Entries Tagged "crime"

Page 21 of 39

Exploiting the War on Photography

Petty thieves are exploiting the war on photography in Genoa:

As they were walking around, Jeff saw some interesting looking produce and pulled out his Canon G-9 Point-and-Shoot and took a few pictures. Within a few minutes a man came up dressed in plain clothes, flashed a badge, and told him he couldn’t take photos in the store. My brother said “no problem” (after all, it’s a private store, right?), but then the guy demanded my brother’s memory card.

My brother gave him that “Are you outta your mind” look and said, “No way!” Can you guess what happened next? The guy simply shrugged his shoulders and walked away.

My brother saw him in the store a little later, and the guy had a bag and was shopping. My brother made eye contact with him, and the guy turned away as though he didn’t want Jeff looking at him. Jeff feels like this wasn’t “official store security,” but instead some guy collecting (and then reselling) memory cards from unsuspecting tourists (many of whom might have just surrendered that card immediately).

Posted on July 10, 2008 at 6:54 AM • View Comments

Hundreds of Thousands of Laptops Lost at U.S. Airports Annually

This is a weird statistic:

Some of the largest and medium-sized U.S. airports report close to 637,000 laptops lost each year, according to the Ponemon Institute survey released Monday. Laptops are most commonly lost at security checkpoints, according to the survey.

Close to 10,278 laptops are reported lost every week at 36 of the largest U.S. airports, and 65 percent of those laptops are not reclaimed, the survey said. Around 2,000 laptops are recorded lost at the medium-sized airports, and 69 percent are not reclaimed.

Travelers seem to lack confidence that they will recover lost laptops. About 77 percent of people surveyed said they had no hope of recovering a lost laptop at the airport, with 16 percent saying they wouldn’t do anything if they lost their laptop during business travel. About 53 percent said that laptops contain confidential company information, with 65 percent taking no steps to protect the information.

I don’t know how to generalize that to a total number of lost laptops in the U.S.; let’s call it 750,000. At $1,000 per laptop—a very conservative estimate—that’s $750 million in lost laptops annually. Most are lost at security checkpoints, and I’m sure the numbers went up considerably since those checkpoints got more annoying after 9/11.

There aren’t a lot of real numbers about the costs of increased airport security. We pay in time, in anxiety, in inconvenience. But we also pay in goods. TSA employees steal out of suitcases. And opportunists steal hundreds of millions of dollars of laptops annually.

EDITED TO ADD (7/14): Seems like this is not a story.

Posted on July 4, 2008 at 8:20 AM • View Comments

CCTV Cameras

Pervasive security cameras don’t substantially reduce crime. There are exceptions, of course, and that’s what gets the press. Most famously, CCTV cameras helped catch James Bulger’s murderers in 1993. And earlier this year, they helped convict Steve Wright of murdering five women in the Ipswich area. But these are the well-publicised exceptions. Overall, CCTV cameras aren’t very effective.

This fact has been demonstrated again and again: by a comprehensive study for the Home Office in 2005, by several studies in the US, and again with new data announced last month by New Scotland Yard. They actually solve very few crimes, and their deterrent effect is minimal.

Conventional wisdom predicts the opposite. But if that were true, then camera-happy London, with something like 500,000, would be the safest city on the planet. It isn’t, of course, because of technological limitations of cameras, organisational limitations of police and the adaptive abilities of criminals.

To some, it’s comforting to imagine vigilant police monitoring every camera, but the truth is very different. Most CCTV footage is never looked at until well after a crime is committed. When it is examined, it’s very common for the viewers not to identify suspects. Lighting is bad and images are grainy, and criminals tend not to stare helpfully at the lens. Cameras break far too often. The best camera systems can still be thwarted by sunglasses or hats. Even when they afford quick identification—think of the 2005 London transport bombers and the 9/11 terrorists—police are often able to identify suspects without the cameras. Cameras afford a false sense of security, encouraging laziness when we need police to be vigilant.

The solution isn’t for police to watch the cameras. Unlike an officer walking the street, cameras only look in particular directions at particular locations. Criminals know this, and can easily adapt by moving their crimes to someplace not watched by a camera—and there will always be such places. Additionally, while a police officer on the street can respond to a crime in progress, the same officer in front of a CCTV screen can only dispatch another officer to arrive much later. By their very nature, cameras result in underused and misallocated police resources.

