I know what the comment said, thank you very much. They were conflating two senses of 'public' in two sentences. I was responding to the implication that because these are, in one sense of the word, public, that means that it is OK to treat them as if they are public in a different sense of the term.
This:
> If the room has an IP camera in it, it is by definition not private.
Does not necessarily mean this:
> Since cheap cameras have begun to appear everywhere I treat them all as if they were publicly viewable.
The implication is that if someone misconfigured or otherwise didn't know their camera was broadcasting to the world, anyone is morally and legally correct in doing whatever they want with it, and it is their fault because it is "public". That is wrong.
I think it's more so similar to that if you leave something shiny and expensive in a visible position in a car in a neighborhood known for high rate of thievery there are good odds of your stuff being stolen. They are not claiming that the thieves are morally or legally correct.
That said, there are many people for whom "blaming the victim" is forbidden at all costs, and thus don't seem to have the facility to understand not making oneself a target. I suspect that you are replying to somebody possibly like that.
> I know what the comment said, thank you very much.
I'm not sure you do. Or at least you're replying to a very uncharitable interpretation.
From my perspective, this read as: the moment you put one of these IP cameras in a room, you should assume you're now in public, no matter what assurances you might have from the manufacturer or what safeguards you might have put in place. So if you intend for a particular space to remain private, don't put one of these cameras there.
> it is their fault because it is "public"
From my reading at least it didn't seem to imply that "it's the camera owner's fault", or that they should know better or that they deserve what they get, etc.
So what? Either he meant to contradict the op (and then it's correct to push back), or this is an entirely superfluous comment given they both understand what the problem is.
This is both completely wrong from a concrete standpoint (if I put an ip camera in your home broadcasting without your knowledge, your home doesn't become magically "a public space"- you still have a full right to privacy); and completely trivial from a literal standpoint (if everyone can see you then you are in public, hey no shit Sherlock).
Which makes me think that people proposing such view are not, in fact, trying to communicate its (obviously wrong or entirely trivial, depending on the interpretation) content; they're trying to say "hey look at me, how tech savvy I am, I'm so in it that for me an open port is, like, a window open on the village square yeah".
OK, I won't bother trying to talk further with someone who thinks in false dichotomies and cannot understand that two things can be true at the same time.
When I'm in my home, I can consider that private and have a right to privacy, and at the same time there can be a camera in there broadcasting to a million people so in no stretch of the word do I have privacy, and my home is not private, and those two truths are not dependent on whether the camera being there, or people watching the feed, is right or wrong.
> When I'm in my home, I can consider that private and have a right to privacy
Agreed
> at the same time there can be a camera in there broadcasting to a million people so in no stretch of the word do I have privacy and my home is not private
Agreed.
And this is the situation we're discussing now: people who are in a private space, whose privacy is violated by an ip camera that makes their private things accessible to the public. This is the description of the website this entire thread is about. What did you add to the conversation?
What I am doing is correcting you on your asserting that my statement was "completely wrong from a concrete standpoint"
You just said :
"> When I'm in my home, I can consider that private and have a right to privacy
Agreed
> at the same time there can be a camera in there broadcasting to a million people so in no stretch of the word do I have privacy and my home is not private
Agreed."
So, to paraphrase, "A space can be considered private by the occupant, but the addition of an IP camera makes it not private.", right?
The intent was to say "You cannot call a space private if it has a networked camera in it." Not "only a public space can host a camera".