Criminals have wisened up to the police's uselessness - in many places, video evidence of a crime even with a clear picture will no longer result in any police action.

The light still works as a deterrent because the light makes them visible to a potential occupier. They'll fear real, immediate confrontation/violence, not some lazy policeman looking 5 minutes at the picture before moving onto something easier such as kids dealing weed.

What amazes me that Facebook and Google has faces and identity of 99% population and could be solved in an instant. FB even used to auto-tag people for you if you upload their photos. Probably still do internally. Solving a crime is like one checkbox away. Yet "the privacy" of doing crime is more important.

This might be reflected in a rise of crime rates, as I suspect that criminals prefer not to commit a crime if they know for sure that they will be caught. Likewise if they know that they will be confronted.

> Dont over estimate how dumb they are.

Somehow, I can't parse this.

Imagine dumb is on a scale [0, 10] where 0 is “not dumb” and 10 is “dumbest a person could possibly be.”

Now on this scale estimate how dumb someone is. If you say 2 (a little dumb) but in actuality they’re a 7 (very dumb) you underestimated how dumb they are.

Yes, but the OP was talking about overestimating dumbness, and it being bad for protecting against home invaders. It still doesn't make sense to me.

He thought a camera would be good enough, but the thief was smart enough to cover his face. He over estimated how dumb the crook was, for the solution (camera), required a thief to walk around showing his face.

See? He overestimated how dumb crooks are, and was robbed.

Thanks! I think reread this subthread about five times before it clicked that "overestimate" was truly the word OP intended to use and there was a valid point being made via that word.

Totally changes the meaning of the comment if one assumes that it was a typo and OP intended to use "underestimate".

This raises a question.

"Don't overestimate how dumb they are" is logical and correct. However, because "how dumb they are" is in the sentence, it emphasizes, well, that they are dumb, which is not what the OP intended to say.

Writing it as "don't underestimate how smart they are" is more readable, although logically, it's stating the same thing.

Even better, I would have written it as "don't underestimate how smart they can be."

Exactly — it's about underestimating how dumb people are (which your comment refers to), not overestimating (which GP refers to).

Nice try AI.

Everyone wears masks these days so the only way to identify a thief is if they are wearing a unique jacket etc

Mr. Blue Basketball Sneakers has been stealing all kinds of stuff from parked cars in the radius of my home. He's been caught on camera probably a dozen times. He wears a black mask, hoodie, and pants but wears some very conspicuous blue basketball sneakers that absolutely glow from the motion lights he ignores. I'm sure he lives nearby as he's always on foot with a backpack and the hits all seem to be one big neighborhood. Hopefully the cops catch him before some crazy homeowner with a gun does.

Any supermarket (or company that does their loss prevention) could run pass their AI and id them in milliseconds.

Same with cars - even if you don't have a licence plate, there are tons of little fingerprints around your car that licence plate reader companies use.

" Dont over estimate how dumb they are."

I don't know... you setup deterrents, as a bluff and it took a while before one worked.