While all we can do to revenge is sometimes a fantasy, I'd say be rational when you turn your fantasies to reality, you might end up paying the hospitalization for the package thieves.
Certainly if you caused someone harm using one it would be illegal in the sense that causing someone harm is illegal anyway, but a harmless trap like this one doesn't seem to me that it would be illegal. I'm not a lawyer though, so I'd be interested to see if there is some law I'm not aware of.
Which Geneva Convention applies to non-state actors not acting in the context of international or internal war? Please quote specifically the relevant provisions making it applicable to that case.
> It's also a five second Google search
Well, yes, that that's all the effort you devoted does explain the rather giant hole in your argument.
Is the full statement. Individual state laws vary but it's important enough to be international law was the point.
From the article:
>If a person sets up such a trap to protect his/her property, he/she will be liable for any injury or death even to an unwanted intruder such as a burglar. It is illegal to set a booby trap on one's own property to prevent intruders.
And that statement is wrong, AFAICT; the Geneva Conventions do not address the conduct at issue here, whether “for starters” or otherwise.
They might prohibit somewhat analogous conduct in a very disanalogous context [0] but context and conduct are not orthogonal considerations in law.
[0] or, maybe not; the specific instrument you are probably thinking of is Amended Protocol II to the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons; it does address booby-traps, but the device at issue here is not a booby-trap as defined in that protocol (not designed to kill or injure).
I'm really disappointed in the quality of the replies to this. I would hope that HN would be just a little more fact based, instead of having people willing to argue over trivially falsifiable claims.
The fact is, booby traps which cause bodily injury (including paintball, very easily, without protective equipment) are definitively illegal in most jurisdictions. This is the truth whether you spend 5 seconds or 5 hours googling.
Totally agree on all counts. No question that any kind of booby trap that is designed to cause injury (and probably even that isn't designed to do so but does anyway) would be illegal.
IANAL but my understanding is that it's generally illegal to have any kind of "booby trap". The concern (and also legal test) is whether or not it would be likely to spring on a first responder. If you have your house fill with knockout gas whenever someone enters and a fireman needs to kick in your front door, you're going to jail. Someone entering illegally such a burglar still can bring a suit around a booby trap (but could also still liable for prosecution for their illegal entry, etc).
Seems like a package trap that triggers on opening would pass that test. First responders aren't going to open a package. The only way they'd be likely to interact with it at all would be to kick it aside.
My brothers friend was sued for medical expenses by a perp who broke something falling over toys the kid hadn't packed away. More than a decade ago, but it does confirm your understanding of the situation.
I know "theft traps" are not legal (even ultimately harmless ones, like the paintball idea mentioned above), but for some reason it feels bizarrely backwards (or ironic?) that a proportionately harmless response to a thief (caught in the act) would be more likely to see prosecution than the act of theft itself.
Ok, let me spell it out: that the law protects criminals and punishes innocent citizens in such cases is indicative of a problem with the law. And yes, defending your property from theft is categorically "innocent".
> If your defense against theft ends up killing the thief do you think you shouldn't be liable?
That depends. Are we talking about a thief who was accidentally killed in a brawl with the property owner (or the troublesome death-by-glitter scenario that some in this thread are so concerned about)? Or a property owner who subdues, binds, and executes the thief? I'm open to arguments that it should be illegal to use lethal force against thieves when it's 100% clear that the thief poses no physical danger to the victim. I also believe that the property owner generally bears responsibility if their traps or other defenses are mistakenly employed against an innocent party. But in general, any injuries a thief incurs during a theft should be his own responsibility, and I'm okay with a world in which thieves live in fear of committing thefts.
I don't think anyone would disagree that generally stealing is wrong and people who do it in general deserve to face consequences. But the consequences should be proportionate to the crime. I don't think anyone deserves to die for petty theft, regardless of circumstances.
It seems like you are suggesting that if someone takes a $50 package off of my front porch, and then I come outside to confront them, and in the altercation this person makes a threatening gesture towards me then I would be within my rights to use lethal force.
That seems like a disproportionate escalation to me.
Anyway I think we just disagree about some of these proportionality issues.
If someone steals something, that doesn't mean they automatically lose all of their rights to life and property simply because in your mind they are now a "criminal".
