"According to the Mountain View Voice and NBC Bay Area, some Peninsula residents are annoyed by the increase in dumping, in part because they say Google isn't working harder to prevent the bikes from being stolen in the first place."
"The root of the problem, as Wired wrote in 2013, is that the bikes are not locked or tracked, leaving them vulnerable to theft."
Are there many people outside the Bay Area who would agree that the "root problem" is with Google failing to adequately protect their property? Am I wrong to think that the real root is the thieves who are stealing the bicycles with apparent impunity, and not with the owners of the bikes?
As a transplant to California from a part of the US with stricter standards regarding property crime, I can't help but think that the apparent official tolerance of theft and common "blame the victim" attitude contributes significantly to the high rate of property crimes.
Just like with shopping carts, I think there's a general perception that these bikes are free to use for the public. People treat it like disposable transportation. Not just the homeless and teenagers with questionable morals; I've seen all kinds of people on them, all over Mountain View. I've even seen one where the "owner" attempted to personalize it by painting it white (badly).
I think Google should add clearer messaging to these bikes, and maybe ask MVPD to stop anyone they encounter on one of these bikes outside of a 3 mile radius from a Google office.
IIRC, except the old ones, they have a plaque in the basket indicating they're private property.
And the campus isn't exactly in the middle of downtown either; it's not like on your walk to the grocery store you cross the Googleplex and take one thinking it's public.
They even send a van to pick them up if you call 650-253-5353 and tell them. It goes without saying that it costs the company money, even when they get recovered.
Why think in either-or terms? Yes, something should be done about the thieves. But imagine leaving a car unlocked and ready to go. How would you feel about the situation then?
Personally, as a Dutchman I find the idea of not having at least two locks on your bikes (preferably different brands, our thieves tend to specialise) absurd.
It's not either-or, but my question here concerns the societal attitudes toward theft and their effect on its prevalence, not the practicalities of reducing the risk of theft.
But imagine leaving a car unlocked and ready to go. How would you feel about the situation then?
I'd feel exactly the same. There are still many parts of the US where cars are regularly left unlocked, often enough with the key in the ignition if it's somewhere considered safe like a private driveway. Where I grew up in rural Wisconsin (northern USA) the joke was that you only needed to lock your car in the late autumn, because if you didn't someone might fill it with unwanted zucchini. Inspired by this joke, I filled several teachers' cars with squash after the first frost.
In these same areas, it's also the case that many houses are rarely if ever locked. I don't think I've ever saw a key for the house I grew up in, and I'm certain I never had one for myself. In the same way that coins in a blind man's cup are not considered OK to steal just because he is not able to defend himself well, having an unlocked house or car is not considered to be granting permission to thieves. Transgression is viewed very negatively even if the level of difficulty is low.
Tying this back to hacking, In 1990, Harper's Magazine published a seminal roundtable article titled "Is Computer Hacking a Crime?" (http://www.textfiles.com/news/hackers.txt). In it, John Perry Barlow makes this comment:
"BARLOW [Day 2. 10:41 P.M.]: I live in a small town. I don't have a key to my house. Am I asking for it? I think not. Among the juvenile delinquents in my town, there does exist a vandal's ethic. I know because I once was one. In a real community, part of a kid's rite of passage is discovering what walls can be breached. Driving 110 miles per hour on Main Street is a common symptom of rural adolescence, publicly denounced but privately understood. Many teenagers die in this quest-two just the night before last-but it is basic to our culture. Even rebellious kids understand that risk to one's safety is one thing, wanton vandalism or theft is another. As a result, almost no one locks anything here. In fact, a security system is an affront to a teenage psyche. While a kid might be dissuaded by conscience, he will regard a barricade as an insult and a challenge."
My point isn't that there is one right approach, but that there is an interplay between attitudes and actions. Is it possible for cars and houses to be left unlocked just because it is currently a low-crime area, or might the fact that cars and houses are unlocked --- combined with a lack of tolerance for crime --- help to keep these as low-crime areas where such an approach is possible?
> BARLOW [Day 2. 10:41 P.M.]: I live in a small town.
