Big Brother: Is He Watching? Security, Privacy, and Where the Line Actually Is (with Aaron Zylla)

After Episode 6 sparked a bigger conversation, Aaron Zylla came back to finish it. 

In this bonus, Andy, Brandi, and Aaron dig into one of the most charged topics in physical security — where does protection end and surveillance begin? 

0:00 - Welcome back & why we're here 

2:14 - Liberty vs. privacy: the Benjamin Franklin framing 

4:30 - Mass-scale AI surveillance: myth or reality?

 7:45 - What "no expectation of privacy in public" actually means 

11:20 - Privacy masking: how it works and why it matters 

15:08 - Business owners, communities, and where to draw the line 

19:33 - State regulations, audio recording, and Colorado's consent law 

24:10 - The Flock controversy and municipal regulations 

27:45 - A real story: HPN crew, a public park, and the media 

32:00 - Final thoughts and the liberty vs. privacy question

 
 🗨️ Mentioned in this episode: 

 → Benjamin Franklin — "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety" — from a 1755 letter written on behalf of the Pennsylvania Assembly. One of Franklin's most cited quotes, though its original context was a tax dispute rather than surveillance. Widely applied today to discussions of security vs. civil liberties. 

→ Google Street View litigation — Aaron references this case in the context of public visibility and privacy expectations. *Note: the actual Google Street View case (In re Google Inc. Street View Electronic Communications Litigation, Case No. 10-md-02184) involved Wi-Fi data collection, not visual surveillance. The legal principle Aaron describes — that there is no expectation of privacy for what is visible from a public road — is well established in U.S. law but stems from a broader body of case law. Listeners interested in this topic are encouraged to consult a legal professional familiar with privacy law in their state. 

→ Minority Report — referenced in discussion of AI surveillance myths. *Note: Aaron's comments on AI camera capabilities refer to commercially available systems of the kind HPN designs and installs. Government and law enforcement agencies may have access to more advanced facial recognition capabilities. The landscape is evolving quickly — listeners are encouraged to research current capabilities and regulations in their area. 

→ Flock — license plate recognition platform; currently subject to ongoing legal and regulatory scrutiny in various municipalities 

→ Colorado single-party consent law — referenced as a state-specific example of audio recording regulations

Connect with Aaron: www.linkedin.com/in/aaronzylla | aaron.zylla@highpointnetworks.com

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Get to the Point is produced by High Point Networks for informational purposes only. Guests include High Point Networks professionals as well as subject matter experts from across the industry, each speaking from their own experience and expertise. Content shared is intended as general information and should be evaluated within the context of your specific organization and circumstances. Views expressed by outside guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of High Point Networks or its affiliates. High Point Networks assumes no liability for decisions or actions taken based on content discussed in this podcast.

Transcript

Brandi: 0:00

Hello.

Andy: 0:01

Hello.

Brandi: 0:01

Welcome back.

Andy: 0:02

Well, thank you very much.

Brandi: 0:03

Welcome back, Aaron.

Andy: 0:04

Welcome back, Aaron.

Aaron: 0:05

Thank you.

Brandi: 0:07

We were gonna get to the reason why Aaron's still here and we have not let him go. We have not released him from our grips.

Andy: 0:12

We cannot get rid of him.

Aaron: 0:13

We can't.

Brandi: 0:14

So one of the things that you know, just in talking after our last podcast, we talked a little bit about physical security and what it means, and in just normal conversation, this topic of security versus privacy came up. And you and I have a story that we can share, I think, later on in the episode. but we felt like it was really important that our listeners understand the difference between security and privacy, and I wanna start this episode just that we're not here to sway anyone one way or the other and, we know that people feel very passionately about privacy and security and, things like that. M- my job, our job here isn't to tell you how to feel about it. Our job here is to inform you and give you the most information and what the differences are, and I, and we hope that by the end of this, that we do that. And so, you know, again, Aaron, thank you for being here. I kn- again, I know that you're passionate about this subject, and I think this is something that does come up in just the whole security and everything's connected, and everything's connected to everything, and where do we draw the line? So that's why we're here today.

Andy: 1:27

Well, that sounds great. I'm gonna do the welcome then.

Brandi: 1:29

I would love for you to.

Andy: 1:30

How's that?

Brandi: 1:30

Thank you.

Andy: 1:31

Well, welcome to Get to the Point podcast. It's the podcast where we talk to real IT experts about real IT stuff, and we try to dig into the why behind the tech that's around us every day and make it a little bit more human. I'm Andy Middlemiss.

Brandi: 1:45

I'm Brandi Mentele.

