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This honestly doesn't seem like a problem with organisational silos. The level of efficiency the author is suggesting is completely unnecessary. If the police h

This honestly doesn't seem like a problem with organisational silos. The level of efficiency the author is suggesting is completely unnecessary. If the police had done some very basic police work, followed up the unauthorized transactions at each location for CCTV they would have gotten a very clear idea of who this person was. In fact hell, find out which phones pinged the phone tower near each of the locations at each of the relevant times and you almost certainly have exactly one suspect who'll match the CCTV and would be banged to rights. With small crimes it's not that they can't be solved, it's that the UK has decided it would rather have some petty crime than to pay the taxes necessary to catch petty criminals (assuming that catching the criminal would even solve the crime problem). The current state of policing in the UK is that small thefts won't be investigated - so it doesn't matter how easy they are to solve.

dTal 8y ago
>find out which phones pinged the phone tower near each of the locations at each of the relevant times I don't know that that is actually possible. The police can access the records for any one number, but accessing all the records for a set of towers in a given time window is a different matter. I would actually love to know if this is within their capabilities.
- angry_octet 8y ago
  It totally is within the capability of telcos. It's a database query away. Whether the police can get a warrant for it is a different matter. I'm not au fait with the details of RIPA post the EU decision [1][2] but it is safe to say the barriers are not that high. Meta data (like cell tower signal strength) is almost certainly available. Towers log everything, and location is a valued derived product. [1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/09/uk-surveillance-regime-violated-human-rights https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/09/uk-surveillance-regime... [2] https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/mediapolicyproject/2016/01/05/some-things-old-some-things-new-a-clause-by-clause-review-of-the-draft-investigatory-powers-bill-investigatory-powers-research-group/ https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/mediapolicyproject/2016/01/05/some-t...
  - dTal 8y ago
    That's just it. There's already a frontend for the police to use that gives them access to all the data for a single phone number, sans warrant. Does that same frontend allow them to perform arbitrary queries across the entire dataset?. If not, then pursuing this lead would involve filling out forms and writing letters to telcos, possibly even obtaining warrants (unlike the usual process), and they probably wouldn't bother. Incidentally, the ability to perform unrestricted arbitrary queries without a warrant across the entire phone-location dataset is a fairly horrifying amount of power for the police to have. But I suppose legally that ship has sailed with RIPA, and now it's just a question of the fine details of the implementation.
    - multjoy 8y ago
      No. Getting a request approved is a nightmare. It's literally easier to get a search warrant from the courts than it is persuading police SPOCs to approve your RIPA request. The gatekeeping is fearsome. They take their duties incredibly seriously.
      - dTal 8y ago
        I'm not quite sure what your 'no' is specifically in reference to. I'm also not sure what a SPOC is, and I'm not familiar with the details of the process. But The Guardian reported in 2014 that "EE, Vodafone and Three give police mobile call records at click of a mouse", and in 2015 that "UK police requests to access phone calls or emails are granted 93% of the time", with rejection rates varying wildly by county from as high as 28% to as low as 0.1%. So it doesn't seem to be as hard as you're making out, unless things have changed wildly in the last few years. May I ask your sources? https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/10/automatic-police-access-customers-mobile-phone-records-like-cash-machine-ripa-three-ee-vodafone https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/10/automatic-poli... https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/01/police-request-access-phone-calls-emails-granted-every-two-minutes https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/01/police-request...
        angry_octet 8y ago
- robk 8y ago
  Already exists in production
jakublangr 8y ago
While I agree with most of what you've said, there is an issue of (a) what level of economic damage does this crime need to cause before it gets investigated—both for individual cases and for London overall (b) any efficiency gain would hopefully decrease the cost of investigation (in terms of hours spent), hence the assistance them with details (e.g. transactions) which they have completely ignored.
- usgroup 8y ago
  Except once they catch him they have to charge him and then prosecute him and then house him in prison and then release him with even worse prospects then he started with, so that he can go back to stealing. I think that there is no economic gains, and there is no efficiency to be had in catching petty criminals. It is a symptom of a bigger social problem which needs to be dealt with .
  - postgeographic 8y ago
    so where does the line between a crime being small enough not to warrant police attention and being big enough to warrant it get drawn? seems pretty arbitrary to me
    - usgroup 8y ago
      well that's easy; start at the worst crimes and make your way down until you run out of resources. The line will draw itself for you.
  - ghettoCoder 8y ago
    Since when is law enforcement about money? Laws exists to ensure a reasonably ordered society and level playing field for everyone. There as to be an attempt at enforcement, even a half-hearted one, to ensure the genereal population follow and believe others follow the rules. Or you have vigilantes rising to deal with issues the police can’t bother with. Unenforced laws are pointless and will be used at the discretion of the police to mess up someone’s day. That’s what gave use expressions like “driving while black”, “sitting while homeless”, and so on. I’m not necessarily advocating for jailtime but maybe catching them and giving trade school as their sentence would be time and money well spent.
ta2223332221 8y ago
Sometimes I wonder if the motivation is to allow petty fraud as an outlet for crime, to keep the people who commit it from doing other less desirable things. Like a stealth welfare.
lifeisstillgood 8y ago
>> it's that the UK has decided it would rather have some petty crime than to pay the taxes necessary to catch petty criminals No such "active" decision has ever been taken by the UK citizens and simply never would be by any democracy I can imagine - and this is probably the next major problem democracy needs to solve. Did you know the UK is self sufficient in strawberries? Supermarkets saw they had demand, and put strawberries on shelves from global suppliers year round, then started competing amoungst themselves on price which meant air freighted strawberries cost more than locally produced greenhoused food so we expanded our greenhouses - in a good stuff it's likely noone would vote for I don't know quite how to solve this but I think a "backlog" approach to democracy would work
- heavenlyblue 8y ago
  >> Did you know the UK is self sufficient in strawberries? Is that’s why I can never find sweet strawberries in the UK?
  - stefanfisk 8y ago
    The plastic ones take less damage from shipping, and people don’t seem to mind eating pretend strawberries, so that’s more of a free market failure thing.
    - jfk13 8y ago
      In my experience, there are good ones to be had, but only if you buy locally and in-season. Imported or forced fruit are almost universally disappointing. Or grow your own, using traditional varieties like Cambridge Favourite or Elsanta.
rtpg 8y ago
Even given that, there are only so many police officers. Even assuming that it would take a person about 30 minutes of work to get an ID of the person, that's Yet Another Person in the system. The extra work goes through the entire chain of operations (can we automate away the court system too? Who is going to drive down to tell the criminal they need to show up?) There is a checklist with hundreds of items that will appear if a person like this gets picked up. And a hell of a lot of work after that. This is the really dumb pragmatic argument to not being a police state (beyond the other arguments)