This is the key element here. In a small town, the tight social connections take care of this issue. I know because I grew up in one, just like you. We also did not lock our doors, nor our bikes for that matter. I even forgot my bike in town once as a kid, just before we went on holiday for two weeks, and when we came back my bike was on our driveway with a note from the butcher saying "Hey, you forgot your bike" - he apparently asked around and some people recognised it was my bike. That's how tight the social network is (which also has it's downsides, but that's another discussion).
But the Google Campus is not a small town, and arguably one of the fundamental aspect of being a large city is that many socially disconnected people live in the same space. And in that situation, you need a lock.
Our village started locking its doors because criminals from a nearby city realised that we didn't. Our area is very sparsely populated, so we don't have a large police force; just one or two vehicles. During work hours, when many people are at work, they would commit a distraction crime in one village, then rob a bunch of houses in another knowing the police was away.
Of course we should get those thieves behind bars, but at the same time: not locking the door leaves you vulnerable to anyone outside of the community who comes up with the same idea. And in a city, with it's many sub-societies stacked upon another, people like that will exist.
> But the Google Campus is not a small town, and arguably one of the fundamental aspect of being a large city
Have you been to Mountain View, and to the Google campus? :) It takes resolution to walk to the Googleplex, grab a bike, and ride it all the way back. Even if the campus were in the middle of Mountain View, it's definitely not a large city.
The property crime rate for San Mateo county is similar (but lower) to northern rural Wisconsin (I've clicked a county at random, not done anything weird to try to find where you lived...).
It of course may be the case that reporting of crime is considerably different between the two places, but it does not at first blush appear to be a situation where one is rampant and the other is strict.
Such problems are much more visible when there are a few hundred thousand people in a given area (compared to 20 or 30 thousand). Perhaps that somewhat accounts for your differing impressions?
Perhaps that somewhat accounts for your differing impressions?
It's possible, but I think I'm accounting for that by basing mostly on personal acquaintances rather than reporting. I'm pretty sure that I know approximately the same number of people in both places, though, and I'm aware of at least 10 times the number of people who have been victims of property crime in California than in Wisconsin, and the ratio for muggings and robberies is even higher.
Over about 10 years my shop is Oakland was burglarized, and my parked (and locked) car was broken into a couple times, and then in a separate incident stolen from the lot of a transmission repair shop (which I have to say, statistically must be a poor place to steal a reliable vehicle). While I personally haven't been a victim of any violence, several friends and employees have been. My impression is that this is well within the norm for the area.
The county level data is interesting, and I think may go to show that the problems areas occur at a finer granularity. there are a lot of smaller areas with severe problems. The Oakland police department, in particular, is famous for (among other things) announcing that "officers would no longer be dispatched to take reports for most nonviolent crimes" and that although you are still encourages to file reports online, "There will be no follow-up investigation and the primary purpose for filing the report is for insurance purposes". http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/Oakland-cops-not-coming-...
My point though isn't that crime isn't so much worse in Oakland than it is elsewhere, but that I have to think that the chosen approach is exacerbating some of the problems that exist, and that it's likely that the situation will continue to deteriorate unless the approach changes.
If someone goes onto a Google campus, takes the contents of a recycling bin, and dumps in a river, is it also Google's fault for not locking down their garbage bins?
To think that this "situation" is somehow Google's fault is ludicrous. Some people just want to criticize a big Company.
I'm all for property rights, but I think the social contract here is pretty ambiguous. Google just tosses these bikes out on the streets, does nothing to police their usage, doesn't ask the police to go after unauthorized users, and doesn't seem to care too much if you call them about a misplaced bike. Google bikes are closer to litter than to property.
Google is not just a campus any longer. There are offices in many different places in Mountain View and Sunnyvale. Even within Mountain View, I'm pretty sure I've seen EMPLOYEES ride them to the train station and Castro Street...
In Germany the owner is responsible for the property, so if something gets stolen and dumped, you have to manage how to get it back. I guess that's why people care more about their stuff and lock it.
Someone who leaves a box full of spray paint cans out on their porch may be partly liable if some delinquent kids steal it and vandalise the neighbourhood. The young hoodlums are still guilty of theft and vandalism, but the negligence of the homeowner clearly played a contributory role.
