It’s becoming more and more common for people to install security cameras and audio devices in their homes. Believing that these devices make them safer, homeowners are installing cameras throughout their homes, others outside of their homes, and doorbell devices that incorporate cameras. The homeowners can monitor these cameras and listen to conversations and other sounds inside their home using an app on their mobile phones.
Would you be willing to house sit in a home for two weeks knowing that the homeowner is watching you and listening to what you say to each other the entire time?
This issue has become something that the house sitting websites need to confront. But so far, their responses have been tentative. Instead of prohibiting the homeowners who use their sites from spying on their house sitters while they’re away, the websites only require homeowners “to advise sitters of the existence and location of all security cameras that are installed both inside and outside the home before an agreement is made.” We’ve done a number of house sits in homes with internal and external cameras, and no homeowner has ever told us about their cameras before we arrived to do the sit and noticed the cameras ourselves. Quite rightly, homeowners are afraid that if they tell the house sitters in advance that the sitters will be monitored throughout, the sitters will decline the sit.
The law is not much help here. The question of whether a homeowner can use video and audio devices to monitor and record house sitters in their home is a matter of state law. So the law is different in every state. In most jurisdictions, it is not unlawful to video and record someone in your home without their knowledge, although there are quirks, like the law in California. While it’s not settled, it seems to be the law in California that you can surreptitiously video house sitters in your home, but it’s illegal to record their conversations without advising them beforehand that you will be doing so. Video recording your house sitters: Yes. Audio recording your house sitters: No.
In our view, it would be best practice for homeowners to state in their listing on the house sitting website that they have video and audio recording devices in their home. That way the house sitter can choose not to apply for the house sit, or can negotiate some accommodation with the homeowner before accepting the sit. The all-too-common practice of not letting the house sitters know what they’re getting into is quite a nasty deception.
When we’ve discovered that we were about to start house sitting in a home with cameras throughout, we’ve tried to get the homeowner to turn off or disable the surveillance system for the duration of the sit. They say they will, but do they? We know of instances in which homeowners did watch us and eavesdrop on our conversations for the duration of a sit. In some cases, we’ve gone around the house and covered cameras that we could find with wash cloths. But we don’t know how to shut off audio devices with which the homeowners are listening to us.
This seems to us to be an issue which is going to become more prevalent and problematic. We think the house sitters’ best defense is to ask the homeowners whether there are video and/or audio recording devices in the home before accepting a house sitting gig. If there are, either decline the sit or work something out with the homeowners that insures the house sitters’ privacy during the sit.
