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alehlopeh 9 hours ago

A lot of you won’t want to hear it but HomeKit + iCloud secure video is the only way to go. For one thing it’s end to end encrypted. You can also do ML stuff like face recognition which happens locally on your Apple TV. And you can set it to trigger HomeKit scenes if eg the person in the video isn’t recognized, or if it recognizes a particular person. Yeah Apple bad, blah blah. But they don’t have an incentive to sell your data.

whatever1 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Unless you explicitly enable Advanced Protection mode for all your devices, Apple stores your key in their servers and will give it to whoever legitimate looking asks for it. Aka ICE etc will definitely be granted access.

digiown 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I wouldn't trust E2EE implemented by an entity against itself that can also push arbitrary updates in principle. Also, any E2EE product that has a non-E2EE mode seems prone to accidental leaks.

varenc 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I don't think that's true for HomeKit Secure Video (HKSV). Advanced Protection turns on E2EE for various iCloud services like iCloud backups and Apple photos. But HKSV is already E2EE'd and the decryption keys aren't part of the device's iCloud backup. At least that's my understanding. I believe health data and the iCloud keychain is similar.

nozzlegear 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Unless you explicitly enable Advanced Protection mode for all your devices

This is very easy though, you just go to your iCloud account settings under the settings app and enable it. It should be on by default imo, but I understand the argument for why it isn't.

Either way, enabling it is not a barrier and ICE cannot be granted access once you do unless you yourself give them that access.

gib444 7 hours ago | parent [-]

Extremely tricky in the UK (Apple (at the behest of the Gov AFAIK) disabled it)

nozzlegear 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Ah my mistake, I forgot they did that.

devStorms 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Home data is always E2EE https://support.apple.com/en-us/102651

akimbostrawman 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Can you point me to the source code i can run on the device? Otherwise it's just another pinky promise for a blackbox by a company that can change at any time even for individual user.

jonahx 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I would like to replace Ring with something fully local.

Local ML/face recognition would be a bonus. Ability to sync to a private owned server owned by me would be a bonus.

I'm assuming there are projects out there that would enable this -- does anyone have recommendations?

brewtide 9 hours ago | parent [-]

Frigate NVR tied to a home assistant instance has my phone getting proactive notifications about people, birds, and buses (in their select areas...). It's not the easiest thing to setup, but if you're using ethernet cameras it seems to work very very well. The few POS wyze cameras's I have on the system tend to cause some problems, but I know for a fact it's 100% a combination of a) wifi (no matter how 'quality') b) wyze.

So, yeah. Look into frigate.

zamadatix 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

When I got an Apple TV I never expected the main value I'd get out of it was being a smart home hub. I do wish the automations were a bit more programmable. Other than that it has been perfect, everything even failed over to my other Apple TV when rearranging the living room without having to think about setting either up as hubs.

dewey 8 hours ago | parent [-]

Also it's the perfect Tailscale exit node that's always online in your home (They have a tvOS app)

noduerme 7 hours ago | parent [-]

I bought a windows minipc a couple months ago for this purpose, and it's basically useless if I'm on the road more than a week, because every windows update causes a reboot and a logout. I know, I should run Linux on it.

Marsymars 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I'm a heavy Apple user (Apple TVs, Mac Mini, iPad), but we also have Android phones in my household, so HomeKit Secure Video is a no-go.

If Apple ever releases an Apple Home app for Android, I'd transition my entire home over by the time of my next Google Home Premium subscription renewal.

radredgreen2 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

And you can run open source camera firmware on a disconnected vlan if you don't want to trust a phone app or a camera with internet access.

https://github.com/radredgreen/wyrecam

willio58 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

And there’s no subscription right?

righthand 9 hours ago | parent [-]

Icloud subscription.

aenis 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Huh? Just roll your own, thats hacker news after all.

Frigrate nvr + cameras that are confined to internal network. Easy peasy. And you get to set it up exactly as you want.

p.s. i am not saying going with apple is a bad idea (i dont have an opinion), i am just saying thats far from the "only way to go"

p-e-w 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

There’s actually another alternative: Just don’t install surveillance in your home. Approximately nobody had it 20 years ago. Before asking which unreliable, overpriced, invasive gadget to buy, think about whether you really need any of them.

nozzlegear 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Why? I like to keep an eye on my dogs when we're away, and it's all done securely using HomeKit video. My iCloud is e2e encrypted and the camera doesn't upload anywhere besides there.