I honestly don't mind when I see a homeless person riding the bike. I guarantee they are getting far more utility out of it than any Google employee is, property rights be damned.
In most jurisdictions, you'd have a very hard time prosecuting this as theft. The bikes are often left tipped over on the sidewalk, here and there around town. At most, under the law, you are probably "borrowing without permission." People (even homeless people) don't usually keep the bikes, they just dump them off somewhere in Mountain View or Sunnyvale, where either someone else picks them up and rides them or someone calls Google to come get them.
That's a piss-poor, chicken-little, false-equivalency fallacy. There's little in way of accountability or personally-identifiable tracking. GPS trackers with batteries are $25 in volume, minus data plan, and epoxy those suckers into the frame. Track the bikes, not people, and recover them before batteries die, if they haven't moved or get dumped in a weird place.
Doesn't seem very different than the Google Bus vandalism that was in the news a few years ago. Some people want Google to look bad for whatever reasons.
It sounds like these people know that recovering the bikes will cost Google money and that their public image will be impacted by having their Google branded property littered in wooded areas.
Honestly, I'm not sure everyone in the area even knows they belong to Google. Two or three of my co-workers (not at Google) show up on them for work every morning, and ride them back to the light rail every evening. I expect they just think they are community free bikes ...
What is up with all the blame on Google? Just because they have money doesn't mean it's okay to victim blame them. Don't blame Google for getting their bikes stolen, blame the people who are stealing them.
32 comments
[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 70.2 ms ] thread"According to the Mountain View Voice and NBC Bay Area, some Peninsula residents are annoyed by the increase in dumping, in part because they say Google isn't working harder to prevent the bikes from being stolen in the first place."
"The root of the problem, as Wired wrote in 2013, is that the bikes are not locked or tracked, leaving them vulnerable to theft."
Are there many people outside the Bay Area who would agree that the "root problem" is with Google failing to adequately protect their property? Am I wrong to think that the real root is the thieves who are stealing the bicycles with apparent impunity, and not with the owners of the bikes?
As a transplant to California from a part of the US with stricter standards regarding property crime, I can't help but think that the apparent official tolerance of theft and common "blame the victim" attitude contributes significantly to the high rate of property crimes.
"Why Can't San Francisco Stop Its Epidemic of Window Smashing?" https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/04/san-fra...
"Why Oakland Police Can't Solve Crime" https://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/why-oakland-police-ca...
And the campus isn't exactly in the middle of downtown either; it's not like on your walk to the grocery store you cross the Googleplex and take one thinking it's public.
Personally, as a Dutchman I find the idea of not having at least two locks on your bikes (preferably different brands, our thieves tend to specialise) absurd.
It's not either-or, but my question here concerns the societal attitudes toward theft and their effect on its prevalence, not the practicalities of reducing the risk of theft.
But imagine leaving a car unlocked and ready to go. How would you feel about the situation then?
I'd feel exactly the same. There are still many parts of the US where cars are regularly left unlocked, often enough with the key in the ignition if it's somewhere considered safe like a private driveway. Where I grew up in rural Wisconsin (northern USA) the joke was that you only needed to lock your car in the late autumn, because if you didn't someone might fill it with unwanted zucchini. Inspired by this joke, I filled several teachers' cars with squash after the first frost.
In these same areas, it's also the case that many houses are rarely if ever locked. I don't think I've ever saw a key for the house I grew up in, and I'm certain I never had one for myself. In the same way that coins in a blind man's cup are not considered OK to steal just because he is not able to defend himself well, having an unlocked house or car is not considered to be granting permission to thieves. Transgression is viewed very negatively even if the level of difficulty is low.
Tying this back to hacking, In 1990, Harper's Magazine published a seminal roundtable article titled "Is Computer Hacking a Crime?" (http://www.textfiles.com/news/hackers.txt). In it, John Perry Barlow makes this comment:
"BARLOW [Day 2. 10:41 P.M.]: I live in a small town. I don't have a key to my house. Am I asking for it? I think not. Among the juvenile delinquents in my town, there does exist a vandal's ethic. I know because I once was one. In a real community, part of a kid's rite of passage is discovering what walls can be breached. Driving 110 miles per hour on Main Street is a common symptom of rural adolescence, publicly denounced but privately understood. Many teenagers die in this quest-two just the night before last-but it is basic to our culture. Even rebellious kids understand that risk to one's safety is one thing, wanton vandalism or theft is another. As a result, almost no one locks anything here. In fact, a security system is an affront to a teenage psyche. While a kid might be dissuaded by conscience, he will regard a barricade as an insult and a challenge."
