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Earlier quoted context omitted.
More generally, boobytrapping stuff has lots of potential harm to lots of potential people. (gas company employees, police, etc). The fact that it's also harmful to thiefs is tangential.
Intending to you kill someone for robbing you is illegal as well if you are not in danger (being at work in this case)
Actually, that depends entirely on which state you live in. Some states under Castle Doctrine allow deadly force to prevent the commission of any felony in your home, including robbery.
That, so far as I know, does not apply to booby traps.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_Doctrine_in_the_United_S...
To be fair, pretty much every single person with a job leaves their home empty all day. Everyone already knows this. I can't wait until I get to read about someone who decided to rob one of these people, but then gets shot to death by the spring gun they set up. Bonus if the spring gun auto-uploads to YouTube.
Regarding spring guns, fun fact: it is illegal for you to make your home unsafe for burglars and other lawbreakers in most US states.
I learned a long time ago that you DON'T tell people you don't trust whether you'll be away from your house and when, but indeed, thousands of people are posting about that on blogs, Twitter or facebook all the time.
Time to relearn old lessons - in the 80s there were warnings about answering messages that said "We're out of town, be back next week!". Then, in the 90s there were warnings about email auto-responders that said "I'm travelling for business, be back next week!". Now the opportunity to tell the public your house is unoccupied has moved to the next technology.
To be fair, pretty much every single person with a job leaves their home empty all day. Everyone already knows this. I can't wait until I get to read about someone who decided to rob one of these people, but then gets shot to death by the spring gun they set up. Bonus if the spring gun auto-uploads to YouTube.
Good point. But one of the key robbin times is vacation. People definitely tweet about that.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Regarding spring guns, fun fact: it is illegal for you to make your home unsafe for burglars and other lawbreakers in most US states.
However, it is legal to use deadly force against an intruder if you're in a life threatening situation. An interesting test case would be to install a wall switch that remotely disables the brakes on your car (so that an intruder can put you in a life threatening situation even when you're not home) and a booby trap that automatically kills anyone approaching it.
We had our car stolen out of the driveway one day after my mom was warming it up in the morning (I'm hearing this is illegal in places like Maryland). She doesn't do this every morning, BTW. What was interesting, though, is that the criminals weren't even smart enough to steal a car that had a full tank of gas. My parents later ran into them (fate is awesome) pushing that car into a gas station not too far from our house after it ran out of gas. I doubt these guys would have been smart enough to case our house based on my Foursquare check-ins. That morning, they were just walking through the neighborhood and saw an opp.
Furthermore, I think the site is also rather silly because it presupposes that everyone knows what Foursquare (or any of the other location-based check-in sites) is enough to make check-in data particularly useful. Contrary to popular belief, there is a whole contingent of people out there who have no clue about Twitter, Foursquare, TechCrunch or anything else we hold dear. :)
Finally, I have a tendency to check in on FS as I'm leaving a location, so I get the points, but I'm already rolling out of the parking lot and back to my house by the time the world knows where I've been.
To be fair, pretty much every single person with a job leaves their home empty all day. Everyone already knows this. I can't wait until I get to read about someone who decided to rob one of these people, but then gets shot to death by the spring gun they set up. Bonus if the spring gun auto-uploads to YouTube.
The issue is that unlike simply observing someone leaving for their regular job, with Foursquare you know exactly where/how far away someone is. If you're watching a house to rob, there's still a remote chance that they might come home randomly (sickness/forgot something). With these 'check-in' services there's no doubt that the user is X miles away and therefore X minutes away from returning.