Dumb Crooks and Technology
Wednesday, 16. December 2009, 22:31:49
Kadeem Cook, surrendered to police after robbing a woman at gunpoint last week, taking her purse and cell phone.Police said the robber then used the woman's cell phone to take photos of himself holding the gun used in the robbery.
But the victim had set up her phone to automatically transmit images to her home computer. She contacted police, who distributed copies of the photo, which shows Cook with the gun, pointing it to his head.
After seeing his photo widely disseminated, Cook thought it best to surrender.
At least he was smart enough to do that.
My son's live-in girl friend was arguing with him one night and sent him away so she could "settle down" and put up the Christmas tree with her two kids. When he returned home, she had taken $1,000 worth of presents that he had just bought and left. Some were intended to be given to her kids but there was also presents for his little girl that would soon be there for Christmas.
She claimed she did not take his stuff and he could not prove it. It was there when she left. She plans on returning to pick up her belongings with a constable.
A security camera from a neighbor's house happened to record her carrying Best Buy bags to the car.
There is a warrant for her in that county for grand larceny. I would like to be there to see that.
I recently bought a small netbook to carry around with me. It uses facial recognition to automatically log you on to your account. If it doesn't recognize the face it takes a couple of pictures and a short video of who is trying to log on to your machine. These can be set to be sent to a certain email account the next time it connects to the internet.
A lot of cell phones today have a GPS in them. They can be set up to send it's location Google Maps. If it is stolen, all you have to do is log on to Google Maps and you can see exactly where your phone is. There are applications for iPhone, Android, and others that send locations to a specified account.

At the rate the government is installing "traffic" cameras, we will be observed continually from the time we leave the house to the time we get to work.
OnStar has revolutionized the auto theft alarm. They can communicate, track and shut down the operation of any car subscribed to it.
Our government makes a copy of all transmissions through AT&T (and more than likely other carriers) and scans EVERY conversation and web page visit at speeds close to real time.
A device mounted on the back of a police cruiser can signal infrared cameras to take digital photos of just about every car on the road. The device "runs" the plate numbers and signals the officer if there is a warning related to that automobile and even check to see that it is insured.

New technology for face recognition uses several 2D pictures to create 3D images that are 95-100% accurate in recognizing faces compared to images in a database. Several states are already contributing drivers license pictures to this database.
If you want a glimpse of facial recognition at work, download the newest Picasa from Google and let it scan the pictures on you hard drive. I was amazed.
With all this technology, why do we still have crimes?

















