8 ms·

At the end of the day its security theater. Having a video of the crime won’t prevent it or even lead to solving it most of the time. If you want actual respons

At the end of the day its security theater. Having a video of the crime won’t prevent it or even lead to solving it most of the time. If you want actual response to active crime you are going to need someone who is paid to preferentially show up to your property and they should be in a guardhouse nearby.

lotsofpulp 3y ago
Could be useful for insurance/liability purposes though. Same reason for a dashcam.
- kjkjadksj 3y ago
  A dash cam is totally different because of how insurance for cars works. The thief burglaring your home does not carry liability insurance for crime. Your property insurance should already cover the theft, there’s no point in determining fault and what company should pay out like in a car accident.
dylan604 3y ago
Sadly, you're not wrong as expecting a police officer to do anything with the footage is just a farcical notion. Which really makes me wonder what police were doing when they were requesting footage from Ring directly. We've been told directly by detectives that they are too busy to look at emails with evidence. There must be some other purpose for them wanting the footage other than solving crimes. I just don't know what it is
- quatrefoil 3y ago
  Solving different crimes. The ones you might get a promotion or some other gratification out of. If you're in a city with 1,000+ home burglaries a year, nobody cares that you clear one and arrest some meth head. But, solve some gruesome or politically-tinged crime and you're holding a press conference and getting praise left and right. We do the same thing as software engineers. Every large company has some lore about what types of work get you promoted, and many engineers prefer to work on that.
  - bluGill 3y ago
    What size is the city with 1000+ burglaries in a year? What is the value of the houses they target? If there are several million houses in the city than 1000 might be close enough to nothing to ignore. However if there are only 2000 houses in the city 1000 is half and enough to get attention - you bet the police care about solving at least some of them. Often the police know who the criminals in town are. However they lack evidence to prove anything. Thus a camera feed showing an already known criminal is enough to get their attention as while they might not care about you directly they criminal who hit you may have also hit a high importance target but they cannot prove it in court - thus convicting them of hitting you helps them for cases they cannot prove.
    - kjkjadksj 3y ago
      If football players get robbed while on tv playing in a game, you or I have zero hope to prevent a burglary short of an armed guard or a few dogs.
  - neuralRiot 3y ago
    > Solving different crimes. The ones you might get a promotion or some other gratification out of. Actually crime against persons (murder, assault, armed robbery) have higher priority than simple burglaries. Having your property taken away is infuriating but no one can argue that stoping a violent criminal is more important.
    - quatrefoil 3y ago
      Maybe? First, a lot of simple assault arrests are for objectionable but ultimately trivial stuff - people getting into drunken brawls, spitting on each other, and so on. A series of burglaries targeting a local small business can be far more devastating to the owner than that. But your argument also doesn't hold because it's clear that there are property crimes that are investigated with zeal. For example, in the SF Bay Area, a person was recently charged with "hate crimes" for taking down some pro-Palestine signs. I'm not making some political point here, but we can agree that the investigation wasn't motivated by the severity of the crime, right?
- jibe 3y ago
  Your detective in your city on that day may have been too busy, but that’s just an anecdote, not a survey of the thousands of cities and police departments and their response to home burglary footage.
  - skhunted 3y ago
    The majority of murders go unsolved. The vast majority of rapes go unsolved. Police regularly don’t even spend the money to process DNA samples. I’m not an expert on this topic but it seems to me that the police in big cities largely don’t do their job.
    - concordDance 3y ago
      The problems you mention are extremely hard. Rape is s notoriously hard crime to prove and murders are either done in gang neighbourhoods where there sre few cameras and people don't talk to police. I don't know of any actually actionable improvement ideas to improve solve rate.
      - skhunted 3y ago
        I believe your knowledge of how police actually work is at odds with the reality of the situation. Your reference to "either done in gang neighboourhoods.." indicates that at least as it pertains to the U.S. you are ill informed. Police juke stats and in a number of urban centers are effectively a legalized gang.
  - dylan604 3y ago
