http://www.news24.com/News24/South_Africa/News/0,,2-7-1442_2198354,00.html
"...The men eventually left in their Peugeot 206 and Toyota Corolla Verso filled with the Gowers's computer, jewellery and, specifically, their LCD television...."
Tag the computer, LCD television, fridge or any other stationary item that won't be moved with a Bluetooth
http://scratchpad.wikia.com/wiki/RadioModems. Install a Bluetooth receiver in each room. As the valuable item is moved from one room to the next, the bluetooth transmitter will automatically mesh with the receiver installed. Even an RFID tag and concealed tag reader will work. The moment the item is moved through the door the tag reader reads it and sends a realtime panic to your security company. Why would you want to move your fridge from the kitchen to the living room? And this information will be made known in real-time to your security company or anybody else for that matter. The bluetooth trasmitter communicates continuasly with the bluetooth in the room. So if they find the transmitter and destroy it , they will destroy the link enabling a real-time panic to be sent in any case. The transmitter could be removed though, but if they don't know about this to begin with.....
Or install a small safe inside a cupboard. The safe should never be opened because on opening the safe a sensor is triggered sending out a panic signal. We have completely rethink how we go about our business in this country. Every single valuable item from a vehicle to a television should be tagged with either a GSM modem, Zigbee , RFID or Bluetooth RadioModems that is in 24hour communication with a base in our attempt at implementing
http://scratchpad.wikia.com/wiki/NetworkCentricWarfare
There always must be some sort of continues real-time fixed wired , Wi-Fi or radio link to a distant premise. All communication media can be jammed: Phone lines can be cut, Wi-Fi can be jammed , 900Mhz made useless with a
http://www.phonejammer.com etc.
The only counter measure to phonejammer is really to build our own cellphones. There is nothing complicated about this, the designs are standard single chip solutions that any Cell engineer can patch together for us and have the PCBs made somewhere. We hack the patent from
http://www.roundsolutions.com and on detecting a spectrum jamming attempt the custom cell phone sends out an alert instead. Thus the thing will in eternity not be Icasa approved - but cares about Icasa if you are about to die? Normal cell phones all operate on the principle of cutting back their signal on detecting a jamming attempt - this is by international protocols. This is fine for Norway where we don't have deranged criminals killing people for their cellphones. Here in lala-land where we are all stuck on the African continent we are going to have to use a little bit of "unofficial" lateral thinking.
As far as hijacking of cars is concerned - this is really beginning to irritate me, because I have posted at length as to how to use a
http://scratchpad.wikia.com/wiki/GpsAndGprs GSM modem and
http://scratchpad.wikia.com/wiki/EmbeddedPc to prevent this or at least make it impossible for them to get away. The scratchpad wiki doesn't contain all the info you will have to do a search on captainwifi on this forum to understand the constraints and limitations of GSM and who to deal with it.
And even simpler solution is to use Vodacom
http://www.look4me.co.za service. Install a cell phone in your car somewhere recharging from some battery circuit and then do a look4me lookup of the cell and thus obviously the car. This is such a simple concept and so easy to implement than I wonder if South-Africans aren't somehow suffering from some sort of mental disorder. I mean obviously your car will get stolen - this is after all South Africa right? So if you know your car will be toast - it is just a matter of time, then why are you refusing to install a R400 common cellphone to prevent this. Please somebody help me out here.
The technology exists to make it impossible for anybody to just "lekke-lekke" drive of with your car without your security company knowing about it. For example install an infra-red transmitter that sends out a realtime pulse that determines the skin color of the person behind the wheel. 99% of hijackers are black and if your are of the umhlungu variety and then obviously in 99% of cases there should be an umhlungu behind the wheel right? Electronic circuits can determine to a high degree of accuracy the skin color of a person, the darker your skin the more IR light is absorbed, the lighter the less is absorbed enabling the tone of the skin to be determined. The killer app is facial recognition software but we are probably another 5years away before this is a reality in a vehicle environment. The facial recognition software will determine in real-time if the person behind the wheel is you or not.
Or install weight sensors and an embedded pc that determines that the weight of the car and its GPS coordinates don't match a regular pattern. The chances are that the hijackers won't weigh the same as you do - especially if you are fat. Hijackers aren't generally fat. Weight sensors can also determine how many people are in the car and relate it to the GPS coordinates. Hijacking is an irritation than can easily, easily be solved - just ask Telkom and Eskom none of their bakkies get hijacked anymore. Why? Because the thieves are convinced there are tracking devices installed. And you must somehow convince a hijacker that your car also has a tracking device:
http://scratchpad.wikia.com/wiki/VehicleSecurity "...
www.datadotsecurity.com or
www.datadot.co.za sprays thousands of micro dots on the vehicle. With a
http://www.donthijackme.co.za sticker on the bumper the thief can determine if the vehicle does have micro dots or not by looking up the registration number on the website. This database should be available in a text file for easy downloading. Thus crime syndicates can keep local copies on their PCs. Everything is done so that the crime syndicates can know exactly which vehicles have tracking devices. This is why hardly any
http://www.escom.co.za and
http://www.telkom.co.za bakkies gets hijacked. The syndicates knows that every single vehicle of theirs has a tracking device...."
"...The man pulled him roughly from the car and took him inside, demanding the key to a security gate between the garage and the house...."
Keys alone are not enough. A keypad that will allow the gates to be opened under duress is the answer. The crook forces you to type in a number but the number alerts the security in real-time that it was entered under duress.
I left, I came back, and homecoming revolution are actually really helpful - there are always admin issues like how to convert your licence, or how to handle tax returns for the time you were away, and they helped sort out a lot of those of things for me.
Not fresh out of varsity, but not middle aged yet either.
