
Airbnb Has a Hidden-Camera Problem (2019) - optimalsolver
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/03/what-happens-when-you-find-cameras-your-airbnb/585007/
======
asperous
The state should be regularly auditing hotels and room-shares, checking for
fire safety, cleanliness, hidden cameras, and legality of the business.

Businesses don't systematically change in response to a few customer
complaints (they just sloppily deal with them), but they do respond to large
fines and legal action.

~~~
ipython
But how would the state regulate this when subletting via Airbnb is already
violating the regulations in place?

~~~
asperous
At least in Oregon where I live, airbnb is legal if you have a business
license and maybe a permit depending in your city. The subletting issue is a
civil issue that the landlord would have to sue over.

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harryf
If you know about Gerald Foos
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Foos](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Foos)
this shouldn’t be a surprise - here’s the New Yorker article
[https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/04/11/gay-talese-
the...](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/04/11/gay-talese-the-voyeurs-
motel)

~~~
t0astbread
And none of these people were prosecuted? Wow. I think voyeurism might just be
the least taken-serious crime today.

~~~
ummonk
See also [https://www.cbsnews.com/news/making-video-voyeurism-a-
crime/](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/making-video-voyeurism-a-crime/) which
was absolutely infuriating to find out about.

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tekknolagi
The camera stuff is beyond creepy. But the name discrepancy seems like it's
getting blown out of proportion. Ray is a common nickname for Ralph...

~~~
TheJoeMan
While I wouldn’t like to find a hidden camera, if I did I would not steal them
AND steal the keys to the house. I do wonder if you’re renting without the
host present if you should just block the camera view and keep staying

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spideymans
Okay HN nerds: what’s the best way to go about sniffing out these hidden cams?

~~~
rudiv
There was a recent BBC video[1] where Stacey Dooley visited South Korea and
engaged with police experts there who search for hidden cameras as part of a
huge 'peeping-tom'-type problem they have with surveillance (primarily of
women) for the purpose of pornography. I concluded from that video that I
couldn't really on my technical expertise and a thorough physical search to
find a hidden camera. Unless I had something that could detect GSM radios or
something of the sort.

[1]: [https://youtu.be/ggYIsnUgUdU](https://youtu.be/ggYIsnUgUdU)

~~~
ficklepickle
You could probably use an SDR to find transmitting wireless devices.

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Nextgrid
The bigger problem is the VC scum behind the company which as per the typical
VC playbook does not care about the negative externalities caused by their
creation and will only do the minimum they can get away with.

> In January, Bigham discovered cameras in his rental that he says were never
> disclosed. After he reached out to the Trust & Safety team, representatives
> told him he and his family had in fact consented to the cameras because they
> were visibly displayed in photos on the listing. After Bigham’s blog post on
> the ordeal went viral, Airbnb apologized and refunded his money.

This kind of behavior is often explained by excuses like incompetence, human
error or poor training. There are 2 possible outcomes:

1) It's an obvious lie and tells you everything you need to know about the
company, but somehow people keep swallowing it instead of calling BS.

2) It's the true reason but highlights the fact that serious incidents like
these are delegated to people with insufficient training because the company
doesn't consider the problem serious enough to invest in proper training.

Either option doesn't look good. This is not limited to Airbnb by the way;
here are some past examples from other VC-funded companies:

Kitsplit's mis-sold insurance doesn't actually protect against stolen gear,
fobs the person off but then does the obvious damage control and pretends to
care when the story blew up (no fucks given about the impact on the people
until their own reputation becomes at risk):
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20276631](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20276631)

Wag "dog walking as a service" startup that tries to silence a killed dog's
owners with an NDA, again no concerns for the wellbeing of the owners, only
concern about their own reputation:
[https://www.facebook.com/nick.moore.7140/posts/3600186133211](https://www.facebook.com/nick.moore.7140/posts/3600186133211)

Wag again, realizing that their entire business model is broken, introduces
predatory fees to stay afloat that might not even be enforceable in court:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20854100](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20854100)

I could find many more examples (even from companies I unfortunately worked
for in the past - because yes, as a lot of people here I used to be drinking
the startup koolaid and was part of the problem too) but I think it's enough
to show a clear pattern here - these companies could not care less about the
negative externalities of their business or actions on society at large.

~~~
thesausageking
Why are the VCs to blame and not the founders and executives of AirBnB?

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hapless
They’re all blameworthy, but the VCs are the ones with the power to stop this
sort of nonsense.

Stop investing in nakedly criminal schemes.

~~~
ummonk
I would actually argue the blame goes to governments for not enforcing their
laws. There will always be scummy founders who create criminal enterprises and
scummy VCs who invest in them - but governments need to make sure they aren't
financially rewarded for it.

~~~
Nextgrid
I agree with this to an extent, but expecting everyone to be committing crimes
until caught would put an insane strain on the justice system and would
basically collapse society. A lot of our society is still built on trust and
works only because the majority of people aren't malicious. This used to work
fine until VC and the whole "startup" mentality made breaking laws a routine
and respectable thing.

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mensetmanusman
Airbnb should just be upfront and tell customers they need to assume they are
being filmed at all times. There are cameras now the size of a grain of rice,
this issue will never go away, the cat is out of the bag.

~~~
bluejay2
Maybe this is not bad advice. Kinda like "don't post any pictures on the
internet that you wouldn't want your grandma to see" or "assume your employer
is reading all your e-mails". But still, it is a massive invasion of privacy
and there should be some recourse for the victims/punishment for the
perpetrators.

~~~
dontcarethrow2
'Assume any current/future employer will be reviewing what you do at your
AirBNB. Enjoy your stay.'

