While it is not explicitly stated, reading the article, I get the sense that the residence don't really know that there is a camera that could do what it did.
Particularly this last paragraph:" Following the report, the Ministry of Science and ICT advised setting up passwords that are difficult to guess and regularly updating one's system. Experts also advise residents physically to cover cameras when they are not in use."
As stated in the article, it started as intercom, then video added, light control, even natural gas presumably for the cooking or heat. My take is: so there they are, naively thinking I didn't press the inter-com button and so it must be doing nothing, and "it is so nice to have an intercom from the bedroom to the kitchen". Instead of doing nothing, everything that happened in the bedroom is now somewhere on the dark-web for sell.
This is not a small thing, thousands of apartments!
Here I am watching some WW2 documentary, what I just saw there applies at home: "(one must prepare for) not what the enemy will do with his force, but what the enemy could do with his force."