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For those without subscriptions. https://outline.com/3CRjpe https://outline.com/3CRjpe >That post has since been taken down, but many comments included critici

• amcoastal 5y ago
  I feel like everyone knows why the line is drawn at such a value. So people like us can't afford to commit crimes, but the rich can.
  • not2b 5y ago
    In many cases the amounts were written into the law so long ago that money was worth maybe 20x as much, or more.
    • hanniabu 5y ago
      And that's why we really need to start assigning equations rather than static amounts in bills
      • seszett 5y ago
        It's not exactly that, but in Belgium penalties written in law are an amount that is multiplied by a factor that is regularly updated. It went from 5.5 to 6 in 2011, then to 8 in 2017 and is still there AFAIK. It seems a bit haphazardly managed to me, but it's something.
      • bpodgursky 5y ago
        Alternatively we could maintain a stable currency people can rely on as a store of value.
    • btilly 5y ago
      My favorite example of such is https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-7/ https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/amendment-7/. $20 doesn't buy as much today as it did in 1800. :-)
      • hermitdev 5y ago
        $20 doesn't buy as much as it did in 2020, either...
        • CRConrad 5y ago
          Compared to the purchasing power difference between 1800 and 2021, a dollar buys (almost) exactly as much in 2021 as it did in 2020. ("Almost" in parentheses, because at any reasonable precision, the 20/21 difference will probably round to zero.) When they're big enough, differences of quantity become differences of quality.
    • Terry_Roll 5y ago
      Inflation was known to legislators back then so its way for legislators to lower the bar and catch more people in the future, without anyone picking up on it at the time. Anyway fabricating evidence has been around for as long evidence has been needed to settle disputes.
  • corndoge 5y ago
    I think that's a bit melodramatic. Lots of people can afford 5k without being part of waves hands "the rich."
  • therealcamino 5y ago
    What do you mean by that? $5000 isn't a fine, it's the amount stolen that moves the offense into a higher category. How does that translate into making the rich able to commit crimes?
    • amcoastal 5y ago
      Because a rich person can steal 50m and get penalized the same way someone like us would when stealing a paltry sum. Though my comment also implies the rich can easily drag out their court case and afford an army of representation so they don't have to deal with whatever sentence they are getting. Even though the sentence itself is a sham because stealing 50m dollars being punished the same as stealing 5k is obviously a sham.
      • kube-system 5y ago
        No, it's literally the opposite. People who steal small sums -- i.e. in street crimes -- get a smaller punishment.
        • amcoastal 5y ago
          ??? The law has the same penalty for any crime over 5k, its literally the parent comment I am replying to.
          • kube-system 5y ago
            Those that get a smaller penalty, i.e. those who steal under $5k, are overwhelmingly not wealthy. Wealthy people are not snatching people's purses on the street.
            • amcoastal 5y ago
              Of course. But the point is that 5k is FAR too low. The difference between stealing 5k and 50m is far greater than the difference between stealing $200 and $5001. Now read all my comments with this in mind and maybe you'll get what we've been saying.
  • bregma 5y ago
    The only difference is in sentencing, and the difference is a lower upper limit on the length of incarceration for the lesser value stolen. There is no difference in the crime itself.
• nerdawson 5y ago
  Could it have been on an exchange or something that used his number for 2FA? I’m not sure how else a SIM swap could lead to access.
  • miohtama 5y ago
    Yes. Likely Coinbase. SIM swap is such a well known attack vector, so it is pure stupidy to leave such high amount behind an SMS.
    • AlexCoventry 5y ago
      Seems kind of crazy to leave that amount on an exchange at all.
      • amatecha 5y ago
        Yeah like, this happened years after the mtgox debacle...
  • Jerrrry 5y ago
    It was a major exchange that did not understand what the 2 in "2FA" meant, yes. Most exchanges did not have proper 2FA until the sim-swath-swoop of 2018-2020.
    • nerdawson 5y ago
      I hate when companies ask for my phone number on sign up. At no point do I ever want that used for auth! The first thing I usually do is enable OTP but I know some companies will still fallback to SMS.
    • miohtama 5y ago
      All major exchanges have supported TOTP (time codes) based 2FA since 2014. However it is a different matter if they force users to use TOTP, as it hinders adoption. Need to get that IPO done first.
  • 5y ago
• elliekelly 5y ago
  I could be mistaken but it looks like the $5,000 is from the CA Computer Crimes statute. For larceny (theft of personal property) in CA the bar is even lower: $950.
  • ziddoap 5y ago
    Yep, in Canada there is two "thefts" generally: over $5,000 and under $5,000. I was charged with theft under 5 when I was 14 after stealing two candy bars and a drink from Walmart. Same charge as I would of had if I stole a 70" flatscreen TV, or a top of the line computer.
    • amatecha 5y ago
      Seems they need a new category, "theft under $5" haha
    • stan_rogers 5y ago
      It's not just in Canada. Have you ever heard the term "grand theft auto"? There have been two levels in almost every jurisdiction for a very long time: petty (small) theft and grand (large) theft. The dividing line in England used to be a shilling, for which you could be hanged or transported. Sixpence would get you a short-ish time in gaol/jail.
      • bregma 5y ago
        The story is about a crime in Canada, so it's relevant.
        • stan_rogers 5y ago
          True, but the separation between grand theft and petty theft exists in pretty much every common-law country, and has for centuries - it's not a peculiarity of Canadian law.