    > Your detective in your city on that day you must of have read over the "detectives"--pural--part of that sentence. I have had a burglary in one home, and then a few years later had a home invasion where the person was very obviously identified to the police. The responding officers were able to look him up, have a positive witness ID made, and then see that this was a "bad guy". No arrest made.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- Aurornis 3y ago
  > Sadly, you're not wrong as expecting a police officer to do anything with the footage is just a farcical notion. Not true at all. Police love footage that provides anything useful when they have time to work on a case and, importantly, the footage is actually useful. A lot of DIY security camera installs provide useless footage: Cameras are mounted too high to catch faces, lighting is bad, license plates are blurry, and the list goes on. If you can actually catch faces, license plates, or anything else identifiable then it goes into the case. > We've been told directly by detectives that they are too busy to look at emails with evidence. That's a polite way of saying your case isn't a priority for them. Caseload is high and most departments have to filter and prioritize aggressively. Unfortunately, anything involving e-mail evidence gets messy very quickly because e-mails require legwork from specialists to verify and admit with a proper chain of evidence. Forwarding an e-mail to a police officer or sending them a screenshot of something might be useful as a hint in an active case, but it's not going to meet the bar for admissable evidence unless they can get more resources on it.
  - whatshisface 3y ago
    The first points make a lot of sense, but the email problem you raise is not a real issue - if they wanted a digital forensic chain of evidence, they could easily ask for the disks from the camera system.
    - Aurornis 3y ago
      > but the email problem you raise is not a real issue - if they wanted a digital forensic chain of evidence, they could easily ask for the disks from the camera system. I was responding to the parent commenter's complaints that police wouldn't look at e-mails in some case (not related to video).
      - whatshisface 3y ago
        The police don't have any procedural rules against looking at emails, those rules are for juries.
      - 3y ago
mingus88 3y ago
Regardless of that we all should have cameras running everywhere all the time It is only recent history that cell phone cameras have become ubiquitous and it has caused a huge shift in the authorities ability to squash their abusive behaviors In the same way that TV played a fundamental part of progress in the civil rights and Vietnam wars, one of the best tools the average person has to hold people accountable is to control the narrative via video My only concern is that gen AI will mean that nobody will ever trust video evidence again. I hope we get some kind of signature based crypto verification on recordings to prove they aren’t fake. Like every device is keyed to authenticate the recordings it produces
- moate 3y ago
  >> Regardless of that we all should have cameras running everywhere all the time I would like to opt out of this nightmarish safety hellscape. I never use the phrase Orwellian because it’s so often misused, but yikes is this some 1984 badthink.
  - Terr_ 3y ago
    I think the distinction is who controls the tools. Everyone having their own cameras is very different from the party controlling cameras around everyone.
    - lapetitejort 3y ago
      Sometimes it's both, like in the case of Ring doorbell cameras. I may install a camera and think I'm in control, until my footage in the cloud is subpoenaed without my knowledge for an alleged crime I have nothing to do with.
      - jrussino 3y ago
        I went with a doorbell with local storage (Eufy, in my case) for this very reason. My knowledge of the law here is virtually nonexistent. It seems likely that I could still be subpoenaed to turn over footage under some circumstances. But at least I'm in control of that footage and it's not automatically being given to some third party.
spoonjim 3y ago
Only if crime isn’t punished. If it is, I.e. the video is used to track down the thief and put them in jail for 20 years, it definitely stops the problem.
- dylan604 3y ago
  20 years for burglary? Sheesh
  - redeeman 3y ago
    its not like you just do it by accident?
    - dylan604 3y ago
      neither was your posting of a comment that didn't further the conversation in a meaningful way. assault gets less time than that, and i'd hope that getting attacked physically would rate worse than the loss of possessions on your chart
      - redeeman 3y ago
        oh we do agree that assault should be way higher in ranking. That being said, burglary can quickly turn to violence. I just dont see why we should entertain that normal well behaved people should tolerate even a tiny risk from people who clearly does not know how to behave, but I guess I am just weird, valuing the rights of people who behave properly over those who commit violent crimes (and yes, burglary is violent)
        Mashimo 3y ago
