4 ms·

It's Getting Harder to Be a Criminal

24 points by randomwalker 17y ago

drcode 17y ago
Scott is missing a key point in that people in America just don't buy used items very often anymore. All those stereos, TVs, bicycles, etc that people used to steal and sell at pawn shops now have very little value. Most people just don't go shopping at pawn shops anymore. That is a major factor that makes theft of personal property less lucrative going forward.
- blasdel 17y ago
  Craigslist, Craigslist, Craigslist. Get cash in public, no paperwork, no fence.
ryanwaggoner 17y ago
Hmm...well, I think it's actually getting easier to be a criminal, albeit completely unintentionally. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=847620 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=847620 But in terms of what he's saying, I think I disagree. I find it telling that he mentions watching CSI for examples of how law enforcement uses technology faster than the bad guys can keep up. We all know how accurate CSI is. From what I've seen, the opposite of what he's predicting is the truth: criminals adapt and use technology faster than law enforcement. Additionally, many of the theoretical technologies he points out have enormous adoption hurdles, including technical, legal, and social. Hopefully some of them will never be used. And each new technology creates new vectors for criminal malice. I'm just not convinced.
- chubbard 17y ago
  Well his sentiment isn't off. Substitute any one of the documentary forensic shows on TV for CSI and you'll see how deep forensic science has become over the last 20 years. I agree it's really hard to cheat with the level of skill forensic scientist have achieved. The only issue with this observation is even in simple cases it can take years to get the evidence and science together to convict someone. Those shows make it seem like it's a matter of a days work, but there are years of research and hunting that goes on in order to solve just one crime. He used CSI because forensic science has become linked with the CSI TV show in pop culture's mind for better or worse.
  - pyre 17y ago
    But there's also a lot of bunk in forensic science, like that guy in the Southern USA that was a 'bite mark analysis guy' that was basically making things up as he went along (destroying evidence after examining it because 'I had already made my evaluation' so the opposing side doesn't have a chance to have their experts look at the evidence, etc). It's surprising how long he was able to get away with this stuff and that juries ate it up and believed him. (I'm also severely disappointed in the legal system that he didn't get jail time for destruction of evidence)
    - BigZaphod 17y ago
      I, for one, really appreciate your use of the phrase "ate it up" just after talking about him being a bite expert... :P
    - pyre 17y ago
      I was bored so I looked up the guy I was talking about: http://reason.com/archives/2009/05/15/a-forensics-charlatan-gets-cau http://reason.com/archives/2009/05/15/a-forensics-charlatan-... edit: This may have a reference to the sandwich being thrown away (based on the google search summary) but it's in PDF and I don't feel like parsing through it to make sure. I'll just leave that as an exercise to the reader. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1086763 http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1086763
    - chubbard 17y ago
      Well that's a whole another ball of wax, or the other size of the sword depending on how you look at it. There are a good number of cases that people are convicted on faulty forensic science many of them not nearly as egregious as the one you describe. Most of the time it still comes from detectives gut feeling, not forensics, that turns a witness into a suspect. The forensics don't come into they are trying to build a case against you. Sometimes the forensics comes from the witness cooperating to give DNA, bite marks, etc as you mentioned. People who cooperate fully only to be wrongfully accused. The real problem is proving the forensics are wrong. Combating faulty forensics is a huge task to bear that can take years too. People who have lost 20 years in jail because the forensics were done by unqualified people or simply incorrect. Sometimes I hear the science explained by the shows and I wonder how in the world is it true. Who verified these results? Who defines what is unique and what isn't? Particularly questionable is techniques that prove uniqueness.