    • bregma 5y ago
      Theft over is liable to a term up to 10 years. Theft under is up to two years. Two years or more is time in a federal institution. Anything less (eg. "two years less a day") and you're working for the province. It basically comes down to if you steal more than $5000 you might go to a very bad place and if it's less, you only go to a slightly less bad place. The line has to be drawn somewhere, and no prison is a particularly good place so it really hardly matters.
• Arrath 5y ago
  >I've always wondered why the line is drawn at $5,000. It's mildly interesting that stealing $46M and stealing $5,000 result in equivalent charges. A lot of those lines are drawn completely arbitrarily, and might be very old and haven't been updated to reflect inflation/rising prices. A classmate of mine copped a felony property damage charge as the threshold was set at a mere $500 at the time, for a typical senior year high school rivalry prank and it really fucked up his life.
  • anonporridge 5y ago
    Tacking on the conversation about arbitrary and static dollar amounts in law. There's an interesting effect where law makers can pass a law with static dollar amounts that seems reasonable at the time, but the force of inflation covertly expands the scope of the state's authority deeper and deeper into the society without any further action or political risk by present lawmakers. A great example of this is the Bank Secrecy Act, which requires reporting of transactions greater than $10,000 to the federal government. At the time it was passed in 1970, $10k was the equivalent of ~$70k in 2021 dollars. $70k actually seems like a pretty reasonable amount as that's a very large transfer that the average person does very rarely for mostly legitimate reasons, like buying a house. It's easy to justify why the feds could use this data to investigate large scale criminals and money laundering. But as inflation has stripped away the value of the dollar, more and more people and activities are falling into that $10k limit. Basically, the surveillance state gets to sneakily expand when laws are pegged to a currency that's constantly inflating by design.
    • Tildey 5y ago
      And of course, governments rarely want to change these laws of antiquity, because it is perceived as being "soft on crime". The optics of it to a lot of the voting population is poor, even if the change is just to be in line with the original intention of the law.
    • gopher_space 5y ago
      > more and more people and activities are falling into that $10k limit. Like what?
• kube-system 5y ago
  > It's mildly interesting that stealing $46M and stealing $5,000 result in equivalent charges. The reason for the differentiation is not to make a $5k theft and a $46m theft equivalent. There is a threshold because, for instance: stealing some pocket change is not a serious crime, and stealing large amounts of money is serious.
  • ziddoap 5y ago
    >stealing some pocket change is not a serious crime, and stealing large amounts of money is serious. I'm curious if you actually think that I wasn't aware of this? I don't think many people need that pointed out to them. My comment was on the arbitrariness of the line, or why there is a single line at all (opposed to a gradient, or multiple "theft over x" categories, etc.).
    • kube-system 5y ago
      To be more specific, the reason for that single line is because some legal systems (like in the US) have different "classes" of offense. That line is the differentiation for which class the crime is. The lesser could be a "summary offense" or "misdemeanor" and the higher a "felony" I, of course, was not suggesting that you didn't know the difference in seriousness. I am stating that the difference in seriousness is the reason for the line, because the underlying legal system generally differentiates crimes this way.
      • ziddoap 5y ago
        Fair enough. I suppose if a single line must be drawn, it must be drawn somewhere. And that line is apparently $5,000.
        • ALittleLight 5y ago
          It could be a function of amount stolen, victim's wealth, perpetrator's wealth.
• PragmaticPulp 5y ago
  > Not to victim blame, but it really is odd to me that someone would leave any amount of BTC on their phone, let alone millions of dollars worth. The SIM swap attack was used to access an online service where the BTC was stored. I know the classic cryptocurrency trope is that Bitcoiners will move money to a paper wallet and then store the passphrase securely somewhere, but in reality that's about as attractive as cashing it out as 46 x (hypothetical) $1 million dollar bills and storing it in a safe. In other words: Most people who have that kind of money really don't want to do anything like that. Most people who don't have that kind of money really overestimate how easy it is to safely and securely store something like that. But that's beside the point. We could debate all day about storing paper wallets in bank safety deposit boxes or using Shamir's Secret Sharing or any other number of increasingly complex scenarios, but in practice most with that kind of wealth aren't really interested in locking it away and not touching it. If they want to make an investment, trade, or purchase, do they jump through all of the hoops to unlock and move some of the money and then securely store it all away again? Surely someone might, but in practice most people want it somewhere that that can trade, invest, transfer, and access with reasonable security. This inevitably turns into one of those internet OpSec debates where people on the sidelines imagine scenarios where they are smarter than the victim (with the benefit of hindsight, of course), but in reality there are many, many people out there storing vast amounts of wealth accessible by 2FA with their phone and it's rarely ever a problem. Cryptocurrency makes this more complicated because the transactions are irreversible, fast, and (somewhat) easy to hide. So if you happen to be internet famous for bragging about your Bitcoin wealth, definitely take steps to make it impossible for people to access it via phones or anything else. But you also probably want to obscure your physical location and invest in personal security, because in-person attacks are the next step. But in reality, a huge number of people have access to a lot of funds via digital access without such problems on a regular basis. It's fun to fantasize about ultimate OpSec, but in practice most people want the money accessible and tradeable on short notice.
  • wmf 5y ago
    Hardware wallets aren't that cumbersome to use; it only takes a few minutes to move coins on/off. Waiting for confirmations takes longer than dealing with the wallet. For daytrading you'd definitely want to keep coins in an exchange though. I'm speaking neither hypothetically nor in hindsight since I pre-ordered the first hardware wallet back in the day and have never lost coins.
• bostonsre 5y ago
  I'm not sure the general population knows any better. It's bad and all and he is f'd, but "stole $46m" does sound like a pretty bad ass line item on a teen's wrap sheet.