        > I just dont see why we should entertain that normal well behaved people should tolerate even a tiny risk from people who clearly does not know how to behave Who said or implied that?
        3y ago
jcrawfordor 3y ago
"video verification" by a monitoring center via cameras can greatly improve police response times, and private security companies are often specifically in the business of video verification systems. There isn't really a dichotomy here and cameras can be an important compliment to a security response arrangement. Increasingly, cameras are the way that security companies dispatch their guards. They are far more actionable than traditional intrusion alarms. Depending on the police department, alarm reports with video may be treated as crimes in progress while intrusion alarm activations alone are not. Unfortunately the technical standards around video verification are not widely implemented and so in practice it usually requires getting your intrusion alarm, surveillance, and security response all from the same vendor. There are common standards but the consumer security industry today is heavily organized around walled gardens and there isn't much adoption of the industry standards outside of commercial. In the commercial world these types of systems are often referred to as "pre-intrusion" since the monitoring center observes the cameras in realtime and, in theory, could dispatch guards to suspicious activity before any intrusion alarm would be triggered. In the consumer world, for cost and privacy reasons, the monitoring center usually only receives video after the activation of an intrusion alarm.
makeitdouble 3y ago
To add to sister comments, solving a burglary is rarely tracking the thieves down in their agit and getting back the goods Hollywood style. What people expect: - triggering an alarm so the theives don't spend the night looking at every nook and cranny of the house - having proof that it was burglars and not the drunk neighboor forcing his way to the wrong house (if so, you'd also want proof of that though) - get the cops and insurance to be on board and have the incident processed swiftly. "solving" here basically means getting the insurance monney to buy the missing stuff.
- dylan604 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - thfuran 3y ago
    There's a pretty good chance you won't have to deal with any insurance paperwork in that case.
    - dylan604 3y ago
      But your family might
- EnigmaFlare 3y ago
  Or just the police not even trying to solve it. In my city, it's inconsistent. A neighbor's alarm activated by accident and 3-4 policemen arrived quickly. Yet a friend's house was actually burgled, they took an ipad which tracked itself to two addresses in a nearby suburb and the police said "sorry, we won't check that out, you should have had cameras". I have a feeling the police prefer to solve crimes by talking to people and browbeating them into revealing things rather than using technology, so I was surprised they recommended cameras.
kobalsky 3y ago
I have the cameras to prevent surprises. If someone walks near my house I immediately get their picture on my phone and/or tv using home assistant with frigate.
- progman32 3y ago
  This is my use case and setup also. If there's someone in my yard I want to know. If I'm not home it additionally kicks off other automations that make my place look less tempting for an attack. Edit: it's also very useful to me to keep video logs of my shop and other areas. I can easily go back to see what happened if something goes wrong (stuff falling, me forgetting stuff somewhere, figuring out why there were big car tire tracks across my yard, etc).
aksss 3y ago
I hear this a lot and it's the wrong expectation. Cameras are not security theater, AND they often won't stop a crime. I don't think people in security industry expect that or sell it to do that. That said, I have seen a dumb ass thief who assumed no cameras were present in a commercial building suddenly notice a camera staring right at him, who then aborted his operation. We had great pics of his unprotected face, which helped police identify and charge said thief. So the value of surveillance is partially preventative, but almost always the value comes in understanding definitively what happened and how it happened. Often this can be the observation of entry attempts that inform an iterative improvement process for security. Hardly theater.
- bigiain 3y ago
  > Cameras are not security theater, AND they often won't stop a crime. Yep. Dashcams don't prevent traffic accidents. But they _do_ make it much much easier for the not-at-fault party to make their insurance claim. It'd be nice of home security cameras "stopped crime", but they are much more useful in documenting your insurance claim. Which is still worthwhile (assuming you have insurance to claim on).
  - prmoustache 3y ago
    > It'd be nice of home security cameras "stopped crime", but they are much more useful in documenting your insurance claim. Which is still worthwhile (assuming you have insurance to claim on). What else do you need except that you got stolen n items when doing your insurance claim?
