Security cameras

There are security cameras in denhac, common tenant areas of the building, and other tenant spaces that record both 24/7 audio and video. denhac owns and maintains the infrastructure for the cameras in our spaces. Best efforts are made to balance the trade offs of respecting privacy minded individuals with the realities of running a hackerspace that offers unsupervised 24/7 access to our building and tools. This wiki page exists to give transparency and clarify frequently asked questions.

Where are the cameras

Cameras are clearly visible and mounted in public rooms on the walls of denhac rooms. They’re placed to overlook door entrances, certain tools/areas, member storage, parking lot etc. There are no hidden cameras. There are signs on the outside of the building as well as under many of the cameras that give legal notice that video and audio recording are taking place.

Who has access to cameras

Access is limited to a handful of people that are either on board of directors and managers. Camera access can be granted to trustworthy individuals who have a legitimate need at the discretion of a board member with admin access. This list will likely expand as our space grows to spread the workload burden of looking at cameras.

When do we check cameras

Looking at camera footage is tedious and no one’s favorite part of their volunteer position as a denhac board member or manager. There’s a variety of reasons we’ve decided reasonably warrant checking the cameras. Some examples include:

• Tools going missing (whether that be theft or someone moved it to a hidden drawer)
• In response to member posting or filing a board complaint or concern with safety, security, rules, conflict, or just that an area was generally left in an unacceptable state.
• Checking how/who broke a tool (reminder – it’s every member’s responsibility to always communicate when tools break. Don’t make us check the cameras!)
• While testing or working on infrastructure. Repositioning after rearranging a room.
• Unacceptable examples that would constitute abuse include: to stalk, harass, or spy on private individuals in the space. If someone trusted with camera access is found to have abused cameras, their access will be revoked and that person likely suspended or banned based on severity and disciplinary consensus of the board. Members can report abuse by emailing board@denhac.org (which goes to the inbox of all board members and managers) or talking to a trusted individual board member or manager.

How cameras are checked

Footage is accessed through unifi’s secured viewer in browser and app. There’s no fancy facial detection features. Figuring out when a tool broke requires manually scrolling through a video feed. For that reason, it’s best practice for camera admins to always keep audio muted when finding an incident, and only enable audio if it’s relevant and required.
When cameras are checked, the person checking posts to a private audit-log channel. Access to the camera system Unifi login logs and this channel are reconciled.

What happens to camera footage

Our unifi cameras record to an on premise server with a 35 day footage retention policy. The server is physically and digitally secured. If there was an incident that required us to save a clip, that footage may be retained longer. Clipped footage is typically saved on denhac board’s google drive or slack chat.

denhac’s waiver has broad legal language intended to best protect the organization stating “we can use footage for any purpose”. We do our best to respect privacy and handle security footage with care and consideration. Any abuse of cameras will be dealt with.