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 given all the talk about wasting electricity. Or the related worries about spies being able to remotely activate devices because they're not completely off.
It has no on-board storage. Where exactly do you think it's recording to, if it's not transmitting?
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?
Don't do analog. It's cheaper but it's not really worth it, you should get at least 720p these days (that means IP) and I'd reckon analog equipment won't be easy to buy for very many more years.
Don't do wifi. You need to get power to the camera anyway, so run ethernet with PoE. All these WiFi surveillance cameras are crazy, jammers are pretty easy to obtain and burglars are going to start using them. In a business installation, you should segment the cameras from the rest of the network, with VLANs or separate switches. Dual-home your NVR or lock it down at a firewall. It's just good practice.
The current trend of cloud-based surveillance is something I find very strange. It's more convenient in some ways than a local DVR or NVR but that comes at a big cost, including often monthly service fees! I think it's really only because of a lack of sufficiently consumer-friendly NVRs. There might be some money there for someone who takes that on.
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. I'm sure it won't be long before they start auto analysis the video for "faces" or "products" or what TV/Music you listened as a "feature". At which point we slowly start to boil...
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...
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. Luckily, these days, that's very easy and cheap.
I am Senior Vice President of making spiteful comments at my house.
