- Clayton Simms discussed privacy concerns with home surveillance systems, like Ring cameras, on Sunday.
- Simms highlights benefits such as theft deterrence and package notifications from doorbell cameras.
- Privacy advocates worry about surveillance potential as the FBI has been using Nest systems in investigations like the Nancy Guthrie case.
SALT LAKE CITY — From the FBI using "back-end systems" to produce video and photos of a suspect in the Nancy Guthrie case, to Ring utilizing its network of doorbell cameras to find lost dogs, home surveillance has been in the spotlight over the past week.
As some have raised privacy concerns, one local criminal defense attorney and legal analyst weighed in on the latest headlines and what to take from them.
"We are participating in our own surveillance, through convenience, through security," Clayton Simms said during an interview with KSL. "There's good purposes, but there could also be bad purposes, and you lose your privacy, you lose your, sort of, freedom, and you feel like you're always being monitored."
Simms said doorbell cameras have many beneficial purposes, from deterring theft, to letting a homeowner know who is at the door and to notifying someone when a package arrives.
However, Ring drew headlines from a Super Bowl commercial advertising a different feature — the "search party" function that utilizes artificial intelligence and the Ring network of cameras to locate lost dogs.
That led the public and privacy advocates alike to raise questions about how the same network could be used to ID and track people.
"You would think that's the next step. ... A suspect in a kidnapping, or a Silver Alert where somebody wandered off from a nursing home," Simms said. "The Ring cameras could identify, 'Oh, that person is wearing a blue shirt, the person in the video walking by about that time was wearing a blue shirt,' so it could become a large surveillance network."
Separately, technologists said how the FBI was able to access images of a suspect in the Nancy Guthrie disappearance through Nest's "back-end systems" raised questions about what kinds of data home surveillance cameras are quietly recording and who can access that information.
"All of that is information that a company, a big entity would have about you," Simms acknowledged.
While some privacy advocates have suggested those concerned about data sharing should opt for cameras that only store video locally, Simms said people simply need to be aware of the potential positives and negatives and act accordingly.
The defense attorney pointed out additional positives to cameras that communicate with each other and data that is stored centrally, including evidence that potentially exonerates people who are wrongly accused of crimes.
"It can help a criminal suspect," Simms said. "It can show, 'Hey, I was in another part of town; I have an alibi.'"
