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Kinda OT, but this made me think of what would be involved in really cracking down on bike theft. You'd probably have to start by registering bikes and putting

by ufmace 11y ago

Kinda OT, but this made me think of what would be involved in really cracking down on bike theft. You'd probably have to start by registering bikes and putting license plates on them, just like cars, and aggressively enforcing the maintenance of those registrations and license plates. So you'd start off by hassling legitimate riders first so that in the future it would be easier to spot a stolen bike and prove that it's stolen. Probably more trouble than it's worth, considering how many kids and low-income people use bikes for transportation. Similarly, getting serious about tracking Bitcoin movements would probably involve a lot of new regulations around the use of Bitcoin, and somehow enforcing them worldwide. I suppose the point was more that the police are likely to be very interested if you rip off one company for $50k, but it's harder to get them interested when you rip off $1k from 50 people spread around dozens of jurisdictions.

maxerickson 11y ago
Bike registration gets lots of serious consideration: https://www.google.com/search?q=mandatory+bike+registration https://www.google.com/search?q=mandatory+bike+registration
reitanqild 11y ago
> So you'd start off by hassling legitimate riders first so that in the future it would be easier to spot a stolen bike and prove that it's stolen. FWIW: Around here bike registration exists but is voluntary.
ScottBurson 11y ago
The point I've seen made about bike theft is that although the reward from a successful bike theft is small, the risk -- the probability of being caught times the likely consequence if one is caught -- is extremely small in most places. So the reward/risk calculation easily supports committing the theft. But if a municipality devotes even a small amount of resources -- an officer or two, full-time, I guess -- to prosecuting bike theft, that can raise the odds of getting caught for a single theft, I don't know, maybe three orders of magnitude -- from 10^-6 to 10^-3, let's say. Someone who steals hundreds of bikes a year is then looking at a real chance of getting caught for one of them. What I've seen argued, and I seem to recall there's even experimental evidence to support this, is that that's enough to reduce the reward/risk ratio to the point where bike theft as a career, at least, is uneconomic. You might still get occasional opportunistic thefts -- leaving a bike unlocked would still not be recommended -- but the bulk of the problem would go away. Coming back to the topic, the same principle probably applies here. You don't have to even try to solve all the ransomware crimes; you just have to solve enough of them, and come down hard enough on the perpetrators, to change the reward/risk calculation. That will probably be a lot harder to do, though, since they're unlikely to even be in the same country as the victims.
- mistermann 11y ago
  Get caught stealing a bike (maybe 2nd offense, whatever), you get 3 months in a labor camp. 2nd offense, one year. 2 years in run the stats and see if there's been an effect.

by ufmace 11y ago

maxerickson 11y ago

Bike registration gets lots of serious consideration: https://www.google.com/search?q=mandatory+bike+registration https://www.google.com/search?q=mandatory+bike+registration

reitanqild 11y ago

> So you'd start off by hassling legitimate riders first so that in the future it would be easier to spot a stolen bike and prove that it's stolen. FWIW: Around here bike registration exists but is voluntary.

ScottBurson 11y ago

The point I've seen made about bike theft is that although the reward from a successful bike theft is small, the risk -- the probability of being caught times the likely consequence if one is caught -- is extremely small in most places. So the reward/risk calculation easily supports committing the theft. But if a municipality devotes even a small amount of resources -- an officer or two, full-time, I guess -- to prosecuting bike theft, that can raise the odds of getting caught for a single theft, I don't know, maybe three orders of magnitude -- from 10^-6 to 10^-3, let's say. Someone who steals hundreds of bikes a year is then looking at a real chance of getting caught for one of them. What I've seen argued, and I seem to recall there's even experimental evidence to support this, is that that's enough to reduce the reward/risk ratio to the point where bike theft as a career, at least, is uneconomic. You might still get occasional opportunistic thefts -- leaving a bike unlocked would still not be recommended -- but the bulk of the problem would go away. Coming back to the topic, the same principle probably applies here. You don't have to even try to solve all the ransomware crimes; you just have to solve enough of them, and come down hard enough on the perpetrators, to change the reward/risk calculation. That will probably be a lot harder to do, though, since they're unlikely to even be in the same country as the victims.

mistermann 11y ago
Get caught stealing a bike (maybe 2nd offense, whatever), you get 3 months in a labor camp. 2nd offense, one year. 2 years in run the stats and see if there's been an effect.