Yesterday, All Their Troubles Seemed So Far Away, Then They Got Busted Via Webcam For Stealing

from the ticket-to-ride...-to-jail dept

Fri, Aug 25th 2006 12:00pm — Carlo Longino

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.

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16 Comments

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Joe Smith, 25 Aug 2006 @ 12:03pm

Crowd Sourcing
Now if you add in a bounty for successful apprehensions you might just have a viable business model.
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RenderingSanity, 25 Aug 2006 @ 12:58pm

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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Spartikus, 25 Aug 2006 @ 1:11pm

New 1984?
Is it still 1984ish if the government isn't the entity behind it?...
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Anonymous Coward, 25 Aug 2006 @ 1:19pm

no, just very voyuristic....
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Frink, 25 Aug 2006 @ 1:34pm

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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- Anonymous Coward, 25 Aug 2006 @ 2:29pm
  
  Re:
  dumb Frink. just dumb.
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Sean, 25 Aug 2006 @ 1:53pm

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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Robert, 25 Aug 2006 @ 2:10pm

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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- Anonymous Coward, 25 Aug 2006 @ 2:30pm
  
  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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  - Frink, 26 Aug 2006 @ 9:51pm
    
    Re: Re:
    Why do you hide as an AC?
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- Anonymous Coward, 25 Aug 2006 @ 2:32pm
  
  Re:
  oh, and double idiocy for failure to call a locksmith first.
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Andrew, 25 Aug 2006 @ 2:14pm

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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Rick, 25 Aug 2006 @ 3:24pm

Who's going to patent this idea now and charge the police for it?
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Philip Hodgetts, 26 Aug 2006 @ 12:39am

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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voyeur, 26 Aug 2006 @ 1:01pm

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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my real name, 26 Aug 2006 @ 1:18pm

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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