Apple senior vice president of software engineering, Craig Federighi, announced HomeKit Secure Video on stage at WWDC 2019 Monday. The tech giant claims HomeKit Secure Video…
Apple senior vice president of software engineering, Craig Federighi, announced HomeKit Secure Video on stage at WWDC 2019 Monday.
The tech giant claims HomeKit Secure Video is an answer to customer privacy concerns over how smart home security camera footage is stored and analyzed — and who has access to it.
Privacy has become an increasingly relevant topic in the tech industry as major companies like Facebook, Amazon and Google have come under fire for data breaches, questions about how information is stored and used — and accusations of bias.
All three of these companies offer consumer devices with built-in cameras, which has prompted further questions about how they’re used in our homes. Apple doesn’t sell camera-equipped smart home devices, but it partners them via its HomeKit smart home platform.
From the D-Link Omna to Philips Hue and the Ecobee SmartThermostat, see what smart home devices work with HomeKit
.
Apple took a strong privacy-centric stance at WWDC, extending beyond HomeKit Secure Video to every device in its lineup, but Federighi spent time focusing on security cameras during his presentation.
According to Federighi, most home security cameras today send your videos to the cloud to be analyzed, which poses a threat to your privacy.
Rather than sending your videos to the cloud first, Apple proposed something different at WWDC: “The video is analyzed in your home, on your resident iPad, HomePod or Apple TV and then it’s encrypted and securely sent to iCloud where no one — not even Apple — can see it,” Federighi said during the keynote presentation.