- teuobk 17y ago
  CSI could be self-fulfilling, in the sense that it might be inspiring young people to study and advance forensic science. Supposedly, it's already changing expectations of juries, in that they are placing more value on forensic evidence (even when it's irrelevant, sadly).
nym 17y ago
Did Scott Adams just watch minority report or something? The technology to automatically give people tickets for speeding already exists, yet it only is implemented in a few areas. I'm curious what other HN'ers think about this...
- dschobel 17y ago
  I think it's a great thing as long as the punishments are reduced since the deterrent factor goes out the window if you catch 100% (or even 90%) of the law breakers.
- shib71 17y ago
  It's the standard here in Australia. Many major intersections and highways have permanent speed cameras, hooked into a vehicle registration db, to automatically post speed tickets (with photos :) to the offender. A new camera pays for itself very quickly, in cost and arguably road safety.
  - macrael 17y ago
    Several studies have shown that red light cameras do not improve road safety. Here is one: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/03/AR2005100301844.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10... I think that this article is a vision of a dangerous future. A free society must necessarily sacrifice some measure of safety. The more information like this we give the state, the closer we come to 1984. It is important to maintain a balance of power between citizens and the police, a balance between criminals and cops. Power Corrupts. History has always shown change to come in pendulum swings. At some point, people are going to react to the loss of privacy strongly and we will get back some measure of what we have lost. In the end, we will find some balance but I certainly hope it is not found at this end of the spectrum.
    - pyre 17y ago
      > The more information like this we give the state, the closer we come to 1984. A while back there was a post stating that the world is moving more towards "A Brave New World" than "1984." I think that it was mostly right.
forensic 17y ago
Am I correct in thinking his ideas on sniffing machines are totally ludicrous? Are we not basically talking about a chemical-based air tester that would have to sort through ridiculously complex masses of data trying to pick out which subtle combination of particles applies to a perp? The sense of smell of a dog is extraordinarily complex and makes full use of a brain. I don't see this being duplicated by computers anytime soon. We'll have full-on walking and talking robots before then... and those robots won't have a sense of smell for a long time. Or maybe I'm just ignant. Seems to me it would be cheaper to build a kill-bot that defends all your possessions from intruders than to make a device that can monitor the subtle smells in a room.
- jsz0 17y ago
  No, I don't think so. Airports are already using a similar technology to detect explosive residue. Basically it's a small telephone booth sized box that blasts you with air and sucks it back up to examine. I'm not sure exactly how it works but it seems possible it could scale to detect other types of particles. At a crime scene you could possibly detect unique body fingerprints based on of everything from perspiration on hair, skin particles, clothing particles, cologne, shampoo type, deodorant type, etc) So if the police can get this scan quickly they could go out and round up possible suspects and compare. Unfortunately I think this points towards more brute force policing where innocent people are subjected to "body scans" simply because they vaguely match a description or were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
  - ars 17y ago
    The machines are airports detect one "kind" of thing, bomb, etc. He's talking about detecting a unique person out of many - that's much much harder.
  - forensic 17y ago