Andy: 1:46

And this is Get to the Point.

Brandi: 1:55

Hey, Aaron.

Aaron: 1:57

That's great.

Brandi: 1:58

We're getting so good at that.

Aaron: 2:00

Oh, rehearsed almost.

Brandi: 2:01

Oh, it's almost rehearsed, yeah.

Aaron: 2:02

Well, I wanna start it off with the quote that so many people have heard, but some people might not have, or it's, used in this topic all the time. it's Benjamin Franklin and his famous quote, "To those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty or safety." it's kind of a profound quote, and it's back from the Founding Fathers— that idea of that liberty versus security and, or liberty versus safety. and it's commonly used in this industry all the time. A lot of detractors will make that claim, "A camera there is infringing on my liberty." And I do like to bring up the point that there is a difference between liberty and privacy. That's probably the most important item, is just understanding the differences. if you could do a thing in a public park, You shouldn't do certain illegal activities with or without a camera. That shouldn't matter. So is that really infringing on a liberty if there's a camera there tracking illicit activities? and then we can delve into lots of interesting lawsuits around the topic as well, but I wanna open it up first before we, really get deep. Did you guys have particular areas you wanted to delve first?

Andy: 3:18

Yeah. Yeah, I, think that obviously you can't have a conversation about anything in tech without AI, and there's this-

Aaron: 3:25

Absolutely

Andy: 3:25

there is this whole am, I being tracked? Am I being followed, Does-

Aaron: 3:31

Another very common one.

Andy: 3:33

Yeah. So I think that's a topic of discussion. And again, I think just the where is that line or is there a line between security and privacy or liberty as you may say, and I know it's a really blurry, very polarizing, topic.

Aaron: 3:49

Well, absolutely.

Andy: 3:50

It's a religious conversation.

Aaron: 3:51

And a lot of people will claim right now that the government is setting up cameras all over the place, and they're tracking all of my movements and all the places I'm going, and that's just simply not the case. The amount of data centers that that would take is more than we're ever gonna build for the next 50 years to track that many people on that kind of scale. And even on the back end of a lot of these systems, the most you can do is look for a human wearing a red jacket and blue pants. You can't, identify. You can't tell the system,"I'm looking for that person." And so it's gonna search its own cameras for every single individual human, male or female, that's wearing that red top and blue pants. you can't just identify an individual like that out of the system. You still have to have that human component to interact with it. so the idea of mass-scale AI surveillance is a myth, and hopefully will stay that way, but I can never say never. You know, we've all seen the movies— Minority Report and those other popular Hollywood films that, that popularized the idea of that AI tracking. we're still a long ways off from that. Thank goodness. I would expect at some point in the future we might be looking at that, but it's not here today.

Brandi: 5:00

Sure. So getting into this security versus privacy, and again, we're talking to businesses, and we're talking to people that are out just wondering, right? Citizens that are like, "Does this... Why is this in my neighborhood?" Or why... can you just talk a little bit about how you might answer that question for a business owner or somebody that's out there, thinking about, "Should I put this up?" Or, "What do I do if they put it up in my neighborhood?" Or how do I... Like, just someone toiling with that kind of question. So

Aaron: 5:32

that's an interesting question, and this kind of goes into one of the lawsuits that I have in mind between Google. when Google first introduced their Street View technology and they were sending their cars around everybody, there was a pretty large class action against them for infringement on privacy. And what the courts determined was that anything visible from the street, you have no expectation of privacy. So that's a huge thing to think about. It's like when your neighbors have a Ring camera, when a gas station in your neighborhood puts up cameras. Anything that can be seen from the road has zero expectation of privacy. even if you have your window blinds open, if something gets recorded when that happens, that's on you as the homeowner, as the property owner, as the community member.

Andy: 6:14

Interesting.

Aaron: 6:15

so you got to keep those things in mind, and that's where that line drops. And so when I've installed cameras in, residential communities, I have put up black privacy masking on backyards specifically, and I, will do windows as well just because it's me being proactive. but that way I can prevent even the risk of somebody monitoring somebody's le- legal private space, unjustly. in the case where sometimes, those privacy masks do get removed, but that requires paperwork. Like the police department has to have a warrant and has to have paperwork and proof to be able to actually use those cameras and those methods.

Andy: 6:55

You're talking about a software blocking out of a particular portion of the image. At the camera level too. It's not even on the server. So the camera will send the footage with a black box on it to the recording area. So the camera itself is the one that's creating that privacy, and the server never sees that. So, that's a methodology for allaying some of the concerns perhaps in certain cases. But it doesn't help. there's a lot of people, there's a lot of misconceptions about that. And who communicates the fact that people are putting privacy masking on these cameras? You know, this is just not something that gets talked about. Oh, interesting. Something you said at the beginning just was kind of an aha moment for me, which was, hey, if you're doing something nefarious, does that negate your expectation for privacy?

