CCTV surveillance camera systems have received a lot of bad press of late, as surveys suggest that there may be as many as many as four million cameras monitoring the public activities of UK citizens, with even greater levels of coverage in the US. The people causing the biggest fuss about all this have expressed alarm that these countries seem to be becoming surveillance societies, and that personal privacy is, with increasing frequency, being disregarded.

Whether this is or is not the case, home video surveillance systems do not, in point of fact, pose any serious risk to your personal privacy. Since they’re channeled over point-to-point IP connections as opposed to broadcast, they can’t be picked up by anyone not (a) informed regarding your frequency and (b) in possession of your passwords.

And there are a great many reasons to want to have a home video surveillance system. These days, you can set up your camera feeds to be viewable online, meaning that not only can you check up on what your nanny or unscrupulous teenagers are doing on your weekend away, but, assuming you’re signed up with a storage cluster like PAR3 or ONStor, you can also run through footage from days or weeks past at the click of a button. The peace of mind this can provide is enviable, and a valuable asset when it comes time to claim on insurance for stolen goods.

The wide selection of camera types also means that you need no longer worry about your home video surveillance system capturing footage by night or in dimly lit areas. The fuzzy, black-and-white night vision cameras of the past are on their way out, being replaced by thermogenic (infrared) cameras of unprecedented image quality. Many produce high definition images which, if displayed at the resolution of your average computer monitor, would be roughly the size of a barn door.

Such cameras also double as extremely dependable fire detectors. In order to conserve power, they can be programmed to be motion-activated. The means to do this is no longer the province of tech-fiends and millionaires – a little Googling will reveal a number of websites offering free applications and downloads to take your home video surveillance system to the next level.

In fact, there’s no reason at all why installing a home video surveillance system shouldn’t be made into a fun DIY job. With information on installation so freely available (including how to disguise your cameras as phone chargers, teddy bears or packs of cigarettes), computing technology so user friendly, webcams and online storage support so cheap, video surveillance is a freshly democratized medium. So if you’re not into paying a security company (which are also offering increasingly competitive rates for sophisticated security solutions), consider making up a quote yourself – you’ll probably be surprised how reasonable it is.