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Yesterday, All Their Troubles Seemed So Far Away, Then They Got Busted Via Webcam For Stealing
from the ticket-to-ride...-to-jail dept
A man in Dallas apparently foiled a robbery in Liverpool, England, when he logged on to view a webcam of Mathew Street, made famous by the Beatles. He noticed some men climb a ladder and smash a window of an outdoor sports store, before they went inside and started coming out with stolen goods, so he called police in Liverpool, who went down and arrested the three alleged theives. Sounds like the Neighborhood Watch by Web might be effective -- now we're just waiting for version 2.0, which marries the concept with those internet hunting sites people were so worried about a while back.
Reader Comments
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Crowd Sourcing
Now if you add in a bounty for successful apprehensions you might just have a viable business model.
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Joe that's not a bad idea at all. Perhaps someone will listen.
Imagine people sitting at their desks at work with a window open on a cam somewhere far away and an EMERGANCY button on screen should something happen...
Oh wait...not working at work...lost revenue...crap can't do that...
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New 1984?
Is it still 1984ish if the government isn't the entity behind it?...
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no, just very voyuristic....
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Some attorney will convince the court that the spying done by a private citizen of a foreign country was illegal. Violated rights - case tossed. Now file suit against the man in Dallas. Man in Dallas now up international shit creek. The bandits end up owning property in Dallas.
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Re:
dumb Frink. just dumb.
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expectation of privacy
Thieves have no expectation of privacy when they are breaking into someones business. A company could have cameras installed in their business that are monitored 24/7 and the person monitoring could be anywhere in the world. The person in Dallas aside. The cops caught them in the act.
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And if I get locked out of my car and have to break a window and I get arrested for car theft, who do I sue for falsae arrest?
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Re:
yourself for being an idiot and failing to show proof you own the vehicle. that was dumb to. do you and Frink know each other?
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Re: Re:
Why do you hide as an AC?
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Re:
oh, and double idiocy for failure to call a locksmith first.
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False Arrest?
Uhm...that's why you show the police your Identification and proof of ownership.
IT really is that simple.
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Who's going to patent this idea now and charge the police for it?
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Typo in original story
"theives" - i before e except after c. :) After getting my knuckles wrapped so many times i can't not notice it 40 years later.
And a totally sycophantic "love the Techdirt blog" only because I do.
Philip
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watching and waiting
I thought I saw a story a while back about having private citizens volunteer to watch web cams on the US border to try to catch illegal aliens sneaking in. Does anyone else remember the details?
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web cams on borders
This story reminded me of the following one from BBC about Texas putting web cams on the border and asking citizens to volunteer to monitor them, looking for illegal aliens:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/5040372.stm
On another note, I just submitted a message a few minutes ago and instead of the usual "your comment has been posted" acknowlegment I got something like "your message has been flagged as potential spam and will be reviewed by a techdirt employee". Ha! I'd like to see a story here about techdirt's "spam filter" and what about my message flagged it as spam.
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