    You make my point for me. Look at how much effort and expense they have to go to just for those bomb sniffing machines - and they basically can track only a small handful of very specific, very rarely found chemicals. Implementing this to sort through things like deodorants and skin flakes is way more complex. You are dealing with organic molecules, for starters. And there are billions of different combinations of airborn bacteria and viruses and stuff that make up the smell of a person.
jsz0 17y ago
It seems the drug business isn't being impacted much. Big increase in arrests for possession but a flat line on sales/manufacturing. I guess if you want a life of crime it's a golden era to be in the drug trade: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/dcf/enforce.htm http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/dcf/enforce.htm
dschobel 17y ago
My guess is that most white collar crimes are already being detected, and the perpetrators are generally getting caught, albeit not as quickly as society would like. I don't think this is any where near the truth in the finance world. It's well known that wall street has long drawn the brightest graduates from the best universities in the world. If you read up on how many times the SEC came close to busting Madoff over the years but couldn't quite connect the dots it's pretty shocking and also very clear that the smartest guys go to make the money, not play cop for the SEC. From the NYT article about it: In the interview, Mr. Madoff said that the young investigators who pestered him over incidentals like e-mail messages should have just checked basics like his account with Wall Street’s central clearinghouse and his dealings with the firms that were supposedly handling his trades. “In the interview, Mr. Madoff said that the young investigators who pestered him over incidentals like e-mail messages should have just checked basics like his account with Wall Street’s central clearinghouse and his dealings with the firms that were supposedly handling his trades. “If you’re looking at a Ponzi scheme, it’s the first thing you do,” he said. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/31/business/31sec.html http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/31/business/31sec.html
abstractbill 17y ago
In the interest of privacy, these ubiquitous videos will be encrypted so securely that playback will be effectively impossible unless the court orders it. While I agree there will be more and more live video available, I think the encryption and privacy stuff is mostly wrong. For starters, nobody bothers to encrypt email, despite the technology existing for many years. Also look at social networking sites. People happily post all kinds of personal data, with increasing frequency and decreasing concern for their own privacy. I think that trend will continue. People might say they care a lot about the ongoing loss of privacy in the modern world, but they don't really.
- wvenable 17y ago
  Email is a poor example for encryption -- too many factors involved. On the other hand, how many people encrypt their online purchases? It's easy to have silent automatic encryption if you build it from the beginning.
  - abstractbill 17y ago
    My belief is that money is actually the only thing people really care about encrypting (or at least it will be, in the long term).
    - wvenable 17y ago
      But if you encrypt everything by default, nobody is going to turn that off either.
samdk 17y ago
We do have a lot of new tools for solving crimes, yes. But criminals also have a lot of new tools for committing crimes and evading detection. Even if we are getting better, we have a long way to go. Murder and Aggravated Assault are the only crime categories where the clearance rate in the US is above 50%. Most are much lower. (source: http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2008/offenses/clearances/index.html http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2008/offenses/clearances/index.ht...) I also feel obliged to point out that the last time I happened to glimpse some sort of CSI-like show on TV, the investigators were zooming in on someone's eyeball in security tape footage to see what was reflected there. CSI is possibly not the best source of information when drawing conclusions about the state of crime-solving technolgies.

