Public Privacy vs. Public Safety: The Ring of Steel grows

I just want a camera, or something that looks like a camera in my building's basement. It's a little creepy down there. If it were made safer* the Significant Other might give up laundry switching duties to me though.

*I don't know that cameras really make anything safer. They just make it more likely to catch the criminal afterwards. Certainly to be a deterrent they have to be really obvious cameras, otherwise it's just being creepier than my fall-out shelter basement.