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Must be something in the water

Looks like the cops in London are getting pretty full of themselves, and its all because of a new system going into place at many frequently burgled (is that a word?) homes and businesses. They have so much faith in their new system, entitled Smartwater, that they have sent a little Valentine’s Day card to frequent or suspected offenders.

“Thinking of you and what you do at this time of year”.

Inside, the message turns more sinister: “Roses are red, violets are blue, when Smartwater is activated, it’s over for you.”

Isn’t that cute? I wonder how long till someone figures out how to beat their system and sends them a cute little card back.

I did some checking on this “smartwater” system and they offer a few products on their horribly ugly and difficult to use website. Their forensic products seem to all revolve around marking products that you want to protect with a “practically impossible to remove entirely” mark that glows under UV light.

Seems like a nice idea, but just the fact that you are telling the crooks about this first seems like a bad idea. I would just shut up about it. For one, just to save face if someone finds out how to beat it, and two, to lock up a few of these guys that don’t know about it and strike first.

Hopefully I’ll get to hear how this turns out.

Via boingboing

  • Thanks for the correction Neil! But that new news just confounds the point of sending out that card to criminals further. If its been out for 10 years, why the card now?

    Weird.
  • It's not really a 'new' system - it's been around for a good 10 years or so. Basically homeowners can use smartwater pens to mark their property with their postal code and house number and then, should any of their property be stolen, if police raid a criminal's house they then know that the items are stolen and where to return them to.

    Most of my valuable stuff (laptop, printer, stereo system etc) is marked with smartwater.
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