Serial Burglar Caught on Webcam 561
Metatron writes "The BBC is reporting about a serial burlgar caught after images recorded by a webcam were automatically emailed to an outside server. The evidence was made available to the police even though the computer itself had been stolen! This is also discussed on the victims own web site and the local newspaper in Cambridge." From the article: "I was relieved it did what I'd intended it to when I was burgled again. It was nice to catch him in the act - but it didn't stop him from stealing my things."
British Court system is FAST! (Score:5, Interesting)
Note that the Slashdot "Nothing for you to see here. Please move along." certainly doesn't apply here ...
P.S. Here's my lighthearted "webcam" pictures of a man who vandelized my christmas lights snowman ;-) [komar.org]
infos ? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:infos ? (Score:3, Interesting)
Down at the bottom, where it says how he did it, it says "That program instructs the computer to grab photos from the video camera - up to five stills per second - and then send them over the internet to a webpage where they are stored for viewing. " They may not be emailed at all - this just might be some stupid journalist (or journalist dumbing things down for the stupid reader) "helping" to explain how it happened.
Re:Serial burglar at 19... (Score:2, Interesting)
People who have already been given four or five chances to reform, but still commit violent crimes have shown that they will NOT reform.
Such criminals can screw up the lives of a hundred other people, and then they are let go and go on and hurt a dozen more before they get caught - is this acceptable ?
There is a need to protect the innocent from them - so they must be permanently isolated from society. The only options are life inprisonment (in jail or psychiatric clinic), death penalty, and exile (as was done earlier, them being sent to Australia, for example). Anything else, and more people get hurt.
In my area a while ago a woman was brutally raped and murdered. Soon after that the murderer was caught - he had been convicted six times already - once for theft, four times for robberies, and once for rape.
I cannot help but think that those who pass laws, allowing such light penalties to hardened criminals, must take responsibility for this woman's death.
ive done this before (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not so lucky... (Score:3, Interesting)
Stories like this only sound cool when someone paid attention...
Creative web cam monitor (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:How about picking up some of this? (Score:3, Interesting)
Horrible for personal use (stained the printers and computers I saw it used it), expensive, easy to see and therefore remove. I wouldn't know where you would stand on warranty etc. if you daubed this stuff on something that you later needed to return.
I've been using.... (Score:3, Interesting)
I've been using Home Watcher [homewatcher.com] on the Windows side for years doing this. It's kind of a nice program for playing around with webcam surveillance for the not not too serious user. It does allow you to upload the images to a personal website and the pay-for version has even more options.
Yes I have caught intruders with it.
I'm not sure I'd use it in mission-critical settings, but for home use and a little playing around it's kind of fun to mess with.
Re:*giggle* (Score:2, Interesting)
What makes everyone else in the English speaking world laugh is that Americans found it necessary to disregard that word and come up with their own, more complicated one.
"Burglarized" is a ludicrous word, not used anywhere else I might add. Goodness only knows why it was invented.
It's like saying "I shopperized for a hat."
I am planning on setting up something like this (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Serial burglar at 19... (Score:3, Interesting)
Nothing.
I think that there are some people who are effectively a lost cause and barring some form of 'Clockwork Orange' style reprogramming being developed, should not be allowed out in society unguided.
I am not advocating '3 strikes and you get life in prison'. What I think is that there should be some form of structured, guarded communities set up that serial offenders are sent to live in.
Instead of cells, inmates would live in flats and would be required to pay rent/utility bills if they are able to find a job in the outside world (which inmates would be expected to try and find). When inmates leave the community to go to work on the outside they are GPS tagged and their locations tracked. The tags would also emit a signal so that way shopkeepers would know that a serial shoplifter has entered, or pub landlord would know if someone who serially get drunks and gets into fights in pubs has walked into the pub. They will be expected to return by set times (though there has to be some flexibilty here - ie traffic jams) and the community itself will have a set internal curfew. Yes, it's big brother, but these are convicted criminals.
One possible benefit is that an inmates family could optionally choose to live with the inmate inside the community. There was an item recently on the news about the issues surrounding sending single mums to prison that guarded communities would get around.
Hopefully over time a convicted criminal could be eased back into society. Unlike a prison environment which bares no relationship to free society, the guarded community would at least bare some relationship to outside world so hopefully the inmate would learn to behave themselves.
Tk
Good security for notebook computers too. (Score:3, Interesting)
It's a z-star branded chip with a pb0330 sensor, Someone recently wrote a driver which supports it: the spca50x module
So I installed this, installed camorama to test it and mvc-0.8.9 to perform the monitoring. I'm still working on toggling it properly when xscreensaver-command is called and sending the files to another system/ftp site, but it's very promising.
This is the last piece of hardware on this machine in want of a proper linux driver (save the ati radeon chip).
The point is, it's not hard to set this type of thing up, and it's a fun project to work on with an instant gratification factor. If you have time and have to leave your systems in an open environment sometimes, it's a great project.
Nice to see such a thing in action!
Re:11 months??? (Score:2, Interesting)
This guy was a thief. If the owner was home, he'd probably run away. Just because a guy steals doesn't mean a guy kills.
Webcam shows American Bank Robber (Score:2, Interesting)
Serial burglar caught on webcam (Score:1, Interesting)
i) why not centralise this and feed directly to the police?
ii) should the police now say - sorry sir, you didn't have a wecam active when your property was stolen - that's like leaving you door open, just asking for trouble
iii) insurance companies - ditto?
Just askin'
Re:British Court system is FAST! (Score:3, Interesting)
This is one of those issues that no amount of back and forth will ever solve. For starters, a private individual does not need to convict someone of a crime being committed directly against them while it is in progress. A private individual merely needs to asses the relative risk involved. That level of appropriate response is codified precisely because people do not see eye to eye on it and never will.
In many parts of the United States, threat to livelihood is considered comparable to threat to life and limb. This allows for full force defense against home invasion, carjacking, and other similiar crimes.
Quite frankly, the British system as it's been described to me is assinine. You should never, EVER be restricted to a fair fight when you are defending yourself. You should be allowed to strike first and with more force than is brought against you. The goal of the law should be to protect the right of the victim to survive, not be fairly matched with his attacker. In a fair fight the attacker might win.