24 points by randomwalker 17y ago

Scott is missing a key point in that people in America just don't buy used items very often anymore. All those stereos, TVs, bicycles, etc that people used to steal and sell at pawn shops now have very little value. Most people just don't go shopping at pawn shops anymore. That is a major factor that makes theft of personal property less lucrative going forward.

blasdel 17y ago
Craigslist, Craigslist, Craigslist. Get cash in public, no paperwork, no fence.

ryanwaggoner 17y ago

Hmm...well, I think it's actually getting easier to be a criminal, albeit completely unintentionally. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=847620 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=847620 But in terms of what he's saying, I think I disagree. I find it telling that he mentions watching CSI for examples of how law enforcement uses technology faster than the bad guys can keep up. We all know how accurate CSI is. From what I've seen, the opposite of what he's predicting is the truth: criminals adapt and use technology faster than law enforcement. Additionally, many of the theoretical technologies he points out have enormous adoption hurdles, including technical, legal, and social. Hopefully some of them will never be used. And each new technology creates new vectors for criminal malice. I'm just not convinced.

chubbard 17y ago
Well his sentiment isn't off. Substitute any one of the documentary forensic shows on TV for CSI and you'll see how deep forensic science has become over the last 20 years. I agree it's really hard to cheat with the level of skill forensic scientist have achieved. The only issue with this observation is even in simple cases it can take years to get the evidence and science together to convict someone. Those shows make it seem like it's a matter of a days work, but there are years of research and hunting that goes on in order to solve just one crime. He used CSI because forensic science has become linked with the CSI TV show in pop culture's mind for better or worse.
- pyre 17y ago
  But there's also a lot of bunk in forensic science, like that guy in the Southern USA that was a 'bite mark analysis guy' that was basically making things up as he went along (destroying evidence after examining it because 'I had already made my evaluation' so the opposing side doesn't have a chance to have their experts look at the evidence, etc). It's surprising how long he was able to get away with this stuff and that juries ate it up and believed him. (I'm also severely disappointed in the legal system that he didn't get jail time for destruction of evidence)
  - BigZaphod 17y ago
    I, for one, really appreciate your use of the phrase "ate it up" just after talking about him being a bite expert... :P
  - pyre 17y ago
    I was bored so I looked up the guy I was talking about: http://reason.com/archives/2009/05/15/a-forensics-charlatan-gets-cau http://reason.com/archives/2009/05/15/a-forensics-charlatan-... edit: This may have a reference to the sandwich being thrown away (based on the google search summary) but it's in PDF and I don't feel like parsing through it to make sure. I'll just leave that as an exercise to the reader. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1086763 http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1086763
  - chubbard 17y ago
    Well that's a whole another ball of wax, or the other size of the sword depending on how you look at it. There are a good number of cases that people are convicted on faulty forensic science many of them not nearly as egregious as the one you describe. Most of the time it still comes from detectives gut feeling, not forensics, that turns a witness into a suspect. The forensics don't come into they are trying to build a case against you. Sometimes the forensics comes from the witness cooperating to give DNA, bite marks, etc as you mentioned. People who cooperate fully only to be wrongfully accused. The real problem is proving the forensics are wrong. Combating faulty forensics is a huge task to bear that can take years too. People who have lost 20 years in jail because the forensics were done by unqualified people or simply incorrect. Sometimes I hear the science explained by the shows and I wonder how in the world is it true. Who verified these results? Who defines what is unique and what isn't? Particularly questionable is techniques that prove uniqueness.
teuobk 17y ago
CSI could be self-fulfilling, in the sense that it might be inspiring young people to study and advance forensic science. Supposedly, it's already changing expectations of juries, in that they are placing more value on forensic evidence (even when it's irrelevant, sadly).

nym 17y ago

Did Scott Adams just watch minority report or something? The technology to automatically give people tickets for speeding already exists, yet it only is implemented in a few areas. I'm curious what other HN'ers think about this...

dschobel 17y ago
I think it's a great thing as long as the punishments are reduced since the deterrent factor goes out the window if you catch 100% (or even 90%) of the law breakers.
shib71 17y ago
It's the standard here in Australia. Many major intersections and highways have permanent speed cameras, hooked into a vehicle registration db, to automatically post speed tickets (with photos :) to the offender. A new camera pays for itself very quickly, in cost and arguably road safety.
- macrael 17y ago
  Several studies have shown that red light cameras do not improve road safety. Here is one: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/03/AR2005100301844.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10... I think that this article is a vision of a dangerous future. A free society must necessarily sacrifice some measure of safety. The more information like this we give the state, the closer we come to 1984. It is important to maintain a balance of power between citizens and the police, a balance between criminals and cops. Power Corrupts. History has always shown change to come in pendulum swings. At some point, people are going to react to the loss of privacy strongly and we will get back some measure of what we have lost. In the end, we will find some balance but I certainly hope it is not found at this end of the spectrum.
  - pyre 17y ago
    > The more information like this we give the state, the closer we come to 1984. A while back there was a post stating that the world is moving more towards "A Brave New World" than "1984." I think that it was mostly right.

forensic 17y ago

Am I correct in thinking his ideas on sniffing machines are totally ludicrous? Are we not basically talking about a chemical-based air tester that would have to sort through ridiculously complex masses of data trying to pick out which subtle combination of particles applies to a perp? The sense of smell of a dog is extraordinarily complex and makes full use of a brain. I don't see this being duplicated by computers anytime soon. We'll have full-on walking and talking robots before then... and those robots won't have a sense of smell for a long time. Or maybe I'm just ignant. Seems to me it would be cheaper to build a kill-bot that defends all your possessions from intruders than to make a device that can monitor the subtle smells in a room.

