J20 minus 15 — take inventory of your home's security

Wow so, it's been a minute since my last post. It wasn't my intention to disappear for 40 days, but in all honesty I've been a bit busy. I had to move out of my flat, pack everything up and move it back to the US, clean and paint, and wrap up the year at work. It was genuinely an exhausting past month and a half and I needed a bit of a break. But I'm back and I'm ready to resume regular content.

Today, I'm going to be writing about home security a bit. Most of us have strategies for keeping our home secure from break-ins and robbers, but as we move into an increasingly authoritarian future, we should consider how we protect our living spaces and what's in them from a more diverse array of potential threats. For this post I'll cover a bit about how you can help secure your home and belongings.

To start with, this is your regular reminder that the police need a warrant to enter your home and you should never under any circumstance invite them in except under the advice and guidance of your attorney. Maybe they want to talk to you about a different crime that you might have witnessed. Maybe they want to talk to you because you've been the victim of a crime, or because they want to do a "knock and talk" because of social media posts you've written. In all circumstances, do not let the police into your home and do not speak to them without a lawyer. Speak to your family and roommates. Ensure that they know these rules as well. If police enter your home, they can plant bugs, they can record evidence with their body cameras (or just their five senses), and they can build a case against you just based on what they see. They can gather intelligence for a future raid. There's no positives that come from having the police in your home, only negatives.

That bit out of the way, when you threat model home security, it helps to start by focusing on your house bit by bit: what threats might affect you from the street or parking lot? What about your garage, shed, or yard? Lobby and elevator? What about inside your home, how can they get in? Let's unpack this bit by bit.

Security in the public right of way

Your home security doesn't stop when you go out your front door. Police and state agents can and do surveil targets from the public right of way. They're experts at setting up surveillance cameras on telephone poles or road signs, often hiding in plain sight where people don't think to look. One good practice is to walk around your home and identify what places in the public way might be used to spy on you in your home or on your property.

Chances are that the FBI does not have a camera on a telephone pole surveilling you right now. (If they do, that sucks—call a lawyer). So a good step you can take right now is to go around and photograph all the places they might put something. This way, if you ever get suspicious, you can look at these photos to see if anything changed. Don't assume you'll notice them putting it up.

Security on your property/common areas

It's also important to think about how you can keep your home safe by looking at the exterior of your home/apartment or its common areas. Some questions I ask:

• what are the means of entry/egress? Are these always open? Can anyone get in? How frequently are they used?
• what surveillance cameras exist? Who has access to that footage? How long is that footage retained?
• what is the environment like, i.e. would a stranger lurking around be noticed by you or other residents?
• is your name on your mailbox or door?

Think through these questions and try to answer them. If your not satisfied with an answer, maybe there's something you can do even if it's out of your control. For instance, if the back door to an apartment building is often left propped open, you can speak with your neighbors about it. Or you can ask your building superintendent who has access to the security footage, or ask them to repair a broken lock. Maybe not everything can or will be fixable, but don't assume that any issues will get fixed on their own. If you live in any community facility like an apartment building, then it might be worth organizing with your fellow tenants to get some of these gaps in regular security filled. At my last apartment, there was an active group chat among tenants so when the exterior door stopped closing all the way and latching, the group was able to organize to get the superintendent to fix it right away.

One note: it may be beneficial to remove your name from your mailbox and replace it with initials or a pseudonym. If you do that, however, don't forget to update your mailing address!

Securing entry to your home

Some things to think about when securing entry to your home:

• do you know how many keys for your door(s) there are? Can you account for who has them? Don't forget to check any access to basement/crawlspaces!
• do your windows lock and are they locked? (bonus: locked windows help reduce energy costs!) Don't forget windows on floors above your ground floor!
• do you have a trusted friend/neighbor who has a key in case you're locked out? Do you know what locksmith you'd call if you needed to get a professional to let you in?
• are your family members/roommates aware to ask for ID for any service technicians that might need to come by?
• are there ladders or other equipment on the property easily accessible that may be used to access an unsecured entry?

There are simple interventions to help keep you secure. Ladders or other equipment can be locked with a bike lock. Keeping keys under flower pots or around the home is too obvious. Instead, rely on a neighbor or friend. Smart locks might sound like an attractive alternative, but I don't trust them. Do a walk around your house and check your windows and make sure they're locked. Store your local locksmith's number in your phone. And if you're missing keys or can't account for them all, then it might be time to replace your locks.

Securing the important stuff in your home

Of course, a determined person can easily get into even a well-secured home if they don't care about doing damage. Windows can be smashed. Walls can be cut through. Locks can be picked.

In these cases, it's worth thinking about how you might keep the important stuff in your home safe: documents, valuables, firearms, storage media. The best way to secure valuables is to keep them somewhere other than your home, for instance a bank vault. (However, even this is not foolproof, as I once stored my stuff in a bank vault that was robbed, where the vault company's business owner was an alleged co-conspirator. Sometimes you can't win for losing.) Rates for safety deposit boxes vary, but I'd be surprised if you needed to spend more than $10-20 monthly, usually less. If you can afford that, then it's worth stopping by your bank to set one up. Things you might want to keep inside: passports, birth certificates, backup hard drives, old cell phones, valuable jewelry, rare items, and so forth.

For things that aren't practical to keep in a vault, you have two options: you can try to hide it, or you can try to secure it. I don't recommend hiding things, because chances are that you'll just end up hiding them from yourself. Hollywood tricks like keeping things in an air vent don't really work that well. But if you do need to practice security through obscurity, make sure you're consistent about where you keep things otherwise you'll spend hours trying to find it later.

To secure items, the best option is a fireproof safe. For basic documents and valuables, you can buy a decent document safe at your local office supply store for like $100ish. But these are portable enough that if someone broke in they could just carry it out.

A bigger safe is going to cost you more money, but has the benefit that it can be bolted to a floor, if needed. However, when you buy a safe, always make sure to get a lock with a physical backup key at least. I recently sold my safe in Berlin and after the buyer got it home, the electronic keypad mysteriously stopped working. I ended up giving him his money back in exchange for him disposing of it. Lesson learned: never trust electronics.

Of course, if you do have safes, it doesn't do you much good to have the keys laying around. Keep your keys with you and a backup copy in an offsite location, such as with a friend or neighbor. Alternatively, and this is my preferred strategy, buy a combination lock safe and keep the combination in a secure note in your password manager.

The same is true for gun safes, but if you're storing firearms, think about what your needs are. You may not want to keep your home defense gun in a combination safe. In these cases, there are plenty of good, cheap quick access safes on the market. I do recommend that you don't post about it online. I once identified the exact location of someone's home built gun storage locker in their home based only on a photograph. This is like catnip for thieves, and when it comes to your own firearms, the less you post online about them, the better and safe you are.

A last note on cameras

We live in the surveillance era and security cameras and doorbell cameras are commonplace. Sometimes the presence of these cameras can be a deterrent, but often not. Sometimes, it's necessary to have them for your own safety—I've had cameras at my home before, and I can't conscientiously tell anyone not to install them if they have specific security needs. But keep in mind that if you have these cameras, there's a good chance the police will come asking around for footage at some point. I've had at least three times when this has happened for things that went down on my street. In each case, the best option is to politely decline to share footage with the police. You have no obligation to do so, and if you do, you might end up being asked to testify later.

This post ended up being longer than I expected, but hopefully you took something away. Securing your home isn't hard, but it's easy to overlook things. Hopefully this is a little reminder to do a periodic sweep around your house to check on things. Make it a quarterly home maintenance habit. Small steps now can save you lots of trouble in the future.