net.wars

For the last 30 years, I've lived in the same apartment on a small London street. So small, in fact, that even though London now has so many CCTV cameras - an estimated 627,707 - that the average citizen is captured on camera 300 times a day, it remains free of these devices. Camera surveillance and automated facial recognition are things that happen when I go out to other places.

Until now.

It no longer requires state-level resources to put a camera in place to watch your front door. This is a function that has been wholly democratized. And so it is that my downstairs neighbors, whose front door is side by side with mine, have inserted surveillance into the alleyway we share via an Amazon Ring doorbell.

Now, I understand there are far worse things, both as neighbors go and as intrusions go. My neighbors are mostly quiet. We take in each other's packages. They would never dream of blocking up the alleyway with stray furniture. And yet it never occurred to them that a 180-degree camera watching their door is, given the workings of physics and geography, also inevitably watching mine. And it never occurred to them to ask me whether I minded.

I do mind.

I have nothing to hide, and I mind.

Privacy advocates have talked and written for years about the many ways that our own privacy is limited by the choices of others. I use Facebook very little - but less-restrained friends nonetheless tag me in photographs, and in posts about shared activities. My sister's decision to submit a DNA sample to a consumer DNA testing service in order to get one of those unreliable analyses of our ancestry inevitably means that if I ever want to do the same thing the system will find the similarity and identify us as relatives, even though it may think she's my aunt.

We have yet to develop social norms around these choices. Worse, most people don't even see there's a problem. My neighbor is happy and enthusiastic about the convenience of being able to remotely negotiate with package-bearing couriers and be alerted to possible thieves. "My office has one," he said, explaining that they got it after being burgled several times to help monitor the premises.

We live down an alleyway so out of the way that both we and couriers routinely leave packages on our doorsteps all day.

I do not want to fight with my neighbor. We live in a house with just two flats, one up, one down, on a street with just 20 households. There is no possible benefit to be had from being on bad terms. And yet.

I sent him an email: would he mind walking me through the camera's app so I can see what it sees? In response, he sent a short video; the image above, taken from it, shows clearly that the camera sees all the way down the alleyway in both directions.

So I have questions: what does Amazon say about what data it keeps and for how long? If the camera and microphone are triggered by random noises and movements, how can I tell whether they're on and if they're recording?

Obviously, I can read the terms and conditions for myself, but I find them spectacularly unclear. Plus, I didn't buy this device or agree to any of this. The document does make mention of being intended for monitoring a single-family residence, but I don't think this means Amazon is concerned that people will surveil their neighbors; I think it means they want to make sure they sell a separate doorbell to every home.

Examination of the video and the product description reveals that camera, microphone, and recording are triggered by movement next to his - and therefore also next to my - door. So it seems likely that anyone with access to his account can monitor every time I come or go, and all my visitors. Will my privacy advocate friends ever visit me again? How do my neighbors not see why I think this is creepy?

Even more disturbing is the cozy relationship Amazon has been developing with police, especially in the US, where the company has promoted the doorbells by donating units for neighborhood watch purposes, effectively allowing police to build private surveillance networks with no public oversight. The Sun reports similar moves by UK police forces.

I don't like the idea of the police being able to demand copies of recordings of innocent people - couriers, friends, repairfolk - walking down our alleyway. I don't want surveillance-by-default. But as far as I can tell, this is precisely what this doorbell is delivering.

A lawyer friend corrects my impression that GDPR does not apply. The Information Commissioner's Office is clear that cameras should not be pointed at other people's property or shared spaces, and under GDPR my neighbor is now a data controller. My friends can make subject access requests. Even so: do I want to pick a fight with people who can make my life unpleasant? All over the country, millions of people are up against the reality that no matter how carefully they think through their privacy choices they are exposed by the insouciance of other people and robbed of agency not by police or government action but by their intimate connections - their neighbors, friends, and family..

Yes, I mind. And unless my neighbor chooses to care, there's nothing I can practically do about it.

Illustrations: Ring camera shot of alleyway.

Wendy M. Grossman is the 2013 winner of the Enigma Award. Her Web site has an extensive archive of her books, articles, and music, and an archive of earlier columns in this series. Stories about the border wars between cyberspace and real life are posted occasionally during the week at the net.wars Pinboard - or follow on Twitter.