Cameras aren’t completely ineffective, of course. In certain circumstances, they’re effective in reducing crime in enclosed areas with minimal foot traffic. Combined with adequate lighting, they substantially reduce both personal attacks and auto-related crime in car parks. And from some perspectives, simply moving crime around is good enough. If a local Tesco installs cameras in its store, and a robber targets the store next door as a result, that’s money well spent by Tesco. But it doesn’t reduce the overall crime rate, so is a waste of money to the township.

But the question really isn’t whether cameras reduce crime; the question is whether they’re worth it. And given their cost (£500 m in the past 10 years), their limited effectiveness, the potential for abuse (spying on naked women in their own homes, sharing nude images, selling best-of videos, and even spying on national politicians) and their Orwellian effects on privacy and civil liberties, most of the time they’re not. The funds spent on CCTV cameras would be far better spent on hiring experienced police officers.

We live in a unique time in our society: the cameras are everywhere, and we can still see them. Ten years ago, cameras were much rarer than they are today. And in 10 years, they’ll be so small you won’t even notice them. Already, companies like L-1 Security Solutions are developing police-state CCTV surveillance technologies like facial recognition for China, technology that will find their way into countries like the UK. The time to address appropriate limits on this technology is before the cameras fade from notice.

This essay was previously published in The Guardian.

EDITED TO ADD (7/3): A rebuttal.

EDITED TO ADD (7/6): More commentary.

EDITED TO ADD (7/9): Another good survey article, and commentary.

Posted on June 26, 2008 at 1:18 PM • View Comments

Security Through Obscurity

Sometimes security through obscurity works:

Yes, the New York Police Department provided an escort, but during more than eight hours on Saturday, one of the great hoards of coins and currency on the planet, worth hundreds of millions of dollars, was utterly unalarmed as it was bumped through potholes, squeezed by double-parked cars and slowed by tunnel-bound traffic during the trip to its fortresslike new vault a mile to the north.

In the end, the move did not become a caper movie.

“The idea was to make this as inconspicuous as possible,” said Ute Wartenberg Kagan, executive director of the American Numismatic Society. “It had to resemble a totally ordinary office move.”

[…]

Society staff members were pledged to secrecy about the timing of the move, and “we didn’t tell our movers what the cargo was until the morning of,” said James McVeigh, operations manager of Time Moving and Storage Inc. of Manhattan, referring to the crew of 20 workers.

From my book Beyond Fear, pp. 211-12:

At 3,106 carats, a little under a pound and a half, the Cullinan Diamond was the largest uncut diamond ever discovered. It was extracted from the earth at the Premier Mine, near Pretoria, South Africa, in 1905. Appreciating the literal enormity of the find, the Transvaal government bought the diamond as a gift for King Edward VII. Transporting the stone to England was a huge security problem, of course, and there was much debate on how best to do it. Detectives were sent from London to guard it on its journey. News leaked that a certain steamer was carrying it, and the presence of the detectives confirmed this. But the diamond on that steamer was a fake. Only a few people knew of the real plan; they packed the Cullinan in a small box, stuck a three-shilling stamp on it, and sent it to England anonymously by unregistered parcel post.

This is a favorite story of mine. Not only can we analyze the complex security system intended to transport the diamond from continent to continent—the huge number of trusted people involved, making secrecy impossible; the involved series of steps with their associated seams, giving almost any organized gang numerous opportunities to pull off a theft—but we can contrast it with the sheer beautiful simplicity of the actual transportation plan. Whoever came up with it was really thinking—and thinking originally, boldly, and audaciously.

This kind of counterintuitive security is common in the world of gemstones. On 47th Street in New York, in Antwerp, in London: People walk around all the time with millions of dollars’ worth of gems in their pockets. The gemstone industry has formal guidelines: If the value of the package is under a specific amount, use the U.S. Mail. If it is over that amount but under another amount, use Federal Express. The Cullinan was again transported incognito; the British Royal Navy escorted an empty box across the North Sea to Amsterdam—where the diamond would be cut—while famed diamond cutter Abraham Asscher actually carried it in his pocket from London via train and night ferry to Amsterdam.

Posted on June 18, 2008 at 1:13 PM • View Comments

Clever Museum Theft

Some expensive and impressive stuff was stolen from the University of British Columbia’s Museum of Anthropology:

A dozen pieces of gold jewelry designed by prominent Canadian artist Bill Reid were stolen from the museum sometime on May 23, along with three pieces of gold-plated Mexican jewelry. The pieces that were taken are estimated to be worth close to $2 million.

