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Gone are the days of guessing who is at the door. Smart video doorbells have boomed in popularity in recent years, with global spending on video doorbell products expected to reach $1.4 billion by 2023.
But one neighbor has shared their displeasure at the use of a video doorbell device in their apartment building, explaining how they asked their neighbor to remove the doorbell in a viral post on Reddit with more than 13,000 upvotes.
User u/supersecret235 explained: "I've been living in my apartment complex for two years and it's been wonderful. Recently a young woman moved in across from my apartment.
"She's very quiet and polite. However, there's one thing that bothers me. She has a Ring doorbell on her door."
Selling their first video doorbell in 2014, Ring's small rectangular device allows users to see, talk to, and record people at their front door. Sold to Amazon for more than $1 billion, the devices are now used worldwide by homeowners.
When the Redditor saw their neighbor leaving her home, they asked her about the doorbell: "[I] asked her why she had it and [said] that I was worried that she could see me in my apartment. She said she had it for packages and due to no peep-holes on the door, and just extra security."
The doorbell owner showed her neighbor that she can see the opposite door but assured the neighbor she is not on her phone checking it.
"I expressed my uncomfortableness and asked her to remove it," said the Redditor. "She told me she was sorry I was uncomfortable but she was not spying on me and had a right to have one up. She wasn't breaking her lease and she had seen other people in the complex have one."
Upset by the doorbell, the Redditor continued to demand that the doorbell be removed and threatened to report it.
Lawyers Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis wrote a seminal paper on American privacy in 1890 where they noted that "what is whispered in the closet shall be proclaimed from the house-tops" as technology advances. While Warren and Brandeis questioned the rights of individuals to control information about themselves, they scarcely imagined a world wherein your image would be instantly recorded while simply walking past someone's home.
Federal privacy laws state that people are entitled to a reasonable expectation of privacy—meaning that no recording should take place in locations with the assumption of privacy such as bedrooms or bathrooms. As nobody can rightfully claim the area outside of a door has an expectation of privacy, this generally does not apply to video doorbells.
Odia Kagan, partner and chair of GDPR Compliance and International Privacy at Fox Rothschild LLP, told Newsweek: "Capturing video is the collection of personal information. As such, both CCTV laws and privacy laws generally apply to the collection. If you are also recording audio, wiretapping laws would also be implicated. If facial recognition is involved, biometrics laws might be implicated. Generally speaking, recording video (not audio) on public property is generally permitted, but not so on private property.
"On private property, in the absence of consent to the recording, the question of whether or not you can record hinges on the question of reasonable expectation of privacy."
It is also important to be aware that some states have different privacy laws in place, and upon purchasing a video doorbell device, there are individual terms and conditions the user automatically agrees to upon installation.
For example, Ring's terms of service put the burden of ensuring that the use of surveillance devices does not violate local privacy ordinances on the owner of the camera.
Kagan said that there are a few questions in this case: "Relevant questions include, is the hallway public or private property? What is the content that gets captured? What is the field of view—do you see just the hallway and people nearing a neighboring apartment or do you see into the other apartment when the door is opened?
"In Europe, there have been many cases regarding excessive collection of data by CCTV citing the scope captured by the camera, the frequency of the recording and/or the retention terms were excessive and requiring clear notice of the recording and, in some cases, the ability to opt out of the recording or have it deleted," explained Kagan. "There may be some movement on this in the U.S. as well."
On Reddit though, replies were not on the side of the irritated neighbor who said it was unreasonable to expect the doorbell to be removed in this case.
"Just think of it as extra security that you don't have to pay for. I guarantee if something happens at your doorstep, the first thing you'll do is go to her for footage," said one commenter.
Meanwhile, another reply said: "Why does this feel like one of those 'tell me you're dealing drugs without saying you're dealing drugs' scenarios?"
"So she can see your door a bit, so what?" wrote another Redditor. "She has the right to have a Ring doorbell there. Her safety trumps a slice of your door being seen on a camera."
Newsweek has reached out to u/supersecret235 for comment. We were unable to verify the details of this case.
About the writer
Alice Gibbs is a Newsweek Senior Internet Trends & Culture Reporter based in the U.K. For the last two years ... Read more