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jasonhong
My colleagues and I recently published a paper at CHI 2020 that was inspired
in large part by this problem of hidden cameras in AirBnBs. Here is a link to
ACM Digital Library
([https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3313831.3376585](https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3313831.3376585))
and a PDF copy of the paper on my Box account
([https://cmu.box.com/s/89iugeaf3hcc51ir9f4akrp1a9b0mogd](https://cmu.box.com/s/89iugeaf3hcc51ir9f4akrp1a9b0mogd)).

One of the things we did was a survey of N=226 AirBnB users. 86 people said
that they manually searched for devices in AirBnBs, and 8 actually found
undisclosed devices. As you might imagine, manually searching is hard because
devices are small, but also because you don't always know if you've found
everything, and because it looks socially awkward too.

People also reported on how they looked for devices, ranging from manual
search (most common) to using WiFi / Bluetooth scanning tools. Here is an
excerpt from our paper as to what people said they did.

 _11 (13%) tech-savvy participants used special tools to help search, such as
using a phone camera or flashlight, scanning Bluetooth and the Wi-Fi network,
and using an infrared scanner. For example, participants reported that they
turned off all the lights and used their smartphone flashlight to shine around
the area and look for reflections that might indicate a camera lens. Some
participants reported that their smartphone cameras did not have an infrared
filter, and so they could detect invisible infrared light emitted by cameras.
Other participants reported using smartphone apps, such as Fing and iNet, to
detect suspicious devices connecting to the network. Two participants brought
RF signal detectors to scan the room for the source of RF signals (cameras).
However, these methods require a strong technical background, and the devices
might not be cheap (e.g., over $100 USD on Amazon for a popular RF signal
detector)._

The main point of the paper, though, is to look at ways for IoT device
manufacturers to help physically locate devices. We called these IoT Locators.
An example might be to have devices blink or beep. It's trying to address the
physical layer of privacy, to help people have more awareness of what's nearby
and where these devices are. The logical layer might tell you that there's a
camera nearby, but we also wanted to help people find those devices and see
(for example) where those cameras might be pointed. There's a big difference
between a camera in an AirBnb that is pointed toward the living room versus
pointed out the window, something that isn't captured just by knowing that a
camera is nearby.

There's lots of limitations, for example needing lots of standards among
device manufacturers and how to incentivize them to install things like these
in devices. I would say the main idea, though, is that we need to really think
more about the physical dimensions of privacy (which has been underlooked in
research and industry), and that we need to think more about how to help
hotels, AirBnBs, and device manufacturers that do want to do better on privacy
w.r.t devices, but don't know what to do.

~~~
nelaboras
Very interesting but one caveat: I doubt you would ever get the most relevant
producers on board. There are dedicated spycam manufacturers and all the cheap
China stuff to build into other things is probably what ends up being used to
spy on customers. So little benefit to try and get legal or voluntary
commitments if in the end many won't play along.

~~~
fomine3
This is what happen in Japan. In Japan phones' camera must ring shutter sound
on taking photo that's annoying on many situations meanwhile bad people use
dedicated spycam that's silent of course.

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filleokus
How costly are these cameras? What are their battery life? Do they stream or
record locally? Where do people get them?

(I'm obviously not interested in unethical spying, but could be fun to play
with)

~~~
grumple
You can get a camera from Wyze for less than 40 bucks that records in hd, does
well in darkness, can be remotely monitored and controlled, records sound, and
has a speaker (for talking to my cat). You can set it to trigger recording on
movement. I have an sd card in it, and it records about two weeks of events at
a time. Records to cloud and/or local storage.

Just be aware that security is never guaranteed and they’ve had some issues in
the past.

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hapless
My favorite part is when the dude who was staying in an illegal flophouse
_calls the police_ about cameras

Gee I wonder why the police response was not kind to him

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spideymans
Could Airbnb solve this by implementing large fines for hosts where hidden
cameras are found?

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oh_sigh
There's also the issue of a guest setting up a hidden camera in their rented
airbnb without the hosts knowledge. I doubt most hosts are sophisticated
enough to even do simple things like see what devices are connected to their
wifi networks or cycle wifi passwords on a per-guest basis.

~~~
ummonk
Ironically you'd need hidden cameras to catch guests that place hidden cameras
in rentals.

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trhway
AirBnB should just offer a hidden camera/microphone sweep service.

~~~
danesparza
Not needed. I just don't use AirBnB anymore.

I suspect the problem isn't with the cameras, but with landlords they can't
control - and that interfere with AirBnb's bottom line.

~~~
pas
Why would only airbnb be affected with this hidden camera problem?

~~~
dkarp
It's definitely not just a problem at AirBnB's. It's also a problem at Korean
love hotels for example
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggYIsnUgUdU&feature=youtu.be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggYIsnUgUdU&feature=youtu.be)

AirBnB's are more affected though, as the penalty might just be a
warning/fine/bad review affecting a single property. At a hotel, the entire
hotel of X rooms would be affected by the bad publicity, so they have more at
stake.

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heartbeats
Why would you not do this? It decreases risk, and customers mostly care about
price. As technology gets better, this is inevitable.

~~~
untog
Because it’s a massive invasion of privacy and customers hate it?

Yes, they’re price sensitive, but if Airbnb carried a “you will be recorded
while you sleep” disclaimer I doubt many would agree.

~~~
heartbeats
Well, that's what terms of service are for. Facebook doesn't seem to have this
problem.

Many tenants have problems with adverse selection; more robust monitoring
systems would allow for them to take on more risky tenants, without seeing
their property trashed.

