This is a funny anecdotal tangent that relates to this issue: there seems to be no privacy, until you suddenly want video. Then you can hardly ever find it.
Specifically, I mean in the context of criminal defense. I'm always looking for video footage which might exonerate a client, and so often, there just aren't any cameras.
Not to say there hasn't been an erosion of privacy in recent years. Just a funny observation that when you need that, you can't get it.
Much of it is that there is no standard in video security. Some places allow you to record it and save, but many are on a 24 hour erase cycle. Also up until this past few years video quality was horrible. I think this will change in the future as 1 or 2 cloud service providers will keep it all. An example of this are the 'Red Light' camera's in the USA atm. Almost every city in the usa has these camera's on the entrances to the city. This data is stored in a phoenix, az companies server and can be used by LE from what I hear on the grapevine.
You're absolutely right - the proprietary nature of modern video cameras and security cameras is an ongoing problem for me. Even when you can find videos, end users are not familiar enough with their particular systemto even include the right video player - so it turns into an intense online search for some video player - any video player - that can actually play the content.