dTal 8y ago

>find out which phones pinged the phone tower near each of the locations at each of the relevant times I don't know that that is actually possible. The police can access the records for any one number, but accessing all the records for a set of towers in a given time window is a different matter. I would actually love to know if this is within their capabilities.

angry_octet 8y ago
It totally is within the capability of telcos. It's a database query away. Whether the police can get a warrant for it is a different matter. I'm not au fait with the details of RIPA post the EU decision [1][2] but it is safe to say the barriers are not that high. Meta data (like cell tower signal strength) is almost certainly available. Towers log everything, and location is a valued derived product. [1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/09/uk-surveillance-regime-violated-human-rights https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/09/uk-surveillance-regime... [2] https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/mediapolicyproject/2016/01/05/some-things-old-some-things-new-a-clause-by-clause-review-of-the-draft-investigatory-powers-bill-investigatory-powers-research-group/ https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/mediapolicyproject/2016/01/05/some-t...
- dTal 8y ago
  That's just it. There's already a frontend for the police to use that gives them access to all the data for a single phone number, sans warrant. Does that same frontend allow them to perform arbitrary queries across the entire dataset?. If not, then pursuing this lead would involve filling out forms and writing letters to telcos, possibly even obtaining warrants (unlike the usual process), and they probably wouldn't bother. Incidentally, the ability to perform unrestricted arbitrary queries without a warrant across the entire phone-location dataset is a fairly horrifying amount of power for the police to have. But I suppose legally that ship has sailed with RIPA, and now it's just a question of the fine details of the implementation.
  - multjoy 8y ago
    No. Getting a request approved is a nightmare. It's literally easier to get a search warrant from the courts than it is persuading police SPOCs to approve your RIPA request. The gatekeeping is fearsome. They take their duties incredibly seriously.
    - dTal 8y ago
      I'm not quite sure what your 'no' is specifically in reference to. I'm also not sure what a SPOC is, and I'm not familiar with the details of the process. But The Guardian reported in 2014 that "EE, Vodafone and Three give police mobile call records at click of a mouse", and in 2015 that "UK police requests to access phone calls or emails are granted 93% of the time", with rejection rates varying wildly by county from as high as 28% to as low as 0.1%. So it doesn't seem to be as hard as you're making out, unless things have changed wildly in the last few years. May I ask your sources? https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/10/automatic-police-access-customers-mobile-phone-records-like-cash-machine-ripa-three-ee-vodafone https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/10/automatic-poli... https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/01/police-request-access-phone-calls-emails-granted-every-two-minutes https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/01/police-request...
      - angry_octet 8y ago
robk 8y ago
Already exists in production

