Buying a car is stressful enough. The car dealers would love to have you think that you are required to provide them with this extremely valuable information but never seem to have the documentation on hand to back their reasons. Ask them for this 'proof' in writing. If they are following the law, they will have some paperwork they can refer to. Unless your financing, the only reason car dealers could possibly have for wanting this is for marketing purposes. The Department of Homeland Security, The Treasury Department AND the IRS do NOT require you to provide this to a CAR DEALER! Your State Attorney General is the appropriate entity to talk to. They oversee the car dealer/auto industry. Ask them this question and ask them to provide their response in writing! ;) We went through this very thing when we bought a new car last year. Paid cash, no financing. We shopped around at several dealerships who ALL insisted we were going to have to provide our SS# in order to complete the sale. They gave us the same BS about Homeland security needing this, blah, blah. Oddly enough, they were unable to provide any documentation to back this up. (We all know that car dealers/salesman are as honest as Eagle scouts, hmm?!) In any case, we told them we had no intentions of giving up this kind of sensitive information to a company that was NOT issuing us credit/financing, or was NOT a government entity. We said we would provide this info to the BMV (bureau of motor vehicles) instead. (If you have a drivers license on file in the state where you are purchasing, then the BMV already has your SS# on file.) They still insisted on having this so rather than argue, we decided to avoid the hassle completely and have our corporation purchase the car instead. The owner of the dealership was so aggravated that he wasn't able to snag our private, personal info that he refused to send us service agreements or ANY follow-up regarding the maintenance of our brand new car. Big deal. In the long run its going to hurt them more than us. They lost our service business, any future business, as well as the word of mouth 'advertising' we are sharing with anyone who wants to listen. We also contacted the car maker to let them know how we were treated. Car dealer should skip SS number By Bob Dyer- Akron Beacon Journal Jul. 25, 2008 bulletin.aarp.orgstatesoharticlesthe_akron_beacon_journal_ ohio_dyer_streets_column_car_dealer_should_skip_ss_number.html Car dealerships prime target for identity thieves By Donna Harris AUTOMOTIVE NEWS July 31, 2004 www.signonsandiego.com/articlelink/rollok/rollok.html

I would never...ever....EVER....keep my SLR in the car. i even carry my backpack in the store with me if its hot out. On the other side of that, I used to keep my sony dsc-w80 in the car year round without any ill effects. I usually kept it in a case, up under the seat, and left a small crack in the window to vent the hot air. It was hardly ever hot when I went to use it. I would keep it down low though, since hot air rises. **This reply is for educational puroposes only. Any use of the advice herein is at the risk of the camera's owner** LOL:) Andy

Answering my own question here, but after a bit of noodling around, I found a cheap (less than $100) security recording system to replace my ancient one, drop in a hard drive, so decided to give it a try. About a fifth the weight, a quarter the size, lots more capabilities, takes both analog inputs and some digital/IP cameras (limited number though). If I were starting from scratch would probably go all digital but being able to use what I already have wired made this an easy decision. Terrible instructions with this unit, but eventually figured it out, and now I can see what's on the cameras from away on my phone. The only extra expense was that it made more sense to replace the ancient monitor (old connections, no hdmi, terrible image and burn-in), so a small cheap digital TV sacrificed, as it also fit the wallmount space and vesa mount perfectly. I had meant to measure the power draw on the old ones and forgot; given how big and old and hot, I could argue that on electricity alone they'll save some money (okay, likely not much). At any rate was only a matter of time with the old system - even the old hard drives it uses are increasingly hard to find and expensive (for what you get). I was pretty surprised at how much smaller and lighter newer gear is in comparison - not to mention reasonably priced.

wdccruise: Thanks for the link to the Dark Sky guidelines. It was helpful to understand which light fixtures they recommend and which they don’t. I will definitely look for a recommended style. Unfortuantely, I do think we need to replace but keep the existing placement of all the lights. I wasn’t really thinking the lights would deter crime (in fact, a neighbor had a sensor flood light come on above their side garage door and all it did was illuminate the area for the criminals to get inside - a neighbor’s security camera caught it on tape). But we do need the lights for visitors, taking the dogs out at night, etc. We used to rarely use the lights by the garage, but now that we have our kids use the keypad for the garage door (instead of keeping the clicker in the car in the driveway) we use those lights a lot more but they could be equipped with motion sensors. I’ll look into that. Regarding the security cameras, I never really wanted to go that route, but the police that have come to the neighborhood recommended them and requested all the tapes from those who do have them. The light/camera combo brands recommended by maddielee were exactly what I was looking for, but the colors and styles are very limited and I’m not sure any would look good with our house. Someone recommended a solar powered camera that could be affixed to the mailbox (police really wanted car and license plate info, but the home cameras are too far from the street to be much use), so I was going to look into those. But I’m open to suggestions.