Comment by nogabebop23 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nogabebop23 | Hacker News Reader

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My house was broken into with the high tech method of a rock through the sidelight window, right on top of the ADT sticker; so much for that theory. This occurred @ 10am on a weekday when we were out for less than an hour too.

We added (real!) cameras after this and for the next 2 years freaked out every time an alert hit our phones. Now there are so many false positives that it's conditioned us to be less uptight.

My sister has a monitored alarm where I'm a secondary contact. On a recent alarm they phoned my to ask if I wanted them to call the cops. As I'm (at least) second in line this had to take at least 15 minutes since the alarm, plus the police response time (tip: minor property crime is not a priority for police). The burglars were long gone by the time anyone got there.

So my point is it's largely security theatre, like airport security. It makes you feel better I guess but does nothing.

> So my point is it's largely security theatre, like airport security.

It's difficult to improve on as well.. good physical security is directly at odds with accessibility and livability.

> It makes you feel better I guess but does nothing.

Worse than that.. as you've noted, it's reconditioned your expectations and it belies the fact that you can never truly secure anything in your home.

If you truly have something valuable, you can either insure it and hope for the best, or store it somewhere other than a space optimized for sleeping, eating and bathing.

If the cost of the security system is less than the discount you get on your insurance policy, then it may be worthwhile purely for that, but it's highly unlikely that the technology will be used to capture the thief let alone recover your property. There is much better and less intrusive technology for that purpose anyways.

Home security seems on the same footing with home anti virus.

My inclination for these kind of systems isn't so much to prevent the act from happening in real-time but more around providing law enforcement with enough footage to land the perpetuators in jail. Of course if that part of the system is broken then we're truly screwed no matter what.

Exactly, the evidence is sometimes worth it if the burglars were dumb enough to not wear a mask. I assume most would be.

All this is exactly why I've never paid for a security system. I have some cameras in the house but that's more to monitor the kids when we (parents) are out of the house.

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