Slashdot Mirror
Serial Burglar Caught on Webcam
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."
he did not undress
I was a victim of a Serial burglar once. I didn't have breakfast for four months because of him... /*rimshot*/
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Note to self: Next time, wear a mask.
TRHOnline - Staggering Towards Brilliance
Baseball cap, thuggish look, awful clothes. Screams thieving chav. Where's the burberry?
"The webcam made our job really easy," added DS Page. "It was a pleasure to show him the pictures and see his expression when we interviewed him."
If only they had a camera...
"but it didn't stop him from stealing my things."
What is the point of a secret weapon if you don't tell everyone about it?!
That's it, I'm turning off all my RS-232 ports RIGHT NOW!
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
but a hamburglar doesn't hamburgle, he robbles.
Looks like the computer that was stolen was the webserver, because for some reason the website doesn't come up. ;)
So that's the bastard that has been stealing the toys and surprises from my cereal... oh wait... serial? Crap... always get those mixed up.
Them that there varmints with their goin' around burglarizing honest folks houses.... it's making a mockery of the judiciarialary system
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
"No madam, I'm a burglar, I burgle people."
Are serial burglars faster than the old parallel burglars?
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In English there is no such word. :-)
Remember though that slashdot is American and that Americans can't speak English.
-- MartinG To mail me: echo kewyjlcxyzvjfxbqwh | tr bcefhjklqvwxyz
i guess USB really will be the end of serial.
"My heart is in the work." - Andrew Carnegie
might not be suitable for newspapers though.
Ok, then how about:
"when the thieving cunt nicked my belongings"
Better?
"burglarized"
burgled.
The word you are looking for is burgled.
There is no such word as burglarized.
A burglar burgles.
You're absolutely right. I apogle.
I spent 11 hours in jail but they woke me up around 11am. That was the lame part.
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one the bus load of girls just went down.
I bet his web cam didn't see the mugging his web server just took!
- Kevin
The less confident you are, the more serious you have to act.
Didn't realise that computers were quite *that* exciting to burglers!
About three years ago, my brother had a roomie that he suspected was vandalising some of my brother's property. Of course, because they had a dog that was allowed to roam through the entire house, my brother couldn't prove that it had been the roomie and not the dog, becuase all of the destruction was well within the realm of a dog's capabilities. So he set up a webcam on his computer to start recording when there was motion in the room, and then storing the video on his web server. This allowed him to catch his roommate dumping a the bowl of leftover Kraft Dinner that had been left on the desk all over/into my brother's keyboard while my brother was at work.
A lot of people leave their computer(s) running when they're not around, and a lot of people have webcams sitting around that 99% of the time aren't even plugged in. I know that this is the case for me, at any rate. It's really easy to miss yet another piece of computer-related clutter on an already messy surface. Although I have to admit, it doesn't take all that much effort to look around for cameras before perpetrating a crime and "accidentally" knock them so that they're not pointed at the area where the crime will be comitted... Not that this would have helped the burglar any, since all it had to capture was him breaking in to prove at least breaking-and-entering, but when someone has a legit reason to be in the room and foils themself through sheer lack of attention... That's pretty stupid, I have to agree.
Did anyone notice he had a stripy top on? What do you suppose happened to his mask, and bag with 'swag' written on it?
Composite output? Good call. I wouldn't want to use a USB camera to catch a serial burglar.
All kidding aside, that's a brilliant simple little setup, and I'm glad that it worked out for you. Have your possessions been retrieved?
Raptor
"Procrastination is great. It gives me a lot more time to do things that I'm never going to do."
Way to go, Duncan. You earned your Slashdot street cred for the year. Not only did you bust him, you used Linux AND Python to do it. Double word score. That's at least good for 200 meta moderation points. The only thing preventing the trifecta and instant Hall of fame induction is that you didn't PGP encode the email as it left the server.
Now if only they could catch the Parallel burglar, that'd REALLY be progress...
"You've got Jail!"
You can have my cynical agnosticism when you pry it from my cold, dead logic.
A few years back I was supporting a dot com startup that was writing an app to do this, and they were going to market it to companies so they could review their security cams easily.
Halfway through the project, someone broke into their office and stole a lot of their stuff. They did NOT get the burglars on video.