Monitoring

August 01, 2024

When we were in Maine, we were amused with stories of the odd behaviors caught on the video cameras surrounding our niece and nephew’s house.  They purchased an abandoned restaurant situated on a lake and for the first several years they were constantly visited by folks thinking the restaurant was still open.  Since the property is on a secluded dead end road anyone who makes it past the fence and onto their yard has no business being there.  Still, there have been several visitors (mostly intoxicated) who have arrived while they have been at work.  That prompted my nephew to install video cameras on the property to alert them if anything happens while they are both gone.  Since their monitoring service records and saves the activity, we were able to watch the antics.

When I looked online, I found the smart home monitoring and security market is one of the most important smart home market segments and was expected to reach approximately US$32.5 billion in 2024 in the US, before nearly doubling in size by 2029.  In 2023, smart home monitoring and security devices constituted the second largest segment of the smart home market in terms of shipments, estimated at around 252 million units.  Connected cameras and doorbells are the most common home security products.  These products are usually designed as part of an integrated smart home ecosystem and are able to generate ongoing revenues for the manufacturer in the form of a subscription fee to access saved recordings.  In 2023, the market for smart doorbells worldwide was valued at around US$16 billion.  In 2024, global spending on information technology is forecast to exceed US$200 billion, with the largest segments being security services, infrastructure protection, and network security equipment.  Artificial intelligence (AI), particularly generative AI, presents an immense potential to improve analytic accuracy, reduce processing in the cloud, and make the system more reliable.

It was somewhat ironic that after we returned home, we had our own home incident.  Melissa had noticed a man lurking around the shop in our back yard and asked me to go see what he was up to.  Our yard backs up onto a large fee space that is lightly forested on one side.  I let the dogs our back and then went with them to see if I could find anything.  I did not.  The next day Melissa heard the front door rattling and went to check.  She opened the door just as the same man was reaching to open the screen.  By this time the kids had arrived and were providing a “friendly” greeting.  She asked if she could help him, and he mumbled something and left.  Melissa began to research camera monitoring systems and reached out to our nephew to see what he recommended.  We now own four cameras for monitoring our two entrance doors, my raised beds and the shop, and our living room.  The living room is for monitoring the kids when we leave them on their own.  A pig’s ear will only keep them occupied for so long.

THOUGHTS:  Between the kids and our new monitoring system we both feel safer, but some warn about how the stored information from the cameras is potentially used.  Shoshana Zuboff, the author of “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism,” warned passing laws that allow police to access stored video creates an environment that fuses government power and private power.  As long as the government depends on the tech companies for access, there will be no laws to stop unwanted data collection.  A security camera can act as a useful deterrent to prevent property crime (break-ins and porch thefts), but will do little to prevent violent crime, although it could help a police investigation.  Both the cameras and the audio alerts can be turned off or set for specific hours.  This allows you to choose when you want to be online and how you are monitoring.  Every advance in technology can be both a bane and a blessing.  Act for all.  Change is coming and it starts with you.