    - kjkjadksj 3y ago
      Literally a police report would be sufficient for burglary claim and you’ve never needed video evidence for that.
shitloadofbooks 3y ago
I had 2 (stolen) cars pull up out the front of my house and 6 teenagers swarm my house (whilst several stayed in the cars) in Brisbane, Australia. I was notified by the motion alarm in my driveway and then my front door and was able to hit the Siren button and scare them off. Without that, I would have had 6 "armed" intruders inside my house with myself+partner+4 year old. The camera system prevented the crime being far more serious than it would have been (both cars+valuables stolen and maybe a stabbing or 3).
- magicalhippo 3y ago
  We just got new windows in our home, replacing aging double-pane glass with newer, much better insulating triple-pane glass. However there was an option to get added sound insulation and my SO is sensitive to noise, we added that. I was also considering the safety glass option, given that we had a porch door with "all" glass (just a small wooden frame). I'm a distracted and clumsy at times so I was worried about running through the glass in the door. After talking to the window manufacturer, I learned that I didn't need the safety glass option since the extra sound insulation meant the construction was laminated, hence acted much like a laminated safety glass. Haven't tried to break them yet, but after helping getting them mounted (about 50kg for a 1x1m window, heavy!) it seems to me it'll take some effort to get through them. Proper anti-burglary glass is likely much better, but wouldn't surprise me if a group of teens would struggle. Anyway, wasn't my primary consideration but I sleep slightly better at night compared to the old windows which could easily have been shattered with a simple rock, including the porch door. edit: Also sleeping much better due to the sound insulation. The triple-pane does most of the damping I imagine, but between them it was a vast difference. I had three ~10 yo boys running around screaming (or playing as they'd say) 10m from my wall, and once I closed the new window to my room I could barely hear them. Not at all like the old windows. edit 2: We also got the option for IR blocking, it adds just the slightest blue tint but cuts 60% of the IR. Made a massive difference in keeping especially the living room cool during summer.
  - treyfitty 3y ago
    You’re a salesman’s dream. You bought into all these features that are incrementally dubious in value, but magnitudes higher in price.
someplaceguy 3y ago
> At the end of the day its security theater. Having a video of the crime won’t prevent it or even lead to solving it most of the time. I know of at least 2 countries where police will be immediately dispatched to a robbery in progress if a person is caught on camera by the alarm system and the owner confirms it's a robbery (e.g. on a phone call). By law, police won't be dispatched unless a person is caught on video, due to false alarms. I know this because that's what happened when my home was robbed and I was out of town. Fortunately, since the police response was quick the thief didn't have enough time to take anything (!), as he must have been in and out in 2 minutes at most. It also helped that there was no jewelry or cash inside the house, of course.
- prmoustache 3y ago
  Sadly it is becoming kind of moot nowadays with so much spam that less and less people are answering to unsollicited calls. I know I don't so the police would just ring my phone and I wouldn't know about it. Not that I would want to but having a security system in my house would probably not be an high enough incentive to start answering these kind of calls.
  - someplaceguy 3y ago
    That's why my alarm company's call center number is on my contact list. I even configured it to bypass "do not disturb" mode. Although unsolicited calls are not a problem here, fortunately.
unethical_ban 3y ago
Having a photo of my hot and run driver at least got me insurance coverage.
- fortran77 3y ago
  We have security cameras (that can read license plates) which caught a woman who backed into my car and drove away just last week.
- unethical_ban 3y ago
  I propose HN have a smart edit detection feature where it allows small edits for a longer period, to correct spelling without xhanching the manning.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- prmoustache 3y ago
  You should be covered by your own insurance who turns to the other driver's insurance to get back the money. And your insurance will send you the money even if the drivers is not known, provided you have called the police so that hit and run is registered. So that photo isn't usually necessary although it helps your insurance getting its money back.
jojobas 3y ago
1) Deterrent alone is not too shabby. 2) You might be right about some places and are definitely wrong about quite a few others. Having clear face images of "troubled youth" known to the cops has led to arrests in Australia, for one.

