Biometric Identification with Low Cost Security Cameras

00:24 - Today I’m going to talk a bit about that, how to manage that risk and give you some suggestions for setting up a system suitable for low to moderate risk situations. This is an absolutely huge subject, there is no way I can fit everything in one video so I’m going to go over the basics, and if there’s something you’d like to know more about I can show it in another video. I use what are known as P O E or power over ethernet cameras, that means they are powered over the network cabling- not the house wiring.

This makes it easy to cut them off from the Internet or air gap them, and it makes it easy to put them on an uninterruptible power supply so that even if power to my home is cut off, my cameras keep recording.

01:14 - Wifi cameras are easy to jam and overall much less reliable. My cameras all use the ONVIF standard, and usually I find 1080P is the sweet spot for quality, low light performance and price. What I have here is a Dahua IP camera, I’ll put the model number of the cameras I like in the description box. No, this video is not sponsored, I’ve purchased all my equipment. Dahua and Hikvision are the two largest Chinese security camera brands.

01:47 - Are they secure enough for home use? Here’s the thing- whatever the intentions of the manufacturer, whatever country they are in, I don’t think any IP camera is secure. I don’t trust any of them. Consider them a window into your home. It’s basically a tiny, weak computer that often goes unpatched and without updates if it’s open to the internet, someone determined with sufficient resources is going to get in eventually. So my first rule, no cameras connected to the internet that are pointed at places anyone should expect privacy- like a bedroom.

If you really need a camera there put it on an air gapped, private network with the NVR in a good lockbox. If the first rule is no internet accessible cameras in private areas, the second rule is change the default passwords. Third rule? Change the default passwords.

02:45 - And never reuse passwords you use for anything else.

02:50 - Honestly let’s just call that rule 2 through 10. 99% of the time poor password management is the reason that cameras are accessed by people that should not have access. This also means you absolutely need to know how to change the password yourself- messy breakup? Yeah you want to change that password ASAP. If you don’t own your tech- someone else will own you with your tech. Manage your camera passwords.

03:19 - I have a reasonably high risk level. So for my security, I practice what we call in infosec “Defense in Depth” which basically means I don’t rely on one layer of security- like a bunch of cameras running on the same network, and attached to one video recorder. That’s a single point of failure. The video recorder breaks down, or someone punches you in the nose and takes it- you’re out of luck. I’m not going to go over my complete security setup- you’d all think I was insane and paranoid, but I am going to show you how to setup one layer of it.

03:57 - I’m also going to change some stuff around and leave a few things out, so that any bad eggs that want to make problems for me don’t have a blueprint. The important thing to remember is that each layer needs to support the other layers, and has to keep working even if the other layers are compromised. This video is sponsored by Skillshare! Skillshare is an online community where you can take a class and learn how to do anything. While Youtube is good for entertainment, it’s kind of gotten to the point where it’s not ideal if you want to master a very specific skill and not waste your time with ads and all that.

04:41 - Skillshare is only $10 a month, has classes on thousands of different subjects and is constantly adding new ones. Last month I baked sugar cookies for laser engraving, the month before that I learned about leather crafting and made my husky Momo a harness.

05:00 - Now I’ve decided I want to learn about street photography. I’m used to having my picture taken, but I’ve never really taken the time to learn how to take better pictures myself, so I’m going to grab my camera and take a walk, try to get some of the basic shots this Skillshare class suggested I start with. I don’t know, that was a lot of fun, but I think I need a lot more practice.

07:41 - If you’d like to learn about street photography, or well, pretty much anything else, the first 1000 of my subscribers to click the link in the description will get a free trial of Premium Membership, so you can explore your creativity. This is an NVR or Network Video Recorder. The NVR is basically an appliance, all it does is record video and display it on a TV. And it’s really good at that. But for getting video on and off and uploading it- the user interface isn’t the best.

NVRs are usually made by the camera manufacturer, are easy to setup and pretty inexpensive. An 8 to 16 channel POE IP camera system with an NVR and no cameras in any private living areas is really the safest bet for most people.

08:28 - There are commercial services that offer “cloud storage” like Ring and others, but as the saying goes “there is no cloud, just someone elses computer”. While they are cheap and easy to setup, all of these cloud based security camera services seem to have a problem taking the privacy of their customers seriously.

08:50 - I would only consider one for the lowest possible risk situations. For not much more than the cost of a security camera cloud service, you can just keep your video, on your own server someplace outside your home- that’s what I recommend.

09:05 - With a NAS or Network Attached Storage device that’s easy. It can use several different ways to upload or sync video to remote locations. This is my Synology NAS, and I have it setup to upload video from my exterior cameras to a server I lease outside China.

09:23 - My cameras are also setup to extract frames with faces from the video streams, all of those are archived and backed up offsite by the NAS. After password management, camera placement is what you want to think about. Most security cameras have terrible placement that really limits their usefulness.

09:44 - If all of them are way up in the corner of the ceiling, they shoot footage that only shows you one thing- what happened. That won’t help the police or anyone else.

09:55 - Only two pieces of information together are actionable what happened, and who did it. When you install your cameras, keep that in mind you have what cameras, and you have who cameras. Don’t try to make your cameras do both. They won’t. Are cameras at face height ugly and intrusive? They sure are. But without a clear view of the perpetrators face- you’ve got nothing. Even if they are wearing a face mask as many people are now- eyes and ears can be very distinctive.

You have a much better chance if you capture them clearly.

10:32 - Cameras mounted at face height are also a strong deterrent, everyone knows they can’t be identified from those far off ceiling cameras but a camera in their face gives them pause.

10:45 - When most people think of “who”, face images come to mind, and sure that’s a good starting point.

10:53 - You are aiming for a clear, evenly lit front face view with very little tilt. If you can get them to look at the camera, all the better. There are a few tricks for this- my favorite is putting googly eyes on cameras, it looks funny and everyone looks for a few seconds because it’s so silly- and bam, I got their face. It’s important to not just limit yourself to faces and ears, get any other information you can. You see this camera? Using the tape on the ground I can see horizontal distance from the wall it’s mounted on.

Which, with this camera, and a little help from our old friend Pythagorus gets us you got it, height. That low camera gets us not only height, but shoes, and there’s a pretty good chance that our perpetrator will be wearing the same shoes as on a previous visit, or will be wearing them when the police look for them.

12:00 - Face, ear, height, shoes- this is much more helpful than what we get from cameras when they are mounted up high, and it usually doesn’t require more cameras, just better placed ones.

12:12 - The procedure for setting up different kinds of cameras varies a lot, so we’ll skip that today. If you want me to do another video on that I will. Once you get your cameras installed, setup, and recording video you need to make sure you know how to export that video. How many times have we see shaky cellphone video taken of a TV because they don’t know how to export the original file? And if you don’t export it you run the risk of it being overwritten.

12:43 - The sooner you can export that video, the faster you can get it on social media or in the hands of the police.

12:50 - My advice is to write down the procedure for exporting video on a piece of paper and keep it next to the recording device- without the password of course. As you can see IP cameras are a huge subject, and I’m sorry to jump around but there’s a lot to cover.

13:07 - In short, I recommend PoE camera systems with an NVR, do not put any security cameras in bedrooms or private living areas, the technology is simply not secure enough yet. If you’d like to send video offsite, get a NAS- I like Synology. That’s it for today, I hope you enjoyed that, I’ll see you all next time and remember if I can do it, anyone can do it. .