Defense is not about punishment. Thieves don’t deserve to die, but it’s okay that it’s a risk they run. As an aside, I see this all the time, usually in conversations about self-defense—“a rapist doesn’t deserve to die”; maybe not but they sure deserve to run the risk and they certainly deserve worse than their victims. At least they have a _choice_.
Because they have the agency and can trivially choose to forego the risks. Why should thieves be guaranteed safety? What else should we fournish for them? A guaranteed minimum haul? :)
Booby traps are not "innocent". What happens if you stop responding and paramedics are sent to your property? They get paintballed because they approached your porch at night when there should have been no visitors?
What happens if you put a car airbag in a booby trapped package, and someone steals the package and brings it home. Then later that day their child or spouse finds and opens the package not realizing it was stolen. Boooom, an airbag in their face and they're seriously injured.
We don't need a world where we're surrounded by booby traps. It's a disaster waiting to happen because there are countless edge cases that people wouldn't consider.
We're quickly moving towards a future with door bell cameras and facial recognition software. We also have more parcel lockers showing up in different cities and neighborhoods where you can have packages safely delivered, available for pickup 24/7. These are better alternatives than setting traps.
"A reasonable person would not suspect glitter to cause bodily injury" seems like a good defense. Setting a trap that can maim is obviously dumb, for the reasons you mention.
We're not talking about liability when a trap injures an innocent person; of course the innocent person would not be held liable. When a trap injures a thief, the thief should be liable.
I agree that traps are a bad idea because I don't trust most people to devise traps that don't harm innocents; however, this is markedly different than the argument that "when a trap hurts a thief, the thief bears no responsibility". Also, the specific scenario we're discussing is a thief getting a bit of glitter in their eye.
Anyway, I welcome any advancement that can help deter thieves (and/or make sure they're prosecuted) while protecting innocent bystanders. I'm not convinced pervasive facial recognition software is the key given the privacy concerns, but maybe it's inevitable. However, all of this is orthogonal to the question of who is culpable for injuries incurred by a thief during a theft.
I don't see this as a black and white situation where the thief should always be responsible for injuries they sustain.
What happens if I setup a machine to fire baseballs at high speed when someone touches my fake parcel? Some teenager comes to steal my package, catches a baseball between the eyes and dies or ends up disabled for life. I'm in the clear because the kid was a thief? Now, I don't think a thief deserves a payday when they slip on ice running from my property, but I also don't believe people should be free to create harmful traps without consequence.
What about those people that run wires across trails on private property? They've killed and decapitated people trespassing on motorcycles or 4-wheelers. Once again, don't blame the property owner that installed the invisible wire? They're in the clear because the person decapitated shouldn't have been riding on that private trail?
How about we don't try to harm thieves. We document and report the case to the police to the best of our ability. Yes, the glitter bomb is extremely innocent, but it's easier to say no to all traps than it is to define what type of traps are acceptable.
> How about we don't try to harm thieves. We document and report the case to the police to the best of our ability.
because the police are basically never going to do anything unless the squad car happens to roll by as the thief is running away with the package. you may as well send your documentation straight into the circular file.
now I understand that kids do dumb stuff from time to time. riding a dirtbike around someones fifty acre estate is not that serious, and could easily be done unintentionally if property lines are not well marked. going up to someones door/porch without an invitation is quite something else. if you can find a way to mess these people up without putting the mailman at risk, I am all for it. I would be very happy to live in a society where messing in/around a person's dwelling is understood to be a serious risk.
>I would be very happy to live in a society where messing in/around a person's dwelling is understood to be a serious risk.
Then move to a state with liberal firearm laws. Seriously, It's amazing how much an intangible line on a map affects the behavior of people seeking to commit property crime in the state I live vs the adjacent state I used to live in.
The very first sentence of your comment says "the law...". This is a discussion about the law, aka legal issues. Morality is not, and never was, in question.
Stop moving the goalposts, it makes you look silly.
And just for the hell of it, no, it is not categorically innocent even when talking about morals, either. Morality is, by definition, something that is personal to each person. Therefor there can be no such thing as "categorical innocence", as moral innocence will be different for each person.
We’re debating the morality of the law. My comment is criticizing the law. You’re trying to argue that the law is morally correct based on a legal definition of innocence (and probably also defense).