lotsofpulp 3y ago

Could be useful for insurance/liability purposes though. Same reason for a dashcam.

kjkjadksj 3y ago
A dash cam is totally different because of how insurance for cars works. The thief burglaring your home does not carry liability insurance for crime. Your property insurance should already cover the theft, there’s no point in determining fault and what company should pay out like in a car accident.

dylan604 3y ago

Sadly, you're not wrong as expecting a police officer to do anything with the footage is just a farcical notion. Which really makes me wonder what police were doing when they were requesting footage from Ring directly. We've been told directly by detectives that they are too busy to look at emails with evidence. There must be some other purpose for them wanting the footage other than solving crimes. I just don't know what it is

quatrefoil 3y ago
Solving different crimes. The ones you might get a promotion or some other gratification out of. If you're in a city with 1,000+ home burglaries a year, nobody cares that you clear one and arrest some meth head. But, solve some gruesome or politically-tinged crime and you're holding a press conference and getting praise left and right. We do the same thing as software engineers. Every large company has some lore about what types of work get you promoted, and many engineers prefer to work on that.
- bluGill 3y ago
  What size is the city with 1000+ burglaries in a year? What is the value of the houses they target? If there are several million houses in the city than 1000 might be close enough to nothing to ignore. However if there are only 2000 houses in the city 1000 is half and enough to get attention - you bet the police care about solving at least some of them. Often the police know who the criminals in town are. However they lack evidence to prove anything. Thus a camera feed showing an already known criminal is enough to get their attention as while they might not care about you directly they criminal who hit you may have also hit a high importance target but they cannot prove it in court - thus convicting them of hitting you helps them for cases they cannot prove.
  - kjkjadksj 3y ago
    If football players get robbed while on tv playing in a game, you or I have zero hope to prevent a burglary short of an armed guard or a few dogs.
- neuralRiot 3y ago
  > Solving different crimes. The ones you might get a promotion or some other gratification out of. Actually crime against persons (murder, assault, armed robbery) have higher priority than simple burglaries. Having your property taken away is infuriating but no one can argue that stoping a violent criminal is more important.
  - quatrefoil 3y ago
    Maybe? First, a lot of simple assault arrests are for objectionable but ultimately trivial stuff - people getting into drunken brawls, spitting on each other, and so on. A series of burglaries targeting a local small business can be far more devastating to the owner than that. But your argument also doesn't hold because it's clear that there are property crimes that are investigated with zeal. For example, in the SF Bay Area, a person was recently charged with "hate crimes" for taking down some pro-Palestine signs. I'm not making some political point here, but we can agree that the investigation wasn't motivated by the severity of the crime, right?
jibe 3y ago
Your detective in your city on that day may have been too busy, but that’s just an anecdote, not a survey of the thousands of cities and police departments and their response to home burglary footage.
- skhunted 3y ago
  The majority of murders go unsolved. The vast majority of rapes go unsolved. Police regularly don’t even spend the money to process DNA samples. I’m not an expert on this topic but it seems to me that the police in big cities largely don’t do their job.
  - concordDance 3y ago
    The problems you mention are extremely hard. Rape is s notoriously hard crime to prove and murders are either done in gang neighbourhoods where there sre few cameras and people don't talk to police. I don't know of any actually actionable improvement ideas to improve solve rate.
    - skhunted 3y ago
      I believe your knowledge of how police actually work is at odds with the reality of the situation. Your reference to "either done in gang neighboourhoods.." indicates that at least as it pertains to the U.S. you are ill informed. Police juke stats and in a number of urban centers are effectively a legalized gang.
- dylan604 3y ago
  > Your detective in your city on that day you must of have read over the "detectives"--pural--part of that sentence. I have had a burglary in one home, and then a few years later had a home invasion where the person was very obviously identified to the police. The responding officers were able to look him up, have a positive witness ID made, and then see that this was a "bad guy". No arrest made.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
Aurornis 3y ago
> Sadly, you're not wrong as expecting a police officer to do anything with the footage is just a farcical notion. Not true at all. Police love footage that provides anything useful when they have time to work on a case and, importantly, the footage is actually useful. A lot of DIY security camera installs provide useless footage: Cameras are mounted too high to catch faces, lighting is bad, license plates are blurry, and the list goes on. If you can actually catch faces, license plates, or anything else identifiable then it goes into the case. > We've been told directly by detectives that they are too busy to look at emails with evidence. That's a polite way of saying your case isn't a priority for them. Caseload is high and most departments have to filter and prioritize aggressively. Unfortunately, anything involving e-mail evidence gets messy very quickly because e-mails require legwork from specialists to verify and admit with a proper chain of evidence. Forwarding an e-mail to a police officer or sending them a screenshot of something might be useful as a hint in an active case, but it's not going to meet the bar for admissable evidence unless they can get more resources on it.
- whatshisface 3y ago
  The first points make a lot of sense, but the email problem you raise is not a real issue - if they wanted a digital forensic chain of evidence, they could easily ask for the disks from the camera system.
  - Aurornis 3y ago
    > but the email problem you raise is not a real issue - if they wanted a digital forensic chain of evidence, they could easily ask for the disks from the camera system. I was responding to the parent commenter's complaints that police wouldn't look at e-mails in some case (not related to video).
    - whatshisface 3y ago
      The police don't have any procedural rules against looking at emails, those rules are for juries.
    - 3y ago

