Threatening public safety, the reliability of the services that keep America connected and comfortable, and the continuing cost-efficiency and affordability of those services, materials and equipment theft at public utilities site – and thus, utility security – has fast become a matter of grave national concern.

While the ethic (or lack thereof) of most forms of theft always tends to be fundamentally the same, the way theft looks – with regard for what is being stolen, where, why, and how – is ever changing. In an increasingly “2.0” world where we are all integrating new and improved technologies into our daily lives, it is often all too easy to forget that serial thieves are members of the same computer savvy “we” and “all” as the law abiding masses, and that improved technologies and the heightened, quick, accessibility to information flows have the unfortunate downside of educating criminals and allowing for their plans to be more sophisticated, informed, and tactical – and there are an abundance of news and police reports to prove it.

Many such reports have centered around the epidemic of metal theft, particularly copper, that has been ongoing for several years now and which is undoubtedly the source of many a migraine for the lawmakers, police force, and public utilities employees faced with the task of repairing damages and putting a stop to it. This crime trend certainly demonstrates no arbitrary, random, decisions on the part of the thieves responsible for it, but rather, careful calculations based on the swelling per pound exchange value of copper wires and parts at recycling plants that had ascended from 80 cents in 2003 to more than $4 per pound at its peak around late 2007. Being found in abundance in public utilities infrastructure like phone lines, electrical substations, and water irrigation systems that are often remote and not usually under surveillance, the “work” of copper thieves alone is costing the nation more than $1 billion, annually, according to The Department of Energy. Unfortunately, with the international economic downturn-influenced devaluation of recyclable metals, public utilities sites haven’t become less attractive to thieves. Instead, some have shifted focus to other costly materials. For example, in March, 2009, 90 solar panels valued at $1,000 per unit were made off with at a water treatment plant in Northern California, an event that exemplifies the growing popularity of theft centered around green technology materials.

Further, in an era where the threat of terrorism is very real, the motivating factors for public utilities materials theft should be recognized as being of the potentiality to be substantially more malicious in nature than more standard motivators for burglary, with the provocation of fear and chaos and the intention of causing physical harm to Americans representing atypical but still possible agendas that this brand of crime may be enacted to fulfill.

The solution? Fight fire with fire, according to many experts. Or, more specifically: counter technology and intelligence with even smarter and more capable technology and intelligence. By contracting and implementing better public utilities surveillance systems like IP cameras and CCTV monitoring systems that make often secluded, theft susceptible public utilities infrastructure sites viewable remotely, these crimes may be noticed and halted while they occur, saving the utilities companies bottom-lines in the long run not only by preventing and stopping theft, but also eliminating the necessity of commissioning often costly teams of security guards to safeguard sites – especially when accounting for the vast amount of space that utilities infrastructure occupies nationwide.