And while each person may have their own opinion about morality, every society in the world has decided that theft is wrong enough to outlaw, so clearly morality isn’t purely subjective (certainly not by definition). Similarly, every society respects an individual’s right to defend themselves (note that “defense” here is defined as some minimal force required to confidently stop an aggressor thereby excluding things like executing an aggressor after he’s been subdued) so clearly this is moral as well.
Please don’t accuse me of moving goal posts. It’s clear that I haven’t. If you can’t participate in good faith this conversation is over.
>You’re trying to argue that the law is morally correct
Find one place where I said that the law is morally correct. I'll save your trouble: you can't, because I never did so.
So now not only are you moving the goalposts, but you're setting up a strawman. Nice. Two fallacies for the price of one.
This conversation has been about the law and legal liability since the beginning. Nobody brought up morality until you did in your attempt to, yes, move the goalposts. It is very clear that you have done so, and it's absurd of you to accuse me of not participating in good faith, when you're doing all you can possibly do to avoid admitting that your argument is ridiculous.
This is a silly comment. You're more likely to blind someone with the dust your car kicks up as you drive by them, and such a person would be actually innocent as opposed to our hypothetical vision-impaired thief.
Likelihood of injury is irrelevant. If your actions recklessly caused the injury of another person, you are liable for them, even if there was only a 1 in a trillion chance of it happening.
And yes, by the way, if you drive by someone knowing that by doing so you will launch debris towards another person in a manner that could injure them, and your car kicks up a rock and hits that person in the head, you would also be liable.
Innocence is also irrelevant, as you do not have the right to injure another person, even if they stole from you.
Trapping is a form of vigilantism and subject to the same problems. What happens when a little kid walking with their parents runs over and picks up the box randomly, and gets show in the eye with a paintball?
There is a reason we don't want a society where that kind of thing is OK.
It's not bizarre. There's a concept of proportionality. Also of latent cruelty. I don't want someone to steal my packages, but I would feel bad if they were blinded or maimed stealing something that ultimately I can afford to lose. People > Property.
EDIT> I think part of why the glitter fart bomb works so well is that it has a sense of humour, and that the designer doesn't come off as cruel.
There’s also a sense of justice and personal responsibility. It’s not hard not to steal, and thieves shouldn’t expect safety. Anyway, compassion is a privilege, not a right.
> it seems oddly ironic that a proportionately harmless response to a thief (caught in the act) would be more likely to see prosecution than the act of theft itself.
In certain jurisdictions the ideological pendulum (closely followed by official public policy) has swung a little too far toward idea that criminals have no agency and are victims of an unfair system that forces them to commit crime to get by and that prosecuting minor crimes is a path to further criminality.
The idea is that by not prosecuting certain crimes we can prevent people from becoming criminals at the ground floor which will prevent them getting stuck in a loop where they can't get a real job and have to commit crime to survive and become a career criminal. While this is not totally baseless and is something I generally agree with there's a categorical difference between applying this thinking to victimless crimes and crimes with a victim (a trap which pretty much all real world implementations fall into).
In the case of petty victimless crimes where there's disagreement over whether or not the crime should be a crime at all (e.g. weed possession) having a don't prosecute by default policy is fine IMO. For petty crime with a victim that pretty much everyone agrees should be a crime (like petty theft) having a don't prosecute by default is stupid because it increases crime in order to score political virtue points for the people who implement it at the expense of the community as a whole (I'm looking at your SF and your failure to prosecute minor property crimes, yes I'm fully aware this will not be a popular opinion circa 9am and 12pm West Coast time).
If locking up the criminal will only make it worse, then do something else. Take the crime as an opportunity to remove them from their criminal environment. Or let them do community service. There are tons of better options than locking people up.
But intentionally doing nothing about theft is just harmful. It rewards the crime and breeds vigilantism.
I believe your point is based on a false premise: that people commit crime because they don't see a better option.
A lot of times people commit crime for the same reasons they eat unhealthy, fight with their family members, and get addicted to harmful behavior. They aren't thinking long term and they don't care about the consequences that much.
There is no political or economic system that you can design that will keep people from being stupid.
There are different reasons why people commit crimes. Some do out of need: they don't see a better option. Others do so out of opportunity: it's easy and they can get away with it. And I suppose a rare group does it out of a commitment to pure evil.
I have very different degrees of sympathy for these groups. The first group needs access to better options. The second group needs to be held accountable. The third group cannot really be allowed to participate in our society.
