De macht van de camera

[Bart Meerdink]

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

Iemand met een webcam heeft mooie opnamen gemaakt van een inbraak in
zijn huis. 4 feb 2005 betrapt, 15 feb 2005 voor 11 maanden achter de
tralies. Wel logisch voor een 19-jarige inbreker met al een
aanzienmlijke staat van dienst (bbc: "13 previous convictions for theft"
!!!), tijdens een proefverlof :-)

Daar waar privacy geen beletsel is (in eigen huis) blijkt duidelijk de
grote kracht van dit middel. Ik heb al eerder een manier beschreven
waarmee de privacy bezwaren ondervangen kunnen worden waardoor
toepassing op straat met mobieltjes ook mogelijk gemaakt zou zijn.

Dan kan zelfs de Nederlandse politie er niet onderuit om een misdrijf op
te lossen.

Bart Meerdink

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/cambridgeshire/4272041.stm
(Zie ook: http://www.grisby.org.nyud.net:8090/burglar.html , is mirror)

Serial burglar caught on webcam

[bijschrift foto] Benjamin Park in the middle of his burglary. Picture
courtesy of Duncan Grisby Park kindly provided a clear image of his face
during the burglary

A house burglar was caught after a webcam on the owner's computer
recorded images of him carrying out the raid.

Stills of serial raider Benjamin Park, 19, of Cambridge, were sent to an
email address so even when he stole the computer, the images could be found.

Police said it was a "brilliant idea" of software engineer Duncan
Grisby, who set it after a previous burglary.

Park was given an 11-month jail term by magistrates in Cambridge on
Tuesday after admitting burglary.

"I was burgled three years ago and was annoyed at the time because I had
thought about setting this system up then, but hadn't got around to it,"
said Mr Grisby.

"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.

So how does it work?

"The burglary was a real violation of my private space but at least he
got caught.

"I just wish he'd got a longer sentence."

Mr Grisby said the system was easy to set up. "There are lot of products
for Windows that you can use to do this - though I used some free
software and wrote some extra software myself."

Police described Mr Grisby's idea as "absolutely brilliant".

"The webcam was set up in his computer and began filming once it
registered motion. It captured every movement Park made," said Det Sgt
Alan page, head of Cambridgeshire Police Burglary Squad.

"At one point he stared into the computer as if it might be making a
noise or something to make him suspicious.

"He then stole the computer but it didn't matter because Mr Grisby had
set it up so that as it was recording it was sending the images to an
email address.

"When the break-in was discovered Mr Grisby simply gave us the email
address and we were able to watch several minutes of footage and say,
`That's Ben Park'.

"Mr Grisby is an extremely bright man. He'd set this up because he'd
been burgled some years ago and the quality was superb.

'Better than alarm'

"It was better than a burglar alarm and when Park initially denied
breaking in to the property we were simply able to show him the footage."

Magistrates heard Park, who has more than 13 previous convictions for
theft, had stolen computer equipment and other property with a value of
nearly £4,000 from Mr Grisby's study.

He committed the offence in February while on bail after being charged
with an attempted burglary in Ely, Cambridgeshire, in August.

"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."

------

So how did Duncan Grisby catch the burglar in the act?

There are many commercial software packages available to capture images
from a web cam and send them over the internet to a web page.

But Mr Grisby took a more Do-It-Yourself route which requires some
technical knowledge.

He used a cheap video camera which is plugged into a video card inside
his PC to capture the images.

Software running on the PC - which must be left switched on and have an
"always-on" internet connection - detects motion and activiates a
separate program written by Mr Grisby.

That program instructs the computer to grab photos from the video camera
- up to five stills per second - and then send them over the internet to
a webpage where they are stored for viewing.

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