HOAs are practically incorporated hamlets - local governments. There is a government (board) which imposes taxed (dues) and imposes zoning & other laws (rules), and can impose debilitating punishments (liens) against subjects (residents). Some are little more than friendly neighbors trying to keep neighborhood home values stable, others are wannabe tyrannical dictatorships.

I could certainly see an HOA installing (increasingly cheap!) license plate & face recognition to monitor local activity "for security reasons"; seems innocuous enough if actually used sparingly to help police solve real crimes, but could quickly become obnoxious/oppressive when meddling board members with hyperactive imaginations start "looking for trouble before it starts".

Yes, "HOA going 1984" is not full blown 1984, but it can terrorize & harm locals until they manage to move (i.e.: persuade someone else to move into a place locals are fleeing for reasons), and if less problematic still proceeds to normalize progression of 1984-ish governance.

Since HOAs are much less capable of doing violence to people, it's certainly not as harmful for them to implement this technology as it is for the state to do so, but I think the impulse to view every single person passing through the neighborhood as a potential threat can create a very dystopian vibe.

There's always a house or two for sale in our neighborhood, and naturally people will slowly drive by the houses to check them out, and without fail, someone will post on the HOA FB page to watch out for such and such sketchy vehicle.

The house we bought was vacant for a short time and some kids came along and threw rocks at some of the windows, but for a few weeks after we bought the house, people would ask us if we knew about the "break-in."

We live in one of the nicest neighborhoods I've ever seen and it's some combination of the news and technology like this that makes people think they're about to get Purged every night.

I don't think the technology is the problem so much as the attitude it creates toward the world, and I think the technology can be quite useful, but when everyone believes it is necessary, it creates a 1984 vibe without government intervention. No government involvement is necessary for us to be suspicious and mean toward each other.

Fully agreeing within your premise. Digitalizing the grandman standing at her window 25/7 does not change the world.

But you missed the part where not you (or your HOA) implements it:

> Services model. Part of the purchase includes a technician showing up and doing the installation. There would be no DIY component.

> Subscription only. The product would be a hardware/software/services bundle with an up front fee and ongoing subscription as default.

So, you have scale. Someone owns all the data. Or three companies, same difference. The state of the "art" security in this sector is beyond laughable (Xiamoi camera showing feed from other peoples camera [0]) and even if not, just buy the dataset. And then the real shit begins.

Give me that dataset of say 20% of the Americans and a decent laptop and I blow Cambridge and their silly facebook data out of the water.

Recognizing people gets ridiculously easy - instead of 7 billion people I only have to identify you out of maybe 100 persons frequenting an area. Cue all the low hanging fruits like your affairs, about all disabilities affecting gait, your bedtime regularity. Let me assume the role of a big store chain: I can not only see plants and garden equipment you buy, but also how you use it and how often you break stuff or let your grass grow brown. Nice!

All these habits, unfiltered, unlike in the internets! How regular is your daily routine? Are you up to some risks due to little sunlight and sport? Your insurer would like to know! Your other insurer would also like to know, should you be considered a traffic risk considering how angry you take your driveway sometimes? But your other insurer has already pattern matched: Is probably an anger management issue. Your future job interviewer thanks you for this red flag!

But hey, you did avoid getting your electric pepper mill stolen that one time, probably!

[0] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/01/cache-issue-causes-x...

> only if government implements it

I suspect that if a non-government implementation becomes widespread the authorities will require access. A bit like grabbing the feeds from Facebook etc.

There's good odds that the HOA won't home-grow this - I'm sure that if this product did exist, it'd either come from or end up being scooped up by one of the usual suspects of the information gathering and advertising age. I don't think that corporations helpfully defining what sort of crime was committed for the local HOA is any less dystopian, it just makes it potentially more subtle.

The problem is that in a capitalist society, the surveillance options that provide the best combination of price and feature set are likely going to come from a company that has other revenue streams such as connecting all those cameras together and monetizing the entire customer network. Enter Ring.