Bosch, the German multinational most famous for its toasters, drills, and refrigerators, is also one of the world’s leading developers of surveillance cameras. Over the last three years, the company has poured tens of millions of euros into its own startup, Azena, which has the potential to completely transform the surveillance camera industry.

Via Azena, Bosch has led the development of a line of surveillance cameras that relies on edge computing — where each camera has its own processor, operating system, and internet connection — to provide “smart” surveillance of people, objects, and places. Like smartphones, these cameras connect to an app store, run by Azena, where customers can purchase apps from a selection of cutting-edge video analytics tools. These apps allow camera owners to analyze video feeds for different security and commercial purposes.

Here, the devil is in the details: In its documentation for developers, Azena states that it will only carry out basic auditing related to the security and functionality of the software available in its app store. According to the company, responsibility for the ethics and legality of the apps rests squarely on the shoulders of developers and users.

In the rapidly advancing field of video analytics, there is a growing market for software that can transform a video feed into a set of data points about individuals, objects, and locations. Apps currently available in the Azena store offer ethnicity detection, gender recognition, face recognition, emotion analysis, and suspicious behavior detection, among other things, despite well-documented concerns about the discriminatory and intrusive nature of such technologies.

Privacy and human rights researchers expressed concern that by decentralizing and facilitating the creation of powerful surveillance software able to analyze people’s traits and activities without their knowledge, Azena has exponentially raised the possibility for abuse. Should we be worried?

Azena says no.

Developers and users “must be compliant with the law,” said Hartmut Schaper, Azena’s CEO. “If we find out that this is not adhered to, we first of all ask for fixes, and then — depending on how…