First, you're unlikely to be prosecuted for setting a trap for a thief. Your liability is almost certainly civil, not criminal. Second, have you found many cases where a thief sued their victim without themselves facing charges for the theft?
Sounds like you hypothetically need something which is inherently dangerous (scorpions) but not purposefully dangerous to the person who opens it (drone scheduled to attack package owner).
As an aside, I don’t know if it legal to ship scorpions.
This adds nothing to the conversation but I absolutely cannot resist sharing this gem that I ran into a few days ago: https://dollarscorpionclub.com (It just seems too appropriate not to share.)
I strongly doubt that there is any rational risk for prosecution given the police response to the first crime, but I would worry more of escalated revenge from the criminal.
Personally, if I could legally, morally and practically, I'd probably use chemical deterrents like cadaverine or butter acid (though the later is possibly dangerous).
Dump 100mg of cadaverine in the thiefs car and they'll never use that car again. And possibly the clothes they wore at the time.
Or other chemicals.
It would be most exciting to find chemicals that yield strongest short-term effects without any damaging long term effects.
Having once had a package thief open/dump packages in my back yard, next to the house, I would prefer you don't do that.
The packages were some rolls of vinyl, a box of sealed granola snacks, and some inexpensive jewelry, all rejected by the thief. If the person was homeless, I'm surprised they ditched the food, it was nutritious and shelf-stable. (I redelivered the packages.)
As far as I'm aware, it's the worst smelling chemical known to humans and has no damaging long term effects. You just have to be veeery careful about it unless you want to stink up the whole town by accident.
This reads like an urban legend. I’ll have to shake the rust off my OChem lab experience and try some synthesis.
Kidding of course, but I it makes wonder how easy this would be for an amateur to synthesize. The consequences being making an entire town nauseous makes this whole thing pretty enigmatic.
I think if this was sprayed into the insides of your car, you'd probably never use the car again and/or never steal packages again either. The trauma resulting from the smell might just be enough.
Hard to believe how many people are concerned by that. So a cowardly thief gets glitter bombed and you are worried that they will come back!! Imagine how much worse it would get for them.
Think of it this way: You have made a 100 to 200 pound large hairless ape angry at you. This creature has human intelligence, and no interest in your feelings or your safety. Rather, it wants to make you suffer. It's more capable than the most advanced robot, and may hold onto its grudge and plan revenge over the next several months or a year.
Nice work, but I think I am not alone in hoping we get to see photos of the skunk-glittered thieves soon!
Oh -- and to the engineer who made that: you've got a billion dollar idea on your hands if you include a camera that takes video from inside the device when it's opened. I can think of at least 14 people to whom I would send one of these for Christmas, birthday, etc.
Do you think the bomb maker could be held liable if the package were to be opened in a moving car that subsequently crashed because of glitter getting in the driver's eyes? I'd be a little nervous about doing this myself.
Here in the USA, everyone is litigation crazy, so an enterprising lawyer would probably happily file a suit against the maker if someone was injured because of it.
The issue though is since the box is so expensive (4 cell phones, custom boards, etc) stealing it was likely a felony.
So you'd have to admit to a felony to sue or press charges against box maker. Second when committing a felony, in many jurisdiction the felon is automatically on the hook for any further 'bad things' that happen during the crime up to and including deaths. So if the felonious package thief got in an accident while opening a stolen package, it could all fall on them as a matter of statute in many places.
What if I just buy something very stupid that could scare someone but I actually wanted it for myself? Or what if I actually bought the same device in the video but I wanted it for some other use or for checking out how it's made?
Intent matters. If you have a baseball bat in your car along with your glove and cleats, you have a piece of sports equipment. If you step out of your car with the bat and smash a car that cut you off in traffic, it's a weapon.
Theif steals package, opens it while driving, crashes into another vehicle or otherwise damages property, life or limb. Maybe the theif has a hard time seeing you, but the other injured parties would likely sue you under the biggest pockets doctrine.
Unlikely unless the circumstances are exceptional.
You can sue anyone for anything. That would be a very uphill lawsuit in normal circumstances (the thief is being negligent by trying to open a package in a moving vehicle and any harm is a result of that negligence). When you add in the fact that the package is stolen it's highly unlikely to succeed. However, I write this from a US perspective. If self defense case law is any indication I suspect that the thief may have a case in the UK.
