alt Hacker News> There is too much opportunity for crime, and a camera is cheap.
The camera doesn't prevent crime. It just displaces it. Even when it doesn't it will not prevent the crime from happening. It _may_ provide you an opportunity to prosecute the person who committed it.
In reality the only real reason to have one is to reduce your insurance premiums.
> crime has been solved
A perpetrator was potentially caught and now has to be tried or negotiated into a plea. I understand we use the term "solve" as a term of art but it's a particularly poor one. It speaks to the need of police to clear their books of negative indicators and not to any first order desirable social outcome.
> That said
That said, if during a demo, you access another customers equipment, I will _never_ do business with you. That's just extremely unprofessional behavior.
Replies
> The camera doesn't prevent crime. It just displaces it. Even when it doesn't it will not prevent the crime from happening. It _may_ provide you an opportunity to prosecute the person who committed it.
And that is worth something in itself, at least in areas where disputes between people are the norm. Gyms in particular suffer from theft to sexual harassment.
> The camera doesn't prevent crime. It just displaces it.
That's why I periodically leave a bunch of bicycles with cheap locks downtown. They act like a kind of criminal sacrificial anode, reducing crime in the rest of the city.