Of course, it’s not the museum’s fault:

But museum director Anthony Shelton said that elaborate computer program printouts have determined that the museum’s security system did not fail during the heist and that the construction of the building’s layout did not compromise security.

Um, isn’t having stuff get stolen the very definition of security failing? And does anyone have any idea how “elaborate computer program printouts” can determine that security didn’t fail? What in the world is this guy talking about?

A few days later, we learned that security did indeed fail:

Four hours before the break-in on May 23, two or three key surveillance cameras at the Museum of Anthropology mysteriously went off-line.

Around the same time, a caller claiming to be from the alarm company phoned campus security, telling them there was a problem with the system and to ignore any alarms that might go off.

Campus security fell for the ruse and ignored an automated computer alert sent to them, police sources told CBC News.

Meanwhile surveillance cameras that were still operating captured poor pictures of what was going on inside the museum because of a policy to turn the lights off at night.

Then, as the lone guard working overnight in the museum that night left for a smoke break, the thief or thieves broke in, wearing gas masks and spraying bear spray to slow down anyone who might stumble across them.

It’s a particular kind of security failure, but it’s definitely a failure.

Posted on June 6, 2008 at 5:04 AM • View Comments

London's Cameras Don't Reduce Crime

News here and here:

Massive investment in CCTV cameras to prevent crime in the UK has failed to have a significant impact, despite billions of pounds spent on the new technology, a senior police officer piloting a new database has warned. Only 3% of street robberies in London were solved using CCTV images, despite the fact that Britain has more security cameras than any other country in Europe.

[…]

Use of CCTV images for court evidence has so far been very poor, according to Detective Chief Inspector Mick Neville, the officer in charge of the Metropolitan police unit. “CCTV was originally seen as a preventative measure,” Neville told the Security Document World Conference in London. “Billions of pounds has been spent on kit, but no thought has gone into how the police are going to use the images and how they will be used in court. It’s been an utter fiasco: only 3% of crimes were solved by CCTV. There’s no fear of CCTV. Why don’t people fear it? [They think] the cameras are not working.”

This is, of course is absolutely no surprise.

Posted on May 7, 2008 at 6:53 AM • View Comments

What to Worry About

Snarky, but basically correct:

3. Male Family Members and Friends (Especially if they are drunk and you are young foreign born.)

It’s the strange man we fear—the footsteps in the dark—the unlocked back door. The correct part of the constant American crime fantasy is that it is usually a man hunting us. Approximately 90% of all murders are committed males. But stop worrying so much about strangers you don’t know and think about the strangers you know. Too often, we invite our predators in and offer them a drink. The leading cause of death for black women from 18-45 is domestic violence. The New York Health Department found that lovers committed 60% of all murders of women. Young foreign-born women were 87% more likely to be killed by a lover than a stranger. Females are much more likely to be victimized by someone they know. Strangers committed about 14% of all murders in 2002 while a family member or an acquaintance committed 43%. Family members commit two-thirds of murders of children under five. Two-thirds of violent crimes committed by acquaintances involved alcohol. Think about that at your next dinner party.

3. People of Your Own So-called Race

An extension of our narcissism is the belief that people who are like us are sane. But it’s the people who are most like us who are mostly likely to kill us. Blacks murdered more than 90% black murder victims. White criminals murdered more than 80% of white murder victims. I’m not saying strangers are safer than the people we know; I’m just saying they might be.

Posted on May 1, 2008 at 2:43 PM • View Comments

Heroin vs. Terrorism

A nice essay on security trade-offs:

The mismatch between the resources devoted to fighting organised crime compared with those directed towards counter-terrorism is unnerving. Government says that there are millions of pounds in police budgets that should be devoted to dealing with organised crime. In truth, only a handful of British police forces know how to tackle it. The ridiculous Victorian patchwork of shire constabularies means that most are too small to tackle serious criminality that doesn’t recognise country, never mind county, borders.

The Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca) was launched two years ago as Britain’s equivalent of the FBI, with the remit of taking on the Mr Bigs of international crime. But ministers have trimmed Soca’s budget this year. Far from expanding to counter the ever-growing threat, the agency is shrinking and there is smouldering unhappiness in the ranks. Soca’s budget for taking the fight to the cartels and syndicates is £400 million—exactly the same amount that the Government intends to spend overseas in countries such as Pakistan on workshops and seminars to counter al-Qaeda’s ideology.

Posted on May 1, 2008 at 6:56 AM • View Comments

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Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.