Venture in development · Dinotics LLC
ASSCoAnti Surveillance State Company
An early-stage Dinotics venture exploring security technology for homeowners, businesses, and eventually public-safety agencies — designed so that footage and control stay with the people who own the cameras.
The premise
Can we build the benefits of a connected security network without creating a central authority that can watch everyone?
Governments want camera coverage because it helps solve crimes. Homeowners and businesses want cameras for their own protection.
ASSCo asks whether those interests can be combined — without building one enormous, government-searchable surveillance system.
The model
Recording is not the same as surrendering.
The direction ASSCo is designing toward, in four steps. None of this describes a shipping product.
- 1
Owners buy systems for themselves
Homeowners and businesses would buy security systems because they’re useful to them. The camera, the footage, and the control belong to the owner.
- 2
Investigators ask whether evidence may exist
After an incident, investigators could determine that potentially relevant, privately controlled footage exists in an area and time window — without gaining access to anyone’s recordings.
- 3
A scoped request goes to the owner
A request would identify who is asking, why, which camera, and exactly which minutes. The owner reviews it and approves or declines.
- 4
Only approved footage is released
Nothing beyond the approved scope would leave the owner’s control, and both the request and the decision would leave a record.
- Requesting agency
- Local police department
- Case
- Hit-and-run investigation
- Camera
- Driveway
- Time range
- 10:42 – 10:51 PM
- Reason
- A vehicle of interest may have passed this location.
Design goals
Don’t ask people to trust a central authority. Don’t build one.
A privacy policy can change overnight. ASSCo’s aim is an architecture in which power over footage is never concentrated in the first place. These are goals we are researching — not claims about a finished system.
ASSCo can’t become the authority
The deeper goal: ASSCo itself should never be able to turn into another centralized surveillance authority. No single party — ASSCo included — should hold a universal key to everyone’s recordings.
Distributed ownership
Equipment and footage belong to the people and organizations who operate the cameras — not to a network operator.
Discovery without a movement database
Metadata can be surveillance too. Finding that evidence may exist must not quietly rebuild a central history of where people have been.
Explicit, scoped, auditable access
Every request should name the requester, purpose, time range, and scope, and every access should leave a durable record.
One privacy floor for every customer
Protections promised to private owners shouldn’t be negotiable by whoever is paying — including government customers.
Resilient to changes in who’s in charge
Today’s trusted administrator may not be tomorrow’s. The architecture should stay hard to turn into population tracking, whoever operates it.
The intended model
Public investment. Private ownership.
A network of privately owned cameras still creates public-safety value. That could give governments a reason to help pay for it — through rebates, grants, or neighborhood programs — instead of funding only government-controlled camera networks. It is part of the model ASSCo intends to pursue.
Public funding should not mean unrestricted government access. Owners would keep control of their systems, and investigators would go through the same permissioned request process either way.
We are also exploring how cameras in public spaces could answer to the communities they watch — through published rules, independent oversight, and public access records — rather than only to the agency that operates them.
This describes an intended model, not an existing program. ASSCo is not yet a deployed product, and there are no government funds, pilots, or contracts involving ASSCo.
Where it stands
Early, and focused on the hard problems.
ASSCo is at the concept and research stage within Dinotics. We are not announcing products, availability, pricing, or technical specifications.
Questions we’re working on
- How can investigators learn that relevant footage may exist without anyone building a history of everyone’s movements?
- How should urgent, life-safety situations work without creating a permanent back door?
- How can cameras in public spaces answer to the communities they watch, not only to the agency that operates them?
- How can someone prove they’re a unique member of a community without handing over more identity than necessary?
If you work in public safety, municipal government, privacy engineering, or security hardware and want to compare notes, we’d like to hear from you.