mingus88 3y ago

Regardless of that we all should have cameras running everywhere all the time It is only recent history that cell phone cameras have become ubiquitous and it has caused a huge shift in the authorities ability to squash their abusive behaviors In the same way that TV played a fundamental part of progress in the civil rights and Vietnam wars, one of the best tools the average person has to hold people accountable is to control the narrative via video My only concern is that gen AI will mean that nobody will ever trust video evidence again. I hope we get some kind of signature based crypto verification on recordings to prove they aren’t fake. Like every device is keyed to authenticate the recordings it produces

moate 3y ago
>> Regardless of that we all should have cameras running everywhere all the time I would like to opt out of this nightmarish safety hellscape. I never use the phrase Orwellian because it’s so often misused, but yikes is this some 1984 badthink.
- Terr_ 3y ago
  I think the distinction is who controls the tools. Everyone having their own cameras is very different from the party controlling cameras around everyone.
  - lapetitejort 3y ago
    Sometimes it's both, like in the case of Ring doorbell cameras. I may install a camera and think I'm in control, until my footage in the cloud is subpoenaed without my knowledge for an alleged crime I have nothing to do with.
    - jrussino 3y ago
      I went with a doorbell with local storage (Eufy, in my case) for this very reason. My knowledge of the law here is virtually nonexistent. It seems likely that I could still be subpoenaed to turn over footage under some circumstances. But at least I'm in control of that footage and it's not automatically being given to some third party.

spoonjim 3y ago

Only if crime isn’t punished. If it is, I.e. the video is used to track down the thief and put them in jail for 20 years, it definitely stops the problem.

dylan604 3y ago
20 years for burglary? Sheesh
- redeeman 3y ago
  its not like you just do it by accident?
  - dylan604 3y ago
    neither was your posting of a comment that didn't further the conversation in a meaningful way. assault gets less time than that, and i'd hope that getting attacked physically would rate worse than the loss of possessions on your chart
    - redeeman 3y ago
      oh we do agree that assault should be way higher in ranking. That being said, burglary can quickly turn to violence. I just dont see why we should entertain that normal well behaved people should tolerate even a tiny risk from people who clearly does not know how to behave, but I guess I am just weird, valuing the rights of people who behave properly over those who commit violent crimes (and yes, burglary is violent)
      - Mashimo 3y ago
        > I just dont see why we should entertain that normal well behaved people should tolerate even a tiny risk from people who clearly does not know how to behave Who said or implied that?
        3y ago