Yes, if you create a hazard and then conceal it and by doing that harm someone else, you're going to be liable --- for the same reason that if you know about a hazard on your property, fail to correct it, post no warning, and it injures a burglar, the burglar will often have a civil claim against you (except here your liability is even clearer, since you deliberately created that hazard).
I would be less worried about the thief's car and more worried about the car the thief runs into.
We're in a universe where yes it did because the package was opened while driving or just happened to spray glitter in the thief's (or potentially a third party not associated directly with the theft) eye.
You would have to prove, that you firstly stole the package(then you open a pandoras box of previous crimes), then prove that the person put it in the package(Very hard to prove, like whats the evidence).
At the end you would just end up going to the police confess the crime, open the door to be prosecuted for other crimes. And yet end up proving nothing about the other person from whom you stole.
It would be shooting in the foot at epic proportions.
I was thinking more about civil liability and not necessarily from the thief. Say the thief crashes into pedestrians - the victims families might go after the thief and the bomb maker.
They couldn't do anything with the footage of them taking it from the front porch. But with close up footage of their face and GPS coordinates of some of their houses it seems like a different story.
I’m not trying to be cynical “at you” but my time with police has taught me they are there to document crime always and stop it directly almost never. TV and Movies mislead.
My time with police has taught me that they will make you do your own documentation by filling out the crime reports yourself, and then just rubber-stamp them for the benefit of your insurance company. Vigilante justice is the only kind there is for misdemeanor property crimes. You could track the thief down, talk him into giving your property back and turning himself in, and drive him to the police station yourself, and the cops would still tell you both to get lost and stop wasting their time.
Petty thieves and burglars are pretty low priority for US cops, as long as it's poor people stealing from poor people. Thus you can have an entire class of people that can routinely steal anything they come across that isn't nailed down, yet never get caught. Because no one tries to catch them. And then they get jobs that give them access to things that are only lightly nailed down, because they have no criminal records.
The cops aren't really there to protect you or your property. They will if it's convenient, but if you need real protection, you'll have to pay someone and have a contract in place. Or just do what most people do: get insurance with a reasonable deductible and keep all your stuff locked up or nailed down.
I sat on a jury for a misdemeanor shoplifting trial. We voted to convict and he got jail time, and when I worked retail during college, misdemeanor shoplifters were almost always arrested and prosecuted when there was good evidence.
I also know people working in the my county solicitor's office and a large amount of their caseload is prosecuting misdemeanor property crimes. I'm sure this varies by location, but I don't think prosecuting misdemeanor property crime is as rare as you think.
Additional, In most states the bar for felony theft is pretty low, and the way that the value is calculated makes it very easy to go over that limit.
For example, I knew a girl who stole some lip balm in high school, but several other girls she was in the store with stole items with a higher value. The DA lumped all of the items together and charged them all with felonies.
The cops may care when someone steals from a retail business. They don't care when the same person steals from you, an individual.
The reason why I know this should be self-evident.
I might also mention that if you know someone in the prosecutors' office, your experience will be very different from the majority of theft victims. Cases that never get referred to the prosecutor due to lack of evidence, due to lack of looking for evidence--or lack of taking the evidence when handed in on a silver platter--are not included in the prosecutors' caseloads.
Cops don't treat retail businesses that much different from individuals in my experience.
If you have video evidence plus a person in custody, a license plate, or an address, there's a good chance of an arrest. If all you have is a picture, then they will blow you off.
>Cases that never get referred to the prosecutor due to lack of evidence
That's most cases of misdemeanor property theft though.
No evidence, video and no idea who the person is, or a he said she said between neighbors that's probably better dealt with through a civil case.
In the vast majority of these cases the problem isn't that the police/prosecutors are being wilfully ignorant, it's that there's nothing they can realistically do.
If it costs more to pay a detective 10 minutes to think about the case than it would to just replace the lost property, the naive case-by-case accounting says to just let it go.
The victim probably doesn't care about a successful prosecution. They might just want to recover their property. They want their bike back. Or their catalytic converter. Or their phone. Or their laptop. Or their dog. Catching the crook is nice, but it isn't the victim's first priority. They just want to be made whole again. They feel that they have already paid for the police protection via taxes, and are frustrated when they can't collect.
