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."
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 ;-)
Hulk SMASH Celiac Disease
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.
It doesn't say a whole lot (and the victim agrees) when a serial burglar who had been imprisoned for burglary before and who was out on bail for yet another attempt only gets 11 months in prison.
:(
At 19 years old with several prior convictions and now this and they think that it will rehabilitate him to stick him in prison for another year?
Glad that this guy was able to quickly solve his case (sad that he had to pay the price once before years ago) and get this guy behind bars but I'm sure it won't stop someone else from being burglarized by this guy again.
Note to self: Next time, wear a mask.
TRHOnline - Staggering Towards Brilliance
could we have some more info about his setup, including the cost, ease of installation... whatever he'd need to have the pics automatically posted to one of these googlemail (at least the GB of storage could be justified) accounts ?
Trolling using another account since 2005.
Baseball cap, thuggish look, awful clothes. Screams thieving chav. Where's the burberry?
I have mine record movements while out as well as speak "Intruder alert, intruder alert" hoping to scare any would-be burglers away while snapping their photo.
Hopefully it will never be "needed."
A great use for the new Mac Mini too!
The victim, Duncan Grisby, is the developer of the excellent omniORB CORBA ORB.
+1 Insightful, -1 Troll. What can I say, I'm an Insightful Troll.
"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!
He posted it on cam.misc and it seemed to spread from there...0 239a9bdae854818
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/cam.misc/msg/
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.
this has happened to me before... sort of. a few years ago when i was 16 or so, i knew i was going to be bored later in the day at school, so i setup my webcam to record movement with a copy of meloris melcam i downloaded off the internet. I didn't notice anything wrong while I was watching it at school, but when I returned to my room I noticed I was missing about $50. The maids that my mom hired for that day had just come to our house, so I suspected them. I checked the video that my program had saved on my HD and there they were. They went and found my wallet which was in my dresser and removed the $50 I had been saving, right in front of the camera. Apparently they arent the brightest of people as the camera was clearly visible and my computer isnt too much quieter than a jet.
You're a genius! If we legalize drugs, there will never be another reason to commit crimes. All crimes can be tracked to this single cause! Cop killers - the cops were trying to keep them away from their inalienable right to get loaded. Wife beaters - because drugs are illegal, the perpetrators needed some other way to amuse themselves. We should all sign a petition to make drugs legal immediately!
Sigh. OK, now seriously - is there any evidence behind your first claim or any data to back up your second claim, or is this just a dead horse that you're fond of beating?
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Had my webcam(s) going, my alarm went off (with armed response in tow) AND I have the vehicle registration number. All this I gave on a CD (silver platter) to the South African Police, and they still managed to bungle it!
Stories like this only sound cool when someone paid attention...
http://www.lavrsen.dk/twiki/bin/view/Motion/WebHom e
I used to do this exact same thing (but after having the house broken into once first)
I think it was around 1998 when I first started using motion, still do. Have set it up in a few office spaces for non-profits.
Not trolling, but this is not new.
He had over 13 previous convictions for theft and this time, caught red handed, he got a whole 11 months. I would say, fast justice is not as good as fair justice. This idiot should be put away for a few years at least.
;)
11 months is practically a slap on the wrist.
Anyway, I want that guy's webcam software.
it's = "it is"; its = possessive. E.g., it's flapping its wings.
SmartWater - a clear liquid containing microscopic particles encoded with a unique forensic signature that, when found coated on stolen property, provides a precise trace back to the owner and, when detected on a suspect, can conclusively implicate a felon. It's big with the UK police. Check out this article on Wired
Is it being prepared to do the right thing, whatever the cost. Isn't that what makes a man? That and a pair of testicles
WIth most creative webcams, you get a piece of software called creative web cam monitor. This can automatically record video or take pictures every X seconds when it detects >X amount of movement in a user defined area of its field of vision. It can upload via FTP or email the resulting files (if you upload via FTP it can generate a html page with activity log + pictures/video), or just send a notification message. It can even play alarm noises! :-) As it only sends pictures/videos with movement on, space is not a big worry.
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?
stripShow - Where WordPress meets webcomics
I've been using Home Watcher 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.
See the Pictures of the Flood of '08
The word "burgled" makes you laugh?
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."
might not be suitable for newspapers though.
Ok, then how about:
"when the thieving cunt nicked my belongings"
Better?
Or try this: coral link
Speaking of which, WTF is up with picture number 2!!!
I thinking that must be the picture they showed him to get a quick confession.
I really wouldn't mind setting up something like this in my new house. Perhaps adding one other feature would be nice however. I was thinking I could put a speaker over the doorway to the computer room, and when the computer detects motion it shouts "Don't move or I'll shoot!" I figure the images of the burglar peeing his pants might make me feel less sad about having my house broken into.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
The camera is just a generic video camera with a composite output. It's connected to a BT-848 video capture card in a Linux PC. I then use motion to detect motion and capture images. I then have some Python scripts I wrote that upload the captured images to an FTP server.
I'm afraid I had to block access to my server from Slashdot. I don't have enough bandwidth for the onslaught.
Duncan.
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.
and US experience has taught us that making it suddenly illegal will probably do more harm than good. I don't see the harm in gradually raising the drinking age, however, until one must be 60 to enjoy a 60-year old Scotch. (And, no, I'm not yet 60, and won't see 60 any time soon.)
I freely acknowledge that the drug problem is complex. That was exactly my point. Legalizing drugs will not fix our problems, any more than legalizing alcohol did.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
Did anyone notice he had a stripy top on? What do you suppose happened to his mask, and bag with 'swag' written on it?
I'm working on this for my Sager 4760, which has a built in video camera at the top of the border around the display.
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!
You are checking your backups, aren't you?
What a totally senseless, trolling thing to say. I could see "If you'd been victimized yourself you'd feel differently." (Personally, I have. It was really jarring, and nobody was ever caught, and I eventually got over it.)
We all know there's difference between a justice system and a revenge system, but you haven't quite gone there. Instead you're talking about potential consequences that need to be prevented.
Do you recommend that we sentence people based on the potential consequences that might result from their crimes -- if they'd happened under different circumstances? That's what you seem to be saying. ("What if the wife [if there was one] of the owner was home at the time -- alone" is particularly rich. Ooh, what if it was the daughter? What if it was a troop of Girl Scouts and he took their cookies??)
You want to be tough on crime. Tell us: what sentence do you recommend? Is this going to turn into one of those "three strikes" laws that take sentencing out of the judge's hands, or what? I want a specific recommendation. It's pretty easy to moan about sentences not being tough enough.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
OK its a bit self serving but its still neat to see a robbery from the inside. BrightNoise Inc. Bank Robbery Just click on the Bank Robber in the cneter image!
Si vis pacem, para bellum! For evil to succeed good men need only do nothing!
"You've got Jail!"
You can have my cynical agnosticism when you pry it from my cold, dead logic.
Whoa there! Better dress up as a native american first so they get the blame. And dude, is this stuff decaffineated? I don't want to end up wrestling a seriously wired lobster.
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.