

PeterStuer wrote: post #6
CM30 wrote: post #2

Take it as you will, but some of the comments in the article are saying that the only things left active are the wifi functionality to remotely switch the device on again, and that the 'camera' part is completely disabled as you'd expect. So at the moment, it's a bit less ominous than the title suggests. That said, I do find it irritating how many devices seem to want to be on permanent 'standby' nowadays, especially…

It says it stops transmitting the video to the cloud service. It doesn't say it turns of the camera part. In fact, from the power draw and the ABI article it seems the only things being turned of are the camera indicator led and the motion detection. Recording seems to continue at 1080p.

this could be technically true, if you shutdown the streaming totally, resuming it cleanly normally require a reboot, which is slow for customers, which is why the reason the encoding is kept running all the time. Been there done that.
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