jcrawfordor 3y ago

"video verification" by a monitoring center via cameras can greatly improve police response times, and private security companies are often specifically in the business of video verification systems. There isn't really a dichotomy here and cameras can be an important compliment to a security response arrangement. Increasingly, cameras are the way that security companies dispatch their guards. They are far more actionable than traditional intrusion alarms. Depending on the police department, alarm reports with video may be treated as crimes in progress while intrusion alarm activations alone are not. Unfortunately the technical standards around video verification are not widely implemented and so in practice it usually requires getting your intrusion alarm, surveillance, and security response all from the same vendor. There are common standards but the consumer security industry today is heavily organized around walled gardens and there isn't much adoption of the industry standards outside of commercial. In the commercial world these types of systems are often referred to as "pre-intrusion" since the monitoring center observes the cameras in realtime and, in theory, could dispatch guards to suspicious activity before any intrusion alarm would be triggered. In the consumer world, for cost and privacy reasons, the monitoring center usually only receives video after the activation of an intrusion alarm.

makeitdouble 3y ago

To add to sister comments, solving a burglary is rarely tracking the thieves down in their agit and getting back the goods Hollywood style. What people expect: - triggering an alarm so the theives don't spend the night looking at every nook and cranny of the house - having proof that it was burglars and not the drunk neighboor forcing his way to the wrong house (if so, you'd also want proof of that though) - get the cops and insurance to be on board and have the incident processed swiftly. "solving" here basically means getting the insurance monney to buy the missing stuff.

dylan604 3y ago
[flagged]
- thfuran 3y ago
  There's a pretty good chance you won't have to deal with any insurance paperwork in that case.
  - dylan604 3y ago
    But your family might
EnigmaFlare 3y ago
Or just the police not even trying to solve it. In my city, it's inconsistent. A neighbor's alarm activated by accident and 3-4 policemen arrived quickly. Yet a friend's house was actually burgled, they took an ipad which tracked itself to two addresses in a nearby suburb and the police said "sorry, we won't check that out, you should have had cameras". I have a feeling the police prefer to solve crimes by talking to people and browbeating them into revealing things rather than using technology, so I was surprised they recommended cameras.

kobalsky 3y ago

I have the cameras to prevent surprises. If someone walks near my house I immediately get their picture on my phone and/or tv using home assistant with frigate.

progman32 3y ago
This is my use case and setup also. If there's someone in my yard I want to know. If I'm not home it additionally kicks off other automations that make my place look less tempting for an attack. Edit: it's also very useful to me to keep video logs of my shop and other areas. I can easily go back to see what happened if something goes wrong (stuff falling, me forgetting stuff somewhere, figuring out why there were big car tire tracks across my yard, etc).

aksss 3y ago

I hear this a lot and it's the wrong expectation. Cameras are not security theater, AND they often won't stop a crime. I don't think people in security industry expect that or sell it to do that. That said, I have seen a dumb ass thief who assumed no cameras were present in a commercial building suddenly notice a camera staring right at him, who then aborted his operation. We had great pics of his unprotected face, which helped police identify and charge said thief. So the value of surveillance is partially preventative, but almost always the value comes in understanding definitively what happened and how it happened. Often this can be the observation of entry attempts that inform an iterative improvement process for security. Hardly theater.

bigiain 3y ago
> Cameras are not security theater, AND they often won't stop a crime. Yep. Dashcams don't prevent traffic accidents. But they _do_ make it much much easier for the not-at-fault party to make their insurance claim. It'd be nice of home security cameras "stopped crime", but they are much more useful in documenting your insurance claim. Which is still worthwhile (assuming you have insurance to claim on).
- prmoustache 3y ago
  > It'd be nice of home security cameras "stopped crime", but they are much more useful in documenting your insurance claim. Which is still worthwhile (assuming you have insurance to claim on). What else do you need except that you got stolen n items when doing your insurance claim?
  - kjkjadksj 3y ago
    Literally a police report would be sufficient for burglary claim and you’ve never needed video evidence for that.

