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Comment by 123pie123 | Hacker News Reader

If there is concerns about cameras on drones, what about CCTV cameras in general?

My mother just recently paid to have a few cameras installed, the cameras are magically on the cloud and accessible from her phone/ tablet, so that the footage could be viewed anywhere

I've not had time to look at these cmeras yet but I suspect the cameras are sending the images back to the country of origin; where all the live video data would be extremly useful to a foreign miltary.

a few ideas come to mind eg face recognition, number plate recognition, your wifi and password for other equipment to connect to, potential to access your local LAN etc..

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The very popular Chinese state-owned Hikvision cameras are known to have backdoors:

https://ipvm.com/reports/hik-backdoor

It's puzzling why they are not yet banned in my country.

Siemens is even RECOMMENDING Hikvision cameras to their clients...

Anything with a camera that can connect to the internet and sold as a retail product could be spying. The problem with Government and Company surveillance is that if a device has a camera and can connect to the internet somehow, it might as well be sending unauthorized information to someone who is not the purchaser of that device.

It shouldn't be that surprising to all of us here that there are Chinese internet connected security camera with IR that costs less than just the RPI camera module. Some of them even have free cloud storage offering! You can make a case of economies of scale and expertise and what not but on a economic level you have to at least entertain the idea that there is the possibility of these devices are generating revenue somehow after sales.

>it might as well be sending unauthorized information to someone who is not the purchaser of that device.

It shouldn't matter, getting hundreds of thousands of cameras collecting at least images/ video streams +wifi information and who knows what other sensors are in the cameras. Also this will lead to countries almost having blanket covereage.

I've counted at least 10 to 20 cameras that I walk past on the way to my local pub (and also in almost every bloody pub and shops!!!!). if these are fitted near military bases extra bonus for intelligence finding!!

I'm surprised that other countries are not subsidising almost free cameras to other countries(eg with free cloud storage), so that they could obtain this amount of intelligence

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