When you buy a cheap $29 camera, you aren't the customer; you are the product. Many budget manufacturers (and some mainstream ones, depending on the EULA you clicked "Agree" to without reading) sell aggregated data to data brokers. This means the footage of your neighbor’s kids playing on the sidewalk could be anonymized, packaged, and sold to marketing firms analyzing pedestrian traffic patterns.

Home security cameras are notoriously vulnerable to hacking because users fail to change default passwords (e.g., "admin/admin"). There is a dark web economy dedicated to streaming hacked "Camming" feeds. Unlike smartphones, many cameras lack screens to indicate if someone is watching live.

The issue is not "surveillance vs. no surveillance." That battle is over. We have chosen surveillance. The issue now is

In the last decade, the home security camera has undergone a radical transformation. What was once a grainy, expensive novelty reserved for the wealthy or the paranoid is now a ubiquitous smart-home staple. From Doorbell cameras that alert you to a package delivery to 4K pan-tilt-zoom domes tracking a raccoon across the lawn, we have built a surveillance state on our own doorsteps.

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