The best part about this awesome neighbor IS… The minute something happens to the front of his house guess who’s door he’s going to knock on begging for help and camera footage…
I just had a conversation like this with my neighbor across the street.
Our families were on vacation and visited a water park at a lodge. They had a mix of smaller Hik/Dahua type domes and the large SURVEILLANCE type housings (which I think were mostly just visual deterrents, left there after being replaced by the domes). I made a joke about the SURVEILLANCE camera that was 10' up, just offset, from the hot tub and pointing right at it, giving the feeling of someone being inches from your face, staring at you. This led me to make comments about how people are fine with that or cameras all around a grocery store and FLOCK cameras tracking you around everywhere you go, but if I want to protect my home I am a weirdo.
He made a comment about people giving me shit, but he knows I am the first person people will go to and ask for information if something happened. This then led into talking about the outside being public and no expectation of privacy, so I am free to record anything I want. It somehow led to recording through windows into the house, but that's also completely legal as long as you are not on their private property (I see "1st Amendment auditors" argue this all the time). We weren't sure where the expectation of privacy begins/ends. Is it from the ground? If I flew a drone, and looked into a 2nd floor window, is that illegal? If that's illegal because there is privacy expected to the 2nd floor from the ground, what about looking from my 2nd floor window into their 2nd floor window? What about looking from my 2nd floor into their backyard with a 6' privacy fence? My thought is: if you have line of sight from where you are, then you should not expect privacy from that vantage point/location, regardless of where you are. Obviously this is with some exceptions. I would expect privacy in a bathroom stall even though someone could look through the door crack, under the door, or stand on the toilet in the adjoining stall and look over the top.
I know his wife has always given me grief because I "record their house" but most of the time any camera that may have a portion of their house in it likely has a focal length too short for detail that far, is recording in Sub stream and lacks even more detail, or doesn't really point at their house as much as they think it does.