I disagree that anything you describe could actually be both commercially viable and deployable without authoritarian involvement

You haven’t heard of Ring cameras? Commercial security systems? They do basically what I’m describing, just not as well because they don’t have as much of an incentive. Are end users willing to pay for these more advanced models? No, so consumer grade cameras stick to object detection like deer vs racoon instead of specific individual detection (e.g. scanning eyes).

Governments, however, are willing to pay that amount. Why? Because they think it’ll help them detect criminals, and they think that helps keep people safe. It’s an extension of the HOA idea, just with government-scale funds backed up with law enforcement to go after threats. That, in itself, isn’t authoritarian, but setting up such a system opens the door for authoritarians to take control and misuse it.

I’d go so far as to say that the people in your theoretical HOA are analogous to supporters of a authoritarian regime.

Analogous, sure, but the HOA has no enforcement arm for non-residents, so all they can do is ask the police to intervene. That’s the difference with a city, it has a police force it can order to intervene using information from that system. It’s the mixing of enforcement and surveillance that makes it authoritarian.

So a surveillance system is not itself authoritarian, it’s only authoritarian of there’s some enforcement arm to enforce obedience or punish disobedience.

If it is nearly impossible to meaningfully use apolitically, then it is not apolitical.

Again, I disagree. Something is only political when used for political ends.