shitloadofbooks 3y ago

I had 2 (stolen) cars pull up out the front of my house and 6 teenagers swarm my house (whilst several stayed in the cars) in Brisbane, Australia. I was notified by the motion alarm in my driveway and then my front door and was able to hit the Siren button and scare them off. Without that, I would have had 6 "armed" intruders inside my house with myself+partner+4 year old. The camera system prevented the crime being far more serious than it would have been (both cars+valuables stolen and maybe a stabbing or 3).

magicalhippo 3y ago
We just got new windows in our home, replacing aging double-pane glass with newer, much better insulating triple-pane glass. However there was an option to get added sound insulation and my SO is sensitive to noise, we added that. I was also considering the safety glass option, given that we had a porch door with "all" glass (just a small wooden frame). I'm a distracted and clumsy at times so I was worried about running through the glass in the door. After talking to the window manufacturer, I learned that I didn't need the safety glass option since the extra sound insulation meant the construction was laminated, hence acted much like a laminated safety glass. Haven't tried to break them yet, but after helping getting them mounted (about 50kg for a 1x1m window, heavy!) it seems to me it'll take some effort to get through them. Proper anti-burglary glass is likely much better, but wouldn't surprise me if a group of teens would struggle. Anyway, wasn't my primary consideration but I sleep slightly better at night compared to the old windows which could easily have been shattered with a simple rock, including the porch door. edit: Also sleeping much better due to the sound insulation. The triple-pane does most of the damping I imagine, but between them it was a vast difference. I had three ~10 yo boys running around screaming (or playing as they'd say) 10m from my wall, and once I closed the new window to my room I could barely hear them. Not at all like the old windows. edit 2: We also got the option for IR blocking, it adds just the slightest blue tint but cuts 60% of the IR. Made a massive difference in keeping especially the living room cool during summer.
- treyfitty 3y ago
  You’re a salesman’s dream. You bought into all these features that are incrementally dubious in value, but magnitudes higher in price.

someplaceguy 3y ago

> At the end of the day its security theater. Having a video of the crime won’t prevent it or even lead to solving it most of the time. I know of at least 2 countries where police will be immediately dispatched to a robbery in progress if a person is caught on camera by the alarm system and the owner confirms it's a robbery (e.g. on a phone call). By law, police won't be dispatched unless a person is caught on video, due to false alarms. I know this because that's what happened when my home was robbed and I was out of town. Fortunately, since the police response was quick the thief didn't have enough time to take anything (!), as he must have been in and out in 2 minutes at most. It also helped that there was no jewelry or cash inside the house, of course.

prmoustache 3y ago
Sadly it is becoming kind of moot nowadays with so much spam that less and less people are answering to unsollicited calls. I know I don't so the police would just ring my phone and I wouldn't know about it. Not that I would want to but having a security system in my house would probably not be an high enough incentive to start answering these kind of calls.
- someplaceguy 3y ago
  That's why my alarm company's call center number is on my contact list. I even configured it to bypass "do not disturb" mode. Although unsolicited calls are not a problem here, fortunately.

unethical_ban 3y ago

Having a photo of my hot and run driver at least got me insurance coverage.

fortran77 3y ago
We have security cameras (that can read license plates) which caught a woman who backed into my car and drove away just last week.
unethical_ban 3y ago
I propose HN have a smart edit detection feature where it allows small edits for a longer period, to correct spelling without xhanching the manning.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
prmoustache 3y ago
You should be covered by your own insurance who turns to the other driver's insurance to get back the money. And your insurance will send you the money even if the drivers is not known, provided you have called the police so that hit and run is registered. So that photo isn't usually necessary although it helps your insurance getting its money back.

jojobas 3y ago

1) Deterrent alone is not too shabby. 2) You might be right about some places and are definitely wrong about quite a few others. Having clear face images of "troubled youth" known to the cops has led to arrests in Australia, for one.