jakublangr 8y ago

While I agree with most of what you've said, there is an issue of (a) what level of economic damage does this crime need to cause before it gets investigated—both for individual cases and for London overall (b) any efficiency gain would hopefully decrease the cost of investigation (in terms of hours spent), hence the assistance them with details (e.g. transactions) which they have completely ignored.

usgroup 8y ago
Except once they catch him they have to charge him and then prosecute him and then house him in prison and then release him with even worse prospects then he started with, so that he can go back to stealing. I think that there is no economic gains, and there is no efficiency to be had in catching petty criminals. It is a symptom of a bigger social problem which needs to be dealt with .
- postgeographic 8y ago
  so where does the line between a crime being small enough not to warrant police attention and being big enough to warrant it get drawn? seems pretty arbitrary to me
  - usgroup 8y ago
    well that's easy; start at the worst crimes and make your way down until you run out of resources. The line will draw itself for you.
- ghettoCoder 8y ago
  Since when is law enforcement about money? Laws exists to ensure a reasonably ordered society and level playing field for everyone. There as to be an attempt at enforcement, even a half-hearted one, to ensure the genereal population follow and believe others follow the rules. Or you have vigilantes rising to deal with issues the police can’t bother with. Unenforced laws are pointless and will be used at the discretion of the police to mess up someone’s day. That’s what gave use expressions like “driving while black”, “sitting while homeless”, and so on. I’m not necessarily advocating for jailtime but maybe catching them and giving trade school as their sentence would be time and money well spent.

ta2223332221 8y ago

Sometimes I wonder if the motivation is to allow petty fraud as an outlet for crime, to keep the people who commit it from doing other less desirable things. Like a stealth welfare.

lifeisstillgood 8y ago

>> it's that the UK has decided it would rather have some petty crime than to pay the taxes necessary to catch petty criminals No such "active" decision has ever been taken by the UK citizens and simply never would be by any democracy I can imagine - and this is probably the next major problem democracy needs to solve. Did you know the UK is self sufficient in strawberries? Supermarkets saw they had demand, and put strawberries on shelves from global suppliers year round, then started competing amoungst themselves on price which meant air freighted strawberries cost more than locally produced greenhoused food so we expanded our greenhouses - in a good stuff it's likely noone would vote for I don't know quite how to solve this but I think a "backlog" approach to democracy would work

heavenlyblue 8y ago
>> Did you know the UK is self sufficient in strawberries? Is that’s why I can never find sweet strawberries in the UK?
- stefanfisk 8y ago
  The plastic ones take less damage from shipping, and people don’t seem to mind eating pretend strawberries, so that’s more of a free market failure thing.
  - jfk13 8y ago
    In my experience, there are good ones to be had, but only if you buy locally and in-season. Imported or forced fruit are almost universally disappointing. Or grow your own, using traditional varieties like Cambridge Favourite or Elsanta.

rtpg 8y ago

Even given that, there are only so many police officers. Even assuming that it would take a person about 30 minutes of work to get an ID of the person, that's Yet Another Person in the system. The extra work goes through the entire chain of operations (can we automate away the court system too? Who is going to drive down to tell the criminal they need to show up?) There is a checklist with hundreds of items that will appear if a person like this gets picked up. And a hell of a lot of work after that. This is the really dumb pragmatic argument to not being a police state (beyond the other arguments)