What's the invasive part? Not giving my dogs privacy when we're out of the home?

gib444 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Did your CCTV increase the time you leave the dogs alone, out of interest?

We never needed CCTV in the 90s/00s for dogs. We would have someone take the dogs out for a walk/toilet, or if having to regularly leave them alone beyond what is fair to them, re-home them

And if you need to check they're not causing mischief they're likely not tired enough

So I'm wondering what use case remains really

nozzlegear 2 hours ago | parent [-]

> We never needed CCTV in the 90s/00s for dogs.

We never needed the telephone back when we had smoke signals and carrier pigeons either.

Here are three real scenarios that have happened to us just off the top of my head where I was thankful we had cameras and locally stored footage rather than smoke signals and old timey folklore:

1. We couldn't find our cat last summer. Turns out she was sitting in the living room window and pounced on a fly that landed on the screen. The corner of the screen pushed out and she fell right out the window. She has no interest in going outside so we never looked for her out there, but she was huddled in a bush right where she fell hours later.

2. A train carrying chemicals derailed and caught fire in my hometown several years ago, causing an evacuation order while we were out of town (https://www.kcci.com/article/evacuation-order-lifted-followi...). The sheriff wouldn't let us back into town for several hours, but we were at least able to judge that our animals were nervous yet okay.

3. My wife came in from the back yard with the dog, who had suddenly started foaming at the mouth. She's panicking, thinking he ate some kind of poison. I have no idea what's going on, so while she calls the vet I look at the camera feed for our patio and see he had been following a little toad around on the deck while my wife was in the garden before finally scooping it up and giving it a few licks.

Would we have gotten by without a camera in all of these scenarios? Absolutely. But it never hurts to have more data, especially when it's privacy friendly and local, and it's disingenuous to nitpick the very basic human desire for peace of mind as if you don't understand it.

> or if having to regularly leave them alone beyond what is fair to them, re-home them

> And if you need to check they're not causing mischief they're likely not tired enough

Don't patronize me.

gib444 an hour ago | parent [-]

So you do leave them for hours and hours, got it.

olyjohn 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Like, its fine that you use it for that, you do you... but I don't understand the actual use case? What are you watching the dogs for? Like are you going to rush home if they shit on the carpet or something?

nozzlegear 3 hours ago | parent [-]

The use case is peace of mind lol, what's not to understand?

zamadatix 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Approximately nobody was using everything x years ago. That's not really a measure of what's nice to have and what's not, it's a measure of how long the nice to have has been around.

ThatMedicIsASpy 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

A 1080p cam with night vision a mic and speakers is 20 bucks. Baby monitors where more expensive in the past (audio only).

kulahan 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Tons of people had cameras 20 years ago. It was 2006, not 1906. Besides, we've had pets for surveillance for hundreds of thousands of years. Literally nobody in history has thought "nah no need for security".

What a ridiculous way to try and be on a high horse.

FarmerPotato 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Pets as surveillance... now we watch the watchers.

Barrin92 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I always wonder what the overlap of this economically is. If you can afford all this home surveillance gear aren't you already likely to live in a place that's comically safe? Why are in particular Americans with their gated communities full of soccer moms and Labradors putting cameras on their house as if they're living on a US military base?

nozzlegear 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

We have cameras to watch our dogs and make sure they're not getting into trouble with each other, things in the house, the cats, etc. We're not worried about bad guys or our personal safety.

recursive 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I like the idea of comedy based on safety.

righthand 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Apple totally sells your data, they just anonymize it first. Why do you think they shifted towards services?

They also can give the Feds access to your iCloud data through a NSL. Just like Prism.

macki0 9 hours ago | parent | next [-]

iCloud data can be end to end encrypted (https://support.apple.com/en-gb/108756)

nozzlegear 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

McDonald's can give my data to the feds through an NSL, yet I still buy their fries every now and then despite the risk.

noduerme 7 hours ago | parent [-]

The good news is they can't catch you if you're already dead from a heart attack.

mwambua 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Do you have evidence of that?

donohoe 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Citation needed