alt Hacker NewsAny sane business that has lots of random people coming in will have cameras recording (except in bathrooms/locker rooms). There is too much opportunity for crime, and a camera is cheap. If something happens you pull up the feed from the last month and give the interesting parts to the police; most often you just delete everything after a month. More than one crime has been solved this way.
That said, if there wasn't a crime the camera footage should be deleted.
Replies
> There is too much opportunity for crime, and a camera is cheap.
The camera doesn't prevent crime. It just displaces it. Even when it doesn't it will not prevent the crime from happening. It _may_ provide you an opportunity to prosecute the person who committed it.
In reality the only real reason to have one is to reduce your insurance premiums.
> crime has been solved
A perpetrator was potentially caught and now has to be tried or negotiated into a plea. I understand we use the term "solve" as a term of art but it's a particularly poor one. It speaks to the need of police to clear their books of negative indicators and not to any first order desirable social outcome.
> That said
That said, if during a demo, you access another customers equipment, I will _never_ do business with you. That's just extremely unprofessional behavior.
The problem isn't having cameras. Its that these cameras should be closed circuit with data residing locally, not being sent to a 3rd party that has full access to the video streams, and who processes them, combines them with other parties, resells data from them, or hands them over without a warrant!