Wireless surveillance cameras - use, laws and ethics. | Nanny Cam Scenarios – Illegal Activity and Violation of Rules

Scenario 1: At the end of a much needed night out with your wife, you return home, pay the kid who has been babysitting your children and call it a night. The next morning your wife asks you to come take a look at something. She’s been reviewing the footage from your wireless surveillance cameras. There, in living color, is your babysitter and five of her closest friends passing around a bong and having a good old time while she’s supposed to be watching your children. You thought her eyes looked awfully bloodshot when you arrived home but chalked it up to her being tired. 

Not only did your babysitter violate your no-guests rules, smoking marijuana clearly leaves her in no state to be responsibly taking care of your children. Furthermore, you wonder what kind of trouble you’d be in if the police happened to show up and find your babysitter doing drugs in your home. 

Your solution for Scenario 1 might be tolerance or it might not be. Personally, I call this the “clean break” scenario. I wouldn’t be tolerant of the person I’d hired to watch my child using illegal substances on my property. Not only is she breaking the law and my rules, she’s jeopardizing the safety of my child in the process. Should you elect to keep her employed, you clearly have to address the issue in a definitive way. But do you tell her you have video of her smoking pot?

No. 

If this is somebody you’d like to keep employed, broach the matter without bringing up the nanny cam. Call her and let her know that you clearly smelled marijuana in the house. Further bolster your position by telling her that a neighbor called to tell you he’d seen a bunch of people enter your home while you were away. Imply that you’d like to keep her services but that you will not tolerate any risks to your child’s safety resulting from a sitter with impaired judgment. Finally, ask her to be honest and decide now whether she’d like to keep her job or not. If she’d like to keep it, she must agree to your terms and understand that you’ll be closely monitoring matters hence forth. 

Should you feel trust has been to irrevocably broken or that you’d simply rather not risk another such event, simply call your babysitter and thank her for her past services but that you’ll no longer be needing her. Should she press for why, feel free to mention the obvious smell of marijuana and a report from an unspecified neighbor relating to her having had guests without your consent. 

Why not mention the evidence being on camera? I’ll answer that question with another question. Why risk it getting around that you’re monitoring your babysitters with nanny cameras? She’s sure to tell her friends who might be in high school or college together. Word could spread like wildfire and where does that leave you the next time you need to hire a sitter? Again, it is the hidden nature of a nanny cam that allows you to catch babysitters doing what they shouldn’t. If one is unscrupulous but aware of being watched, she’ll probably just move her undesirable behavior into another room.