jsz0 17y ago
No, I don't think so. Airports are already using a similar technology to detect explosive residue. Basically it's a small telephone booth sized box that blasts you with air and sucks it back up to examine. I'm not sure exactly how it works but it seems possible it could scale to detect other types of particles. At a crime scene you could possibly detect unique body fingerprints based on of everything from perspiration on hair, skin particles, clothing particles, cologne, shampoo type, deodorant type, etc) So if the police can get this scan quickly they could go out and round up possible suspects and compare. Unfortunately I think this points towards more brute force policing where innocent people are subjected to "body scans" simply because they vaguely match a description or were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
- ars 17y ago
  The machines are airports detect one "kind" of thing, bomb, etc. He's talking about detecting a unique person out of many - that's much much harder.
- forensic 17y ago
  You make my point for me. Look at how much effort and expense they have to go to just for those bomb sniffing machines - and they basically can track only a small handful of very specific, very rarely found chemicals. Implementing this to sort through things like deodorants and skin flakes is way more complex. You are dealing with organic molecules, for starters. And there are billions of different combinations of airborn bacteria and viruses and stuff that make up the smell of a person.

jsz0 17y ago

It seems the drug business isn't being impacted much. Big increase in arrests for possession but a flat line on sales/manufacturing. I guess if you want a life of crime it's a golden era to be in the drug trade: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/dcf/enforce.htm http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/dcf/enforce.htm

dschobel 17y ago

My guess is that most white collar crimes are already being detected, and the perpetrators are generally getting caught, albeit not as quickly as society would like. I don't think this is any where near the truth in the finance world. It's well known that wall street has long drawn the brightest graduates from the best universities in the world. If you read up on how many times the SEC came close to busting Madoff over the years but couldn't quite connect the dots it's pretty shocking and also very clear that the smartest guys go to make the money, not play cop for the SEC. From the NYT article about it: In the interview, Mr. Madoff said that the young investigators who pestered him over incidentals like e-mail messages should have just checked basics like his account with Wall Street’s central clearinghouse and his dealings with the firms that were supposedly handling his trades. “In the interview, Mr. Madoff said that the young investigators who pestered him over incidentals like e-mail messages should have just checked basics like his account with Wall Street’s central clearinghouse and his dealings with the firms that were supposedly handling his trades. “If you’re looking at a Ponzi scheme, it’s the first thing you do,” he said. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/31/business/31sec.html http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/31/business/31sec.html

abstractbill 17y ago

In the interest of privacy, these ubiquitous videos will be encrypted so securely that playback will be effectively impossible unless the court orders it. While I agree there will be more and more live video available, I think the encryption and privacy stuff is mostly wrong. For starters, nobody bothers to encrypt email, despite the technology existing for many years. Also look at social networking sites. People happily post all kinds of personal data, with increasing frequency and decreasing concern for their own privacy. I think that trend will continue. People might say they care a lot about the ongoing loss of privacy in the modern world, but they don't really.

wvenable 17y ago
Email is a poor example for encryption -- too many factors involved. On the other hand, how many people encrypt their online purchases? It's easy to have silent automatic encryption if you build it from the beginning.
- abstractbill 17y ago
  My belief is that money is actually the only thing people really care about encrypting (or at least it will be, in the long term).
  - wvenable 17y ago
    But if you encrypt everything by default, nobody is going to turn that off either.

samdk 17y ago

We do have a lot of new tools for solving crimes, yes. But criminals also have a lot of new tools for committing crimes and evading detection. Even if we are getting better, we have a long way to go. Murder and Aggravated Assault are the only crime categories where the clearance rate in the US is above 50%. Most are much lower. (source: http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2008/offenses/clearances/index.html http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius2008/offenses/clearances/index.ht...) I also feel obliged to point out that the last time I happened to glimpse some sort of CSI-like show on TV, the investigators were zooming in on someone's eyeball in security tape footage to see what was reflected there. CSI is possibly not the best source of information when drawing conclusions about the state of crime-solving technolgies.