Entries Tagged "crime"

Page 14 of 39

Security Cameras in the New York City Subways

The New York Times has an article about cameras in the subways. The article is all about how horrible it is that the cameras don’t work:

Moreover, nearly half of the subway system’s 4,313 security cameras that have been installed—in stations and tunnels throughout the system—do not work, because of either shoddy software or construction problems, say officials with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which operates the city’s bus, subway and train system.

I certainly agree that taxpayers should be upset when something they’ve purchased doesn’t function as expected. But way down at the bottom of the article, we find:

Even without the cameras, officials said crime in the transit system had dropped to a record low. In 1990, the system averaged 47.8 crimes a day, compared with 5.3 so far this year. “The subway system is safer than it’s ever been,” said Kevin Ortiz, an authority spokesman.

No data on how many crimes were solved by cameras, but we know from other studies that their effect on crime is minimal.

Posted on March 31, 2010 at 1:24 PM • View Comments

Master Thief

The amazing story of Gerald Blanchard.

Thorough as ever, Blanchard had spent many previous nights infiltrating the bank to do recon or to tamper with the locks while James acted as lookout, scanning the vicinity with binoculars and providing updates via a scrambled-band walkie-talkie. He had put a transmitter behind an electrical outlet, a pinhole video camera in a thermostat, and a cheap baby monitor behind the wall. He had even mounted handles on the drywall panels so he could remove them to enter and exit the ATM room. Blanchard had also taken detailed measurements of the room and set up a dummy version in a friend’s nearby machine shop. With practice, he had gotten his ATM-cracking routine down to where he needed only 90 seconds after the alarm tripped to finish and escape with his score.

As Blanchard approached, he saw that the door to the ATM room was unlocked and wide open. Sometimes you get lucky. All he had to do was walk inside.

From here he knew the drill by heart. There were seven machines, each with four drawers. He set to work quickly, using just the right technique to spring the machines open without causing any telltale damage. Well rehearsed, Blanchard wheeled out boxes full of cash and several money counters, locked the door behind him, and headed to a van he had parked nearby.

Eight minutes after Blanchard broke into the first ATM, the Winnipeg Police Service arrived in response to the alarm. However, the officers found the doors locked and assumed the alarm had been an error. As the police pronounced the bank secure, Blanchard was zipping away with more than half a million dollars.

Posted on March 29, 2010 at 1:48 PM • View Comments

Acrobatic Thieves

Some movie-plot attacks actually happen:

They never touched the floor—that would have set off an alarm.

They didn’t appear on store security cameras. They cut a hole in the roof and came in at a spot where the cameras were obscured by advertising banners.

And they left with some $26,000 in laptop computers, departing the same way they came in—down a 3-inch gas pipe that runs from the roof to the ground outside the store.

EDITED TO ADD (4/13): Similar heists.

Posted on March 24, 2010 at 1:51 PM • View Comments

Casino Hack

Nice hack:

Using insider knowledge the two hacked into software that controlled remote betting machines on live roulette wheels, the report said.

The machines would print out winning betting slips regardless of the results on the wheel, Peterborough Today said.

I’d like to know how they got caught.

EDITED TO ADD (4/17): They got their math wrong:

However, the scheme came unstuck after an alert cashier noticed a winning slip for £600 for a £10 bet at odds of 35-1. The casino launched an investigation that unearthed a string of other suspicious bets, traced back to Ashley and Bhagat, IT contractors working at the casino at the time of the scam.

Posted on March 17, 2010 at 6:33 AM • View Comments

More Surveillance in the UK

This seems like a bad idea:

Police in the UK are planning to use unmanned spy drones, controversially deployed in Afghanistan, for the “routine” monitoring of antisocial motorists, protesters, agricultural thieves and fly-tippers, in a significant expansion of covert state surveillance.

Once again, laws and technologies deployed against terrorism are used against much more mundane crimes.

Posted on January 26, 2010 at 7:16 AM • View Comments

A Useful Side-Effect of Misplaced Fear

A study in the British Journal of Criminology makes the point that drink-spiking date-raping is basically an urban legend:

Abstract. There is a stark contrast between heightened perceptions of risk associated with drug-facilitated sexual assault (DFSA) and a lack of evidence that this is a widespread threat. Through surveys and interviews with university students in the United Kingdom and United States, we explore knowledge and beliefs about drink-spiking and the linked threat of sexual assault. University students in both locations are not only widely sensitized to the issue, but substantial segments claim first- or second-hand experience of particular incidents. We explore students’ understanding of the DFSA threat in relationship to their attitudes concerning alcohol, binge-drinking, and responsibility for personal safety. We suggest that the drink-spiking narrative has a functional appeal in relation to the contemporary experience of young women’s public drinking.

In an article on the study in The Telegraph, the authors said:

Among young people, drink spiking stories have attractive features that could “help explain” their disproportionate loss of control after drinking alcohol, the study found.

Dr Burgess said: “Our findings suggest guarding against drink spiking has also become a way for women to negotiate how to watch out for each other in an environment where they might well lose control from alcohol consumption.”

[…]

“As Dr Burgess observes, it is not scientific evidence which keeps the drug rape myth alive but the fact that it serves so many useful functions.”

Basically, the hypothesis is that perpetuating the fear of drug-rape allows parents and friends to warn young women off excessive drinking without criticizing their personal choices. The fake bogeyman lets people avoid talking about the real issues.

Posted on November 17, 2009 at 5:58 AM • View Comments

Hacking the Brazil Power Grid

We’ve seen lots of rumors about attacks against the power grid, both in the U.S. and elsewhere, of people hacking the power grid. President Obama mentioned it in his May cybersecurity speech: “In other countries cyberattacks have plunged entire cities into darkness.” Seems like the source of these rumors has been Brazil:

Several prominent intelligence sources confirmed that there were a series of cyber attacks in Brazil: one north of Rio de Janeiro in January 2005 that affected three cities and tens of thousands of people, and another, much larger event beginning on Sept. 26, 2007.

That one in the state of Espirito Santo affected more than three million people in dozens of cities over a two-day period, causing major disruptions. In Vitoria, the world’s largest iron ore producer had seven plants knocked offline, costing the company $7 million. It is not clear who did it or what the motive was.

60 Minutes called me during the research of this story. They had a lot more unsubstantiated information than they’re provided here: names of groups that were involved, allegations of extortion, government coverups, and so on. It would be nice to know what really happened.

EDITED TO ADD (11/11): Wired says that the attacks were caused by sooty insulators. The counterargument, of course, is that sooty insulators are just the cover story because the whole hacker thing is secret.

Wired also mentions that, in an interview last month, Richard Clarke named Brazil as a victim of these attacks.

Posted on November 11, 2009 at 12:19 PM • View Comments

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Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.