Aaron: 7:46

In general, yeah.

Brandi: 7:47

Especially in a public place? Absolutely. I mean, if I'm out in the... a public park out in the open.

Andy: 7:52

Probably have no, expectation of privacy anyway, back to your original point about the Google case.

Aaron: 7:55

Absolutely. There is no expectation of privacy in any public spaces. Yeah. And that includes parks, parking lots outside of a business that's visible from the main road. There's, no expectation of privacy out there.

Andy: 8:06

I would imagine that the Google law case was kind of a landmark, you know, setting the bar-

Aaron: 8:13

Oh, it absolutely was.

Andy: 8:14

Setting the bar with what is privacy in a community.

Aaron: 8:18

Absolutely does.

Andy: 8:19

So it gives us a definition basically.

Aaron: 8:21

Yeah. And, it would prob- I don't know, like, the actual case number or the name of it off the top of my head. Probably a good thing to add in the description if anybody wants to do some further research on that. It is some interesting reading.

Andy: 8:33

Yeah. Very good.

Brandi: 8:34

Yeah. Nice.

Andy: 8:34

Very cool. Cool. What else you got?

Brandi: 8:37

Yeah, I mean, for me, I think each individual needs to make their own determination of in your own environment, right? of what you feel is that line.

Aaron: 8:52

Yes.

Brandi: 8:53

and I think that maybe goes for someone who's, in your own personal space, right? I'm gonna make a determination whether I want a Ring camera out or whether I want, whether I don't, or whether I- but I think in an organization, really it's our business to protect. I mean, is that really what it is? Like, you know, when you, we talk about this, you have 'em on the gas station, or you have'em inside the gas station. I mean, that's their business that they're protecting, so that also kind of falls in a different category, correct?

Aaron: 9:21

Yeah. Yeah, 'cause you've got the interior zones where the business is a private entity, and they're monitoring their space as the private entity. And then you have the area around that business, and so-

Andy: 9:33

Which is public as well.

Aaron: 9:34

Yeah, which is public or private, residential. I mean, there's a whole pile of different classifications. For one of our customers, I actually did a design. Like, "Here's where I would put cameras and how I would do the coverage. You might wanna have your legal team look it over for the implications of the community, because that's an entire row of suburb right behind your facility, and you guys need to make a policy determination on that as, what the relevance of..." And, I still went through and programmed black boxes in a lot of those areas, but, I just wanted their legal teams to be aware of it even, so that in case any of the community sees the cameras going up and starts raising concerns, that they're at least to be able ahead of the game.

Brandi: 10:14

And, and I would assume that falls inside the organization, too, right?

Aaron: 10:17

Yeah, absolutely.

Brandi: 10:17

"Here's where I would put cameras. Here's where I would not put cameras," right?

Aaron: 10:20

Absolutely.

Brandi: 10:20

and probably having a legal team review that as well. Correct? Okay. So inside and outside.

Aaron: 10:25

Yeah. and it doesn't have to be a huge legal process, but, even just legal and marketing PR teams being aware that there might be concerns from the community that you should be prepared for.

Andy: 10:35

And how do we answer those? How do we address those? Yeah. Very good. There's a lot of Media frenzy on this very topic.

Aaron: 10:46

Oh, absolutely.

Andy: 10:48

So, the flock camera stuff, we talked a little bit about that. But, I mean, you see a lot of the cities, there's all kinds of suits going on about, you know, is that an infringement? Is that... Are they tracking individuals and reporting that off to, off to some agencies or whatever the case may be. So I... Any other comments on that? We've touched on that a little bit, I guess.

Aaron: 11:12

Quite a few on that one, and that is very much dependent on your municipal, county, state, federal regulations. There's a whole bevy of regulations on that, and you need to be aware of what's allowed and not allowed in your area. for instance, Colorado is a single party consent state. so in the event you have a camera recording a conversation on a public street, that could be considered an infringement because those two people are having a conversation. Neither of them are aware that they're being recorded. Now, there's the, no expectations of privacy in public spaces, right? So if you have a business and there's parking behind the business and you have cameras there, you do need to make an effort to make your employees and customers, staff aware that recording is in process because then they're aware of it and can move away from there.

Andy: 12:03

Then you've notified.