But the cops don't want to dick around with solving petty crimes. And they don't want to spend $10000 to recover $200 worth of property, and possibly still not have enough evidence to convict. They certainly don't want to give their only physical evidence back to its rightful owner, and then not have it available for a trial later with clear chain of custody. They also feel that they have already allocated their entire budget, prioritizing more serious crimes first, and that focusing their limited resources elsewhere could reduce public safety.
I'm not judging the cops here, just saying the priorities are not aligned in the petty theft victim's favor, with reasonable arguments possible both for and against the rigorous pursuit of petty crimes.
As a general rule, an individual cannot count on the cops to help them. With anything. Especially if you're not white. So you don't even call them, unless someone is dead or about to die anyway, or you absolutely have to for your insurance claim. Handle your own vigilance, buy property insurance, and let the crooks choke on your glitter.
[Citation Needed] 'Explicit' means something. I'd love to see the reference where the DA explicitly says they do not give a shit about property crimes.
In the video, Rober mentions that he previously brought his security camera footage to police (the camera monitoring his house, not the camera in the prank box), but that they said it wasn't worth their time to pursue such cases.
Yes but that's because the security footage didn't provide any actual information on the thief. Whereabouts, identity, etc. The GPS location of the thief, clear footage of the face, should be a slam-dunk case for a DA.
Yes - not worth their time to investigate and try to track down that information. In this instance - the police spend 0 time investigating, and 2 hours arresting, booking, and forwarding criminal charges.
That was for the first one though, where all he had was a random persons face, way harder to actually track that person down. For the later ones like the car and even more so the apartment/house it's a much easier case so they might have actually bothered because they can directly link the theft to an actual ID through the plates/address. Even with that the chances they'd bother is medium to low but it's much more likely given the amount of data Mark could hand over.
Not anywhere near a lawyer but I think the same theory applies here as with bait cars, cops intend for them to get stolen but it's not an issue. The person is still doing something illegal.
I think there's a difference between "don't care" and "wasn't worth their time". It's possible that with the number of complaints the police needed to investigate, the particular thefts in question were below the triage threshold.
Booby-trap is usually defined as "to cause bodily injury when triggered". Spreading glitter in someone's car isn't causing bodily injury. However, if the glitter caused someone to choke and die, or blinded an eye, then a crime would be committed.
I think the technical answer here is yes but, given the fact that the police themselves were too occupied to pursue the original thieves, I find it equally unlikely they're going to pursue the vigilante
IANAL - but I'd suppose they could sue you and may even win but it's not going to do much for their public image in the best case and the worst case they get prosecuted for theft.
> Given the police's complete inaction vigilantism was inevitable.
This makes me wonder: who is responsible for the lost package? I would expect, if the deliverer can't prove they delivered the package (because they didn't get a signature), they're responsible for the loss and need to pay for the loss.
The recipient certainly can't help that someone left a package outside. If the loss is for the recipient, then I can certainly understand the vigilantism, but that's a pretty awful system.
I'm glad I can usually pick up my packages at my neighbours'.
The delivery company sometimes takes pictures of the package left at the door. The customer is ultimately responsible for the package, not the shipper. It's the customer who files the police report.
The sender and the sender's agent (shipping company) own the package until it is delivered. That's why the sender insures it and insurance payments go to the sender.
But often it is more complicated than that, because there's a commercial contract between the sender and the recipient that also has to be taken into account.
I'd call it a legally grey area, with the commercial sender often likely filing an insurance claim and re-sending the lost merchandise.
> I'd call it a legally grey area, with the commercial sender often likely filing an insurance claim and re-sending the lost merchandise.
Really I think that's more a customer service nicety than anything the company would be legally required to do. Seems like everyone has done their part to fulfill their obligations once the package hits your doorstep.
The package was on his porch, not in his mailbox, and it has a fake UPS label. Nothing federal about it--definitely nothing involving the secret service. The only way he might get charged with something is if the glitter bomb manages to injure someone (and even then it wouldn't be a federal crime).
Agreed. If an accomplice in the passenger seat opens the package while they are driving and glitter gets in the drivers eyes, that could end poorly. Maybe instead, nix the glitter and use an oily fart spray that can't easily be cleaned off, but won't potentially blind the person might be safer. Maybe even design it so that when you open it, a cup of really nasty fart oil pours out in 4 directions.
