A content creator is going viral on TikTok after sharing with viewers that she believes her neighbor is spying on her.
Ashton (@ashton_krg) appeared to be sitting in her backyard when she asked TikTok users whether they believed her hunch about her neighbor was right.
“Am I losing my mind or does it look like the neighbor has a camera in the owl that looks over my fence?” she asked her nearly 700 followers.
Ashton then showed users the owl, which was visible over her backyard’s fence. It looked as though the owl’s head was on some type of swivel, as it moved around before it was locked in a dead stare with the content creator.
“What do you think?” Ashton asked in the accompanying text overlay. “Is there a hidden camera in the owl?”
The content creator doubled down on her conspiratorial thinking in the accompanying video caption. “That owl is just too suspicious,” she wrote. As of Thursday, Ashton’s TikTok had amassed 533,100 views.
Is the neighbor really snooping?
In a second video, Ashton said that she previously asked her neighbor whether he was spying and he said no.
“When I did, he was like, ‘No way there’s a camera in there,’” Ashton recounted. She added, too, that her neighbor said the owl served as a decoy to scare away woodpeckers.
Ashton, however, said she wasn’t convinced.
“From what I looked up online, it looked like the exact same model that actually did have a camera,” she said. As a result, she said she came onto TikTok to ask viewers whether they had experience with the owl her neighbor owns. She ended her clip by saying she believes there was a 50-50 chance the owl contained a secret camera.
Roughly half of viewers seemed to think he was spying on her, too.
“Yes, your neighbor has an owl camera. Our neighbor has an owl camera too,” one woman wrote. “However, their camera is looking over their fence pointing to a field. Not into our yard. That is scary, strange, and creepy.”
“Looks suspicious to me,” another said.
“You are not losing your mind. Trust you gut,” a third user advised. “Put up a barrier of some sort on your side. If he moves the owl, that’s a good confirmation that it’s a camera.”
“He’s def checking on you,” a fourth viewer warned.
But not everyone thought that Ashton’s neighbor had bad intentions.
“I think it’s just to keep birds from nesting nearby,” one woman guessed.
“I have one,” another added. “No camera inside.”
@ashton_krg That owl is just too suspicious. #hiddencamera #owlmystery #redhair #hairtok ♬ original sound – Ashton
Are there really owl decoys with secret cameras in them?
In another follow-up video, Ashton showed viewers some of the decoy owls available for purchase online. She provided a screenshot of a “scarecrow decoy” owl that can be put on a stick and then sit in your backyard or fence, and is known to deter birds. (One, on Amazon, looked similar to the one Ashton’s neighbor has and is available for purchase for $19.)
“It looks pretty realistic to an animal, but its head doesn’t move,” Ashton clarified, noting that her neighbor must have a different animatronic-type device. The content creator then showed viewers another owl decoy, which was on a swivel, that would move “with any rhyme or reason.” But Ashton said that this likely wasn’t the device her neighbor had either. His owl, she said, “was out during the hurricane” and its head wasn’t moving in random directions.
Ashton said that she has jumped and ran in front of her neighbor’s owl, but that it doesn’t change positions based on her movements. Given that, Ashton said she doubted that her neighbor owned a motion detector-type device.
Then she showed viewers that she believes her neighbor owns: an owl-shaped bird watcher equipped with a camera that runs for roughly $200.
“This is exactly what the owl looks like. This is exactly how it moves. All the mechanics are the same with it shifting from spot-to-spot,” Ashton said. “This is obviously a pretty accessible product.”
In some cases, snooping is illegal
According to security.org, people have been imprisoned or fined for how they use their security cameras. The most common infraction, it said, was using said cameras to invade someone else’s privacy.
“For example, a landlord who puts a hidden security camera inside his apartment unit without consent from the tennant,” it reported. “That’s an obvious violation of privacy.”
When setting up security cameras, it advised viewers to consider both consent and expectation of privacy laws. It noted that while it’s generally legal to record video in public (e.g. doorbell camera, security cameras, phone cameras) and on your property, there’s a greater expectation for privacy in areas such as bathrooms and bedrooms.
One-party consent laws, meanwhile, primarily deal with the private recording of audio conversations. Some states, including California, Florida, and Maryland, have all-party consent laws, meaning that all individuals in the conservation area need to give their consent before being recorded.
The site said that hidden cameras are generally legal so long as they abide by your state’s privacy laws. It stated, for example, that homeowners can put a hidden camera in their living room since it’s a common area. The website also said that outdoor cameras are largely OK. “Even if your outdoor cameras have indirect views of your neighbors’ yards, that shouldn’t be a problem,” the website read. But, generally, it’s best to keep your cameras focused on your own property.
The Daily Dot has reached out to Ashton via TikTok comment.
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