My point isn't that there is one right approach, but that there is an interplay between attitudes and actions. Is it possible for cars and houses to be left unlocked just because it is currently a low-crime area, or might the fact that cars and houses are unlocked --- combined with a lack of tolerance for crime --- help to keep these as low-crime areas where such an approach is possible?
> BARLOW [Day 2. 10:41 P.M.]: I live in a small town.
This is the key element here. In a small town, the tight social connections take care of this issue. I know because I grew up in one, just like you. We also did not lock our doors, nor our bikes for that matter. I even forgot my bike in town once as a kid, just before we went on holiday for two weeks, and when we came back my bike was on our driveway with a note from the butcher saying "Hey, you forgot your bike" - he apparently asked around and some people recognised it was my bike. That's how tight the social network is (which also has it's downsides, but that's another discussion).
But the Google Campus is not a small town, and arguably one of the fundamental aspect of being a large city is that many socially disconnected people live in the same space. And in that situation, you need a lock.
Our village started locking its doors because criminals from a nearby city realised that we didn't. Our area is very sparsely populated, so we don't have a large police force; just one or two vehicles. During work hours, when many people are at work, they would commit a distraction crime in one village, then rob a bunch of houses in another knowing the police was away.
Of course we should get those thieves behind bars, but at the same time: not locking the door leaves you vulnerable to anyone outside of the community who comes up with the same idea. And in a city, with it's many sub-societies stacked upon another, people like that will exist.
Have you been to Mountain View, and to the Google campus? :) It takes resolution to walk to the Googleplex, grab a bike, and ride it all the way back. Even if the campus were in the middle of Mountain View, it's definitely not a large city.
http://www.civicdashboards.com/county/san-mateo-county-ca-05...
http://www.civicdashboards.com/county/oneida-county-wi-05000...
It of course may be the case that reporting of crime is considerably different between the two places, but it does not at first blush appear to be a situation where one is rampant and the other is strict.
Such problems are much more visible when there are a few hundred thousand people in a given area (compared to 20 or 30 thousand). Perhaps that somewhat accounts for your differing impressions?
It's possible, but I think I'm accounting for that by basing mostly on personal acquaintances rather than reporting. I'm pretty sure that I know approximately the same number of people in both places, though, and I'm aware of at least 10 times the number of people who have been victims of property crime in California than in Wisconsin, and the ratio for muggings and robberies is even higher.
Over about 10 years my shop is Oakland was burglarized, and my parked (and locked) car was broken into a couple times, and then in a separate incident stolen from the lot of a transmission repair shop (which I have to say, statistically must be a poor place to steal a reliable vehicle). While I personally haven't been a victim of any violence, several friends and employees have been. My impression is that this is well within the norm for the area.
The county level data is interesting, and I think may go to show that the problems areas occur at a finer granularity. there are a lot of smaller areas with severe problems. The Oakland police department, in particular, is famous for (among other things) announcing that "officers would no longer be dispatched to take reports for most nonviolent crimes" and that although you are still encourages to file reports online, "There will be no follow-up investigation and the primary purpose for filing the report is for insurance purposes". http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/Oakland-cops-not-coming-...
My point though isn't that crime isn't so much worse in Oakland than it is elsewhere, but that I have to think that the chosen approach is exacerbating some of the problems that exist, and that it's likely that the situation will continue to deteriorate unless the approach changes.
To think that this "situation" is somehow Google's fault is ludicrous. Some people just want to criticize a big Company.
That's the thieves, not Google. Google tosses the bikes inside the campus only.
> doesn't seem to care too much if you call them about a misplaced bike
If you ever call them, they'll send a van to collect the bike, as buying a new bike costs more money than rescuing it.
It sounds like these people know that recovering the bikes will cost Google money and that their public image will be impacted by having their Google branded property littered in wooded areas.