Is it legal that My backyard neighbor installed a surveillance camera on the second story of his house?

Customer Question

My backyard neighbor installed a surveillance camera on the second story of his house to tape the ongoings of my backyard and he can also see directly into certain rooms of my house. I live in California and I thought that video surveillance cameras could only record public areas ie: the front yard. Please advise.

 

Answer

Good afternoon and thank you for your question.

Generally, a person has no expectation of privacy in the outdoors (for instance, if the police spot illegal activity outdoors from the air, it is not usually considered a search). However, if the person has erected a fence and the neighbor has arranged for a video camera to peek over the fence, there may be a remedy at law.

Even without a fence, some remedies may be available.

Further, if audio is recorded, some states/municipalities have anti-eavesdropping laws. In such a situation, eavesdropping may be criminal in nature. Depending on the positioning of the cameras, there also might be a criminal case for voyeurism. A victim may wish to contact the police and request that the police investigate the matter. The police may then be able to arrest an individual who is committing such acts. Alternatively, the police may simply ask the person to cease the activity.

Alternatively civil claims may be available. An eavesdropping victim may have a claim that the camera and microphone constitute a nuisance or that the neighbor is interfering with the “quit enjoyment” of his property. The common law concept of nuisance states that one person may not use his own property so as to injure another person's enjoyment of his own property. An infringement on the right to "quiet enjoyment" of property could also be a possibility. "Quiet enjoyment" generally means undisturbed use of one’s own property.

               

Surveillance video catches another front yard thief

PALM DESERT, Calif. -
It was a surveillance video we broadcast two weeks ago, showing a woman
stealing packages from a home in Indio - and leaving behind an empty package as her calling card, that caught the attention of Palm Desert Country Club resident Dave Van Winkle.

 

Last December patio furniture, two chairs and a table, was stolen from his front yard.
He was at his second home in Seattle at the time, and he believes his surveillance cameras may have caught the same woman at work.

"It looked like the same person, same MO, dropped off a package, whereas this gal dropped off a card," said Van Winkle.
Does it look like the same person?

Van Winkle said the table and chairs were worth about $300.  He says he contacted the sheriff's department at the time of the theft, and was recently told investigators will compare the two videos to determine if the same woman is involved in both cases.

"It's a free thing to them.  They think hey nobody is going to follow up on it.  Nobody going to do anything about it.  All they have to do is wear sunglasses and go up to somebody's doorstep, take the product and leave," said Van Winkle.

Since Van Winkle's surveillance cameras aren't going anywhere, he's not going to leave his front patio barren.  He plans to replace the furniture that was stolen.

"Might have to bolt everything down with a chain, that was a suggestion, you know, but it's gonna look like a park.  I  guess that's what they do at park places, they tie everything down.  We'll probably have to do that," he said.

Tips on Hiding Surveillance Cameras at Home in Your Yard

From ehow.com
When setting up home security, surveillance cameras in your yard help you to see criminals before they enter your home. In 2010, there were 2,923,430 household burglaries reported in the U.S., according to the U.S. Department of Justice website. Using surveillance cameras in your yard can give you an advantage over criminals and ensure that no one gets away with violating your family's safety.

Low-level Cameras

• One of the keys to a good surveillance system is the ability to see the criminals' faces to assist in legal prosecution. But when criminals look for surveillance cameras in your yard, they look up at your home or in the surrounding trees. By using smaller cameras hidden in fake stones or placed in darker parts of your garden, you can get a clear view of the criminals without them even knowing that you have a camera.

Landscape Lights

• Criminals are looking for devices that look like surveillance cameras when they enter your yard. Surveillance cameras placed around your yard that look like landscaping lights may never even get a second look from criminals trying to break into your home. Install small surveillance cameras in landscape lighting casings, and point them at any angle of your backyard where you need a good view.

Patio Decorations

• Hanging patio lanterns, electric patio light fixtures, and even large wind chimes can be places to hide yard surveillance cameras. With wind chimes, use large, decorative hangers to place the wind chimes close to your patio. In the base of the wind chime hanger is where you can hide your camera. Patio lanterns and lighting fixtures are inconspicuous and, when turned off as they would be when a criminal approaches, can act as a well-hidden place to put a surveillance camera.

