> Doing any of that would create a very distinct MO.
Crime is all about risk management. Sloppy purchases could leave a trail, yes, but video evidence can also leave a trail. One trail is easier to cover than the other: lots of people buy paint and guns, not many rob trucks.
> have you seen how small cameras are these days?
This isn't hide-and-seek. The game is not over for the perp if a shitty miniature camera buried in the truck's frame catches a few blurry frames of a masked man. I was responding to the "just do machine learning on LIDAR data" proposal that got thrown out elsewhere in the thread. Equipment that can reliably identify people who control the physical situation and don't want to be identified is probably expensive and vulnerable. Making it relatively invulnerable makes it even more expensive.
> A problem not made any worse by driverless vehicles
Yes, precisely. They never were a deterrent and "just call 911" was/is not going to stop robbers. The deterrent is sitting in the cab.
> "Crime is all about risk management. Sloppy purchases could leave a trail, yes, but video evidence can also leave a trail. One trail is easier to cover than the other: lots of people buy paint and guns, not many rob trucks."
The sort of MO that I am talking about is "Always shoots out the cameras after stopping the truck, using a rifle" (or whatever the specific details happen to be).
The reason you do not want to establish this sort of MO is that it allows the police/FBI to connect different incidents, different truck hijackings, and figure out that they were all perpetrated by the same gang of criminals.
Once they do this, they can begin analysing where and when you are likely to strike in the future. They can use information such as "This gang was out committing crime on April 15th, June 3rd and July 18th" to narrow down their list of suspects, eliminating people who might be matches for one date/location but not for the others.
> "This isn't hide-and-seek."
When you are talking about shooting out cameras, it really is. I mean, ignoring the hollywood silliness of it, chances are you are going to be in that cameras field of view before you shoot it, and any footage that camera already shot will not be destroyed by the bullet smashing the lense. The LIDAR is really not going to be the primary source of information about the thieves anyway, the cameras will be.
> "They never were a deterrent and "just call 911" was/is not going to stop robbers."
Calling 911 is about catching robbers, not deterring them. The sooner the police arrive on the scene, the more likely the criminals will be caught.
How fast does the average truck hijacking happen? How fast does it happen when the truck that is being robbed has been immobilized? Maybe you can get the trailer off and onto another truck, but that takes time and could be hindered any number of ways. Immobilizing the truck isn't a good idea when there is a human driver that could be harmed, but with a self-driving truck there is no reason why it wouldn't be done.
Crime is all about risk management. Sloppy purchases could leave a trail, yes, but video evidence can also leave a trail. One trail is easier to cover than the other: lots of people buy paint and guns, not many rob trucks.
> have you seen how small cameras are these days?
This isn't hide-and-seek. The game is not over for the perp if a shitty miniature camera buried in the truck's frame catches a few blurry frames of a masked man. I was responding to the "just do machine learning on LIDAR data" proposal that got thrown out elsewhere in the thread. Equipment that can reliably identify people who control the physical situation and don't want to be identified is probably expensive and vulnerable. Making it relatively invulnerable makes it even more expensive.
> A problem not made any worse by driverless vehicles
Yes, precisely. They never were a deterrent and "just call 911" was/is not going to stop robbers. The deterrent is sitting in the cab.