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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

#21

Post by ausjke »

robmcm wrote: post #9
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 think there is an ever increasing market for reverse engineered services for products like this. I would love to have a local instance of their back end running, that I would be in total control of. That way I could choose to make it work externally or not, or even have it working when there is not external internet connectivity. The problem is, the perceived value of these companies is having access to the video.…

there are cameras with a lid that you can physically close video-taking, no way to bypass it.

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

#22

Post by dmd »

rplnt wrote: post #19
dmd wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

No. Dropcam streams. There's no on-board storage. (Ok, maybe there's a megabyte or so - enough to store about one second of video for buffering before transmitting.)

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

#23

Post by mmastrac »

fredley wrote: post #7
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 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.…

Any chance you could point at the libraries you are using?

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

#25

Post by lfowles »

mmastrac wrote: post #23
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.…

Any chance you could point at the libraries you are using?

There's a program called `motion` that I've used in the past for a similar setup.

http://linux.die.net/man/1/motion

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

#26

Post by oh_sigh »

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?

A general purpose computer seems like the worst possible thing you could buy then.

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

#27

Post by michaelt »

fredley wrote: post #11
listic wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

  being caught doing so would severely damage
  their business
The threat of bad publicity for his employer discourages Andy from looking in the S3 buckets. But it also stops Bob blowing the whistle if he sees Andy looking in the S3 buckets.

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

#28

Post by click170 »

mmastrac wrote: post #23
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.…

Any chance you could point at the libraries you are using?

There is a Linux program called Motion that I use to monitor my IP cameras.

It records to a location of your choosing and has pre and post motion detection hooks allowing you to email the pictures or videos to yourself when motion is detected.

IME it works quite well. I setup one camera and motion uses about 60% CPU, but there was no noticeable increase when I added camera 2 3 and 4.

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

#29

Post by brbsix »

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...

Surveillance cameras constitute an "illegal eavesdropping operation", says Santa Ana Police Association. Sick. More and more you have to consider LE as the enemy when worrying about security (both physical and digital).

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

#30

Post by rplnt »

dmd wrote: post #22
rplnt wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

No. Dropcam streams. There's no on-board storage. (Ok, maybe there's a megabyte or so - enough to store about one second of video for buffering before transmitting.)

How does that negate my statement? You don't have to store (much of) the video to process it locally on the device. As an example, it's being compressed before streaming. As to whether it does something with the video is another question, but it's definitely possible without storage.
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