Deception

• One of the ways to successfully hide surveillance cameras in your backyard is to convince criminals that they can see all of your cameras. Install decoy cameras at various points around your yard that have a blinking red light to give the impression that they are live surveillance devices. Criminals will spend their time trying to avoid or damage the decoys while your hidden cameras record the entire crime

 

 

  

Neighborhood Mischief Caught on Tape by Coomatec Camera

From NYTimes.

STEVE MILLER is justifiably proud of the manicured grounds around his stately stucco home in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla. So he was nonplussed last year when he discovered that someone had been tossing plastic bags of dog excrement into the sculptured shrubs around a palm tree in his front yard.

“It was a pile of at least 10 bags,” said Mr. Miller, 55, who owned a dance costume business in Bristol, Pa., before retiring to Florida in 2005. “I had my suspicions, but wanted to find out for sure which one of my neighbors was doing it.”
So Mr. Miller went to a local electronics store and bought a $400 do-it-yourself video surveillance kit. In so doing, he joined the ranks of outraged homeowners who are recording their neighbors’ misdeeds. Attracted by the declining prices and technological advances of such devices, these homeowners are posting the videos online to shame their neighbors or using them as evidence to press charges.
      
With their cameras hidden in bushes or dangling from windows, these homeowners are outing not just littering dog owners, but also bottle snatchers and car scratchers. Mr. Miller used only one coomatec camera(sd card dvr camera), anchoring it with a zip tie to a concrete balustrade outside an upstairs window and running the wire inside, where he plugged it into a micro SD card. It will be better      
A week’s worth of video footage clearly showed one of his neighbors slinging bags of dog feces into his yard. “You’d see him come from all directions and even turn around afterwards — like I was his dumping destination and not just a convenient stop on his way,” said Mr. Miller, who showed the video evidence to his community’s security patrol. “They were stunned, and wrote the guy a citation for improper waste disposal, littering and leash law violations.”
      
Moreover, the neighbor had to pick up all that he had tossed. Mr. Miller also had some fun at the neighbor’s expense, posting a video on YouTube with a suitably silly soundtrack and narration. The video has had more than 4,000 views.
      
“He never apologized, so that’s why I posted it,” Mr. Miller said. “But I did wait until after he moved.”
There are countless videos online that are intended to settle scores between neighbors. Whereas such disputes were once confined to the individuals involved, now they can have a much wider audience, whose members often take sides and post comments.
      
Take Adam Kliebert, 41, a real estate developer in Houston, who last year trained a video camera on his driveway in an attempt to catch his neighbor, Woody Densen, a former state district judge, scratching the back of his car. The video, which was posted online and delivered to the police, shows Mr. Densen walking behind the vehicle. Although the front of the car obscures the former judge’s actions, he pleaded guilty last April to criminal mischief, a misdemeanor, and paid for $3,000 worth of damages to Mr. Kliebert’s Range Rover. The video has been viewed more than 3,000 times.
Robert Pelton, the lawyer for Mr. Densen, said he did not damage the car and pleaded guilty only in order to avoid trial.
      
Mr. Kliebert was still out the $2,000 he paid for the surveillance equipment. But, he said: “I don’t care. I wanted to catch him, and he knows it’s there so he won’t try anything.” Despite a history of animosity that predates the car incident, the two men remain neighbors.
Prices for surveillance equipment have been falling for the past five years; systems that once cost thousands of dollars now cost hundreds. Popular do-it-yourself kits by manufacturers like Logitech, Swann, Defender and Coomatec currently cost between $150 and $2,500, depending on the number of cameras, digital storage capacity, wireless capability and whether a monitor is included.
                    
Mr. Gore not only recorded the cats but also discovered neighbors looking in his windows while he was away. After he showed the video to the manager of the mobile home park, Mr. Gore said, “The trespassing stopped, because they know they’re being filmed.” (Trespassers will also get soaked by a motion-activated sprinkler Mr. Gore bought to drive away the cats.)
      
Mr. Gore posted videos of his nosy neighbors and of the sprinkler squirting the cats on YouTube. One video has funny captions, and music from the vintage British television comedy “The Benny Hill Show.” The other is narrated by the cartoon character Tweety Bird: “I tawt I taw a puddy tat!” The two have had more than 43,000 views.
      
“A lot of people get mean, posting videos like that,” said Mr. Gore. “I thought it was better to be humorous.”
      