Aaron: 12:04

Yes. There's regulations on whether or not you can record audio even. And so we have certain areas where we have it set up that audio is a part of the camera, but it's turned off unless there's a heightened security threat. And so in the case of an incident, there can be a panic button or some other alarm trigger that then enables that microphone during the duration of that incident, and then can get turned off again. there's all sorts of... That's the automation, that's the layers of security. you can record what's going on, but actually being able to hear what's going on too can sometimes make or break a case if there's, you know, criminal intent or any other number of issues that can come up.

Brandi: 12:43

So basically what you're saying is this is kind of a state-by-state situation-

Aaron: 12:46

Absolutely.

Brandi: 12:46

And there are other federal regulat- Okay. That would prevent someone from infringing upon your rights.They're... Okay.

Aaron: 12:53

I mean, the levels of regulations that you have to abide by are significant and can get you in trouble. And so as an integrator, as somebody that designs and, implements these systems, it's I have to work with the customer. I have to know more about the local areas that I'm working in and try to make sure that we do abide by privacy regulations, because privacy is extremely important.

Andy: 13:14

Back to the, comments from the last one. It's a lot more involved than hanging up a camera.

Aaron: 13:20

Absolutely.

Andy: 13:21

So a lot to consider. yeah, I think that was just, coming out of that last one, a little side chatter. It was like, "Oh, this is, there's a lot more to talk about here." So I appreciate you, appreciate you staying with us for that.

Brandi: 13:33

Yeah I do too, and I think you and I just recently had an issue. I'll just. tell the story if you don't mind. Uh, you know, some guys of ours working with one of our customers, hanging up cameras in a public space, a public park, and local media came in. And, again, not here to name any names, I'll just tell the story. and, their take was really that Big Brother is here, right? And, the efforts by the customer are really to keep the community safe. And I, think, again, everyone can have their own personal opinions about it. but just talk to me a little bit about how you handled that. I mean, obviously you came to me, which was the right thing to do. We kinda monitor just from a marketing perspective. But, just from a safety concern, talk to me a little bit about even though we're out there with a customer, someone taking pictures or knowing our location, that could impose a security risk to our people.

Aaron: 14:29

Yeah. I was very concerned 'cause the article itself was a little factually misleading. they were talking about a brand of cameras, that Flock, that we don't deal with, and they didn't name us specifically, but did show pictures of our guys and said where they are, and so in that safety side of things, this topic does bring up a lot of emotions. A lot of people have opinions on it, and some people, you've seen the news lately. There's been a lot of actions in the news that seemingly normal people taking extreme actions, and so I was concerned for the crew that was on site. and we did take some precautions to make sure that they were aware of their options, to make sure that they were safe and, I straight up told them, I was like, "I know the cameras are expensive, but if you fear for your safety, go ahead and just drop it, get in your car, and leave. Call 911. You know, contact the authorities and handle it appropriately."

Brandi: 15:18

Yeah. Yeah, this is definitely something that people get emotionally charged about. And again, this, episode was never intended to do that. Again, we just wanted to kinda- Yeah ... clear up the air about... Because some people could feel like, "Hey, this physical security thing as we continue to advance is a little bit intrusive." And, again, no matter what side you're on, it really doesn't matter. That's not what we're here to determine. I think our goal today was just to get a little more information out of you, Aaron, and we, definitely appreciate you being here to, walk us through. Any final thoughts, as someone's, thinking about this subject or... And if you don't, that's okay, too. but any final thoughts for our listeners?

Aaron: 15:56

I think it really is important to understand the definitions of liberty and privacy. You know, that Benjamin Franklin quote is really, dial down. Does liberty and privacy mean the same thing? And if you have the liberty to do something, does that mean it should be able to be done with privacy? And that's where a lot of those... It's just, it's a tough topic to handle, and some really charged emotions related to it.

Brandi: 16:24

Yeah. Thank you. Appreciate that.

Andy: 16:26

Very good.

Brandi: 16:26

Yeah. Good stuff. This is our first bonus episode. We just couldn't wait to talk to you again.

Aaron: 16:35

Bonus round.

Andy: 16:35

Bonus round in the PHY-SEC space. You know I was gonna go there.

Brandi: 16:40

I knew you were gonna do it. I was hoping that we could get through whole thing without you saying that word. I thought you were gonna open with it too, by the way. All right, gang. Thank you so much for sticking with us in this bonus episode. hit the subscribe button if you wanna hear more, follow us. You can hit up our website. Take us home, Andy.

Andy: 16:57

All right. And thank you again, Aaron. Really appreciate you sticking around for that. I think it was a brilliant add-on to the conversation. Very much appreciated. And thank you all for tuning in today. And remember, we are always here to help you get to the point. Have a fantastic day.