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[Mark Rober] was fed up with packages going missing. He kept receiving notifications that his shipments had been delivered, but when checking his porch he found nothing there. Reviewing the CCTV footage revealed random passers-by sidling up to his porch and stealing his parcels. It was time to strike back. Over six months, [Mark] and his friends painstakingly designed, prototyped and iterated the perfect trap for package thieves, resulting in a small unit disguised as an Apple HomePod. The whole scheme is wonderfully over-engineered and we love it.
The main feature of the device is a spinning cup on the top which contains a large amount of glitter. When activated, it ejects glitter in every directions. You could say it's harmless, as it's just glitter. But then again, glitter has a way of staying with you for the rest of your life — turning up at the least expected times. It certainly leaves an emotional impression.
The trap uses an accelerometer to detect movement, geo-fencing to determine when the package has left the property, glitter and a fart spray to make the thief regret it, and smartphones to capture the thief's reaction for the enjoyment of the hacker.
Also at BBC.
See also: Jersey City PD, Amazon work together to catch package thieves
Jersey City PD nabs 12 this week in porch package sting
(Score: 3, Interesting) by sjames on Tuesday December 18 2018, @07:52PM
On the other hand, the thief cannot report you at all without confessing to a crime. In many jurisdictions, any liability for harm that comes to anybody in the commission of a crime falls upon the criminal(s). The booby traps that are illegal are generally things such as bombs, shotgun wired to a door, tiger pits, etc that are designed to cause bodily harm. Glitter and fart spray simply don't rise to that level.
The DA will have to consider that they would be seen as prosecuting a local minor hero for pranking the lowest form of life that richly deserved what they got. The king of thing an opponent would bring up during the next election.
There is a long history of such packages being made and used against package thieves including stink bombs and spring loaded garbage ejectors. I've never heard of an attempt to prosecute the person who made the package.
My only suggestion would be replace the fart spray with a more vigorously aerosolized artificial skunk spray. That stuff lingers. If they're going to be dirty skunks, they should smell like dirty skunks.