Do his videos anger his neighbors? “There ain’t much they can do about it,” he said.
Indeed, the law seems to be on Mr. Gore’s side because he recorded only what was happening in his yard. “It matters how you’re doing it and why, but generally it’s true that you can film your own property as well as anything that is in public view,” said David Ardia, director of the Citizen Media Law Project at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society. “It’s when you extend your senses into unexpected places, like using a telephoto to film what’s going on in your neighbor’s bedroom, that you could run into trouble.”
      
Representatives of neighborhood security patrols, police departments and animal protection agencies said that video has helped them deal with situations that, in the past, would have been one neighbor’s word against another’s. “It’s hard to argue with video evidence,” said Officer Bruce Borihanh, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Police Department. “And it’s a powerful deterrent if people consider their actions could end up on YouTube.”
Video evidence led to the arrest of Jay Risner’s neighbor in St. Clair Shores, Mich. Mr. Risner, 29, an engineer for a phone company, noticed laundry detergent and redeemable bottles disappearing from his basement shortly after a new neighbor moved into his condominium complex in 2008. “I thought it was him, but you need proof before the cops can do anything,” Mr. Risner said.
             
The neighbor was ordered to pay restitution for what he had stolen as well as for a new door lock for Mr. Risner’s basement — since the old one was obviously easy to pick. At his new house, Mr. Risner has installed surveillance cameras that are trained on both the front and back doors.
“I’m not sure now,” he said, “whether to worry more about my neighbors or strangers.”

How To Set Up Time On My Coomatec DVRCam If I Use 64GB Micro-SD Card?

Now most of DVRCam can't support 64GB micro-SD card, however, coomatec provide solution to the user who hope to record more days.

Step1

1. Download the following from the Coomatec Website in the Download section:

a) Time setting program as your model on the label of the color box:

Time Setting for DVRCam(C802,C808,C901,C902)

Time Setting for C802H

Time Setting for C908H

b) VLC Player as your operations system:

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/index.html

Step2.

Take the Micro SD card and plug it into your PC/Laptop using the Adaptor provided.

a) The micro-SD card capacity available is above 2GB and the file system should be FAT32.

b) Please format the micro-SD card in first use if the camera can't recognise it.(The red light of camera blinks). 

c) Many fake micro-SD card make the DVRCam crash. Please buy genuine from our resellers.

Know how to test the micro SD card in this link: http://www.coomatec.com/faqsdetial?id=32

        C802& C802H                         C808 (hidden inside under the screw on lens/lighting cover)

C901&C902&C908H  Open the waterproof cover and front cover and insert TF card here.

Step3.

After "Removable Disk" appears, unzip the TimeSettings files downloaded.

Step4. 

Run the Time setting program, and select the video size and image quality as you need to set. The camera set up file will then be copied onto the Camera's SD Card. Don't change the name of the text.

Step5. 

Insert micro SD card into the camera and position the camera for recording and plug it into the power supply provided. The Blue LED start flashing, so the camera is recording.

Note: Many fake micro-SD card make the DVRCam crash. Please buy genuine from our resellers.

If the dvrcam crash, please format your micro SD card and reset the camera as this link:

http://www.coomatec.com/faqsdetial?id=21

Step6.

The camera is now recording video and will continue to do so until stopped by removing the power.

Step7.

If you want to look at the video recorded then unplug the camera from the power and remove the Micro SD card and plug it into your PC/Laptop using the Adaptor provided.

Step8

Install and run the 3gp Player downloaded from the Coomatec Website to view the videos that have been recorded on the SD Card.

a)If the videos recorded look good, but can't be played, please test your TF card in this link:

http://www.coomatec.com/faqsdetial?id=32

b)If there is no videos while the blue light is blinking, please plug in mains to record at least 30mins and press the small button in front of the SD Card to save the recording. Because the built-in battery run out, the dvrcam can't save video automatically.

c)If the camera don't over write old files, please insert the micro-SD card in the dvrcam and format it.

Remember

a)the dvrcam will start to overwrite previous recordings if runs out of space on Micro SD card, so check and download if you want to keep a recording.

b)the Ir leds shines back if you install dvrcam to look through windows.

c)If the colour of videos is a bit washy to you, please choose C901&C902&C908H, good color with IR Cut filter.