When my husband and I moved from Texas to Los Angeles in 2018, we had a very short window of time to find a place to live. We knew we wanted to buy as opposed to rent, and, much like an eager couple on an episode of House Hunters, we had some nonnegotiables: no HOA, no condo units on the ground floor (for noise and safety). After too many years schlepping to the laundromat in the snow when I lived in Maryland, in-unit laundry was a must. An alarm system was also a given, regardless of where we ended up.
Lam Thuy Vo’s recent Neighborhood Watch series about LAPD’s use of surveillance tech, including officers’ ability to access Angelenos’ Ring doorbell camera footage and crime alerts, resonated with me as a homeowner and a Black woman. We wanted our home security measures to include cameras, but I was adamant that would not include any Ring products. The fact that Ring was sued by users who were threatened, taunted with racial slurs and whose children were harassed was, well, alarming. We ultimately chose SimpliSafe with a home-monitoring plan. Even though Ring and SimpliSafe store video footage in the cloud, there were very important differences that factored into our decision. Ring stores video recordings up to six months by default versus 30 days with SimpliSafe, and then only as an opt-in feature.).
I’d like to think I have a healthy paranoia about the eyes and ears of tech we use every day. Browser cookies and trackers watch our internet searches and monitor our online shopping carts to suggest products we might like. Virtual assistants like Siri listen even when we’re not talking to them. (Do you really think it’s a coincidence that you can ask Alexa a question about the weather for a sunny vacation spot and Amazon suddenly starts suggesting swimsuits you might like … in January?) And those terms of service we numbly agree to without reading? Sometimes our data is provided to companies for market research or sold to data brokers for better-targeted advertising we don’t even realize we’ve consented to. In my mind, the “Neighborhood Watch” reporting confirmed that my husband and I had made a good decision about a home security system…