The more I think about this, you could probably make a much safer solution for less than a few dollars if you forego the video capture. Is there a safe non-toxic stinky oil? All you would need is a box that once opened, is very difficult to put back together, that holds stinky oil.
I would probably also put wording on the package that says, "By taking or opening this package, you consent to recording and agree to manage the discharge of a very stinky oil. The opener of the packages assumes all responsibility and liability for any damage that results from touching this package".
I was thinking of what you can and cannot mail; specifically, that what he did could be construed as a letter bomb. Granted, it’s much much less dangerous, but the mechanism is the same. At a time when public figures get pipe bombs in the mail, rigging a package to “explode” once opened... I think there’s enough material for a humorless DA (or one with an agenda) to make hay, or at least for a uneasy explanation with some serious people. Obviously IANAL, and I don’t know if the federal laws on mail extend to packages left on the porch as the other poster pointed out, but still.
Source: what my teenage self thought was a hilarious prank got to the attention of the FBI. Although the matter was cleared up in the end, being interviewed by an FBI agent at 17 taught me not to count on the understanding and second degree of law officers.
The video is well worth your time. The device works very well, and the fart spray has a purpose, in that it encourages the thief to ditch the package as soon as possible, enabling him to recover and reload it.
No it's not. Stop, just stop. Think about the holidays and why we have them. Put some extra cash in the Salvation Army pot, give some toys to the Marines for Toys for Tots. Do something positive.
Presumably the last thief never disposed of the package and was therefore the only one to discover the cameras. I wonder what they were thinking, and if they'll come across the video. Wouldn't be surprised if so, it was on the front page of Reddit yesterday.
Stealing (physically at least) is a stupid way to make money. A $200 game console will hardly net a thief $50. There are a lot of issues in my city with the less fortunate stealing items to make some small money - bikes are a common target. It neither really helps the thief, and it's very unfortunate for the person stolen from.
In California, thefts of under $950 are not felony crimes. And there's no more "three strikes". So you can steal packages for a living and, at worst, have to spend a week or two in jail over the course of a year. Not a bad living.
If I paid you $200, would you spend two weeks in jail?
If getting that $200 meant risk to you (someone confronting you, someone else taking your money, risk of an officer giving you a beat down), would you still take it?
It doesn't take a lot of risk to offset the "value" of stealing $950 labeled-worth goods (which will net you <$250 in cash).
The parent poster said that you’d spend maybe two weeks in jail over the course of the year. It’s not a balance of $200 vs. 2wks jail, it’s a balance of ($200 per package x many packages per day * 365 days per year) vs. 2wks jail.
If I was poor and did not see a light at the end of the tunnel, I would go to jail for free. Your tax dollars would pay for my lodging, food, exercise and hanging out with my friends. Jail is also a great place to network and improve your knowledge of the system and criminal techniques.
I was in jail for awhile but, regrettably, learned no new criminal techniques. In fact, most people seemed pretty reticent to talk about crimes or why they were in there. I did learn how to make a nutritious paste from commissary food, how to hide sugar packets in a mattress, and how to make a chess set out of toilet paper and toothpaste. I also found out that drugs are extremely cheap in jail--costing just one or two candy bars--since many people in jail have child support judgements against them and are effectively barred from using the commissary. Having access to the commissary can have a profound effect on your comfort in jail, so if you're a homeless person with some small passive income (and no child support!) it might be all right. I could see doing it through a harsh winter, but personally I'd probably choose the streets most of the time. The food you get might not be as regular, but it'll be more varied and probably more nutritious than what you'll find in a cell.
You also have to discount that by the probability of actually getting caught because the police barely care about property crime cases and even with video of the person stealing the package the work nontrivial work of tracking the person down isn't worth the hassle. So is 50-100 bucks with a small chance of actually suffering any consequences at all.
It doesn't take a lot of risk to offset the "value" of stealing $950 labeled-worth goods (which will net you <$250 in cash).
If you're trying to say the risk isn't worth it, sure, you're right. And the average person wouldn't do it. But plenty of criminals don't live their lives by such risk/reward calculations. Roughly 5% [0] of people in prison in the US have decided to disregard the risk/reward ratio and go ahead with relatively small scale thefts.
agreed, they'd probably need to be substantially higher to really enter criminal's conscious consideration to put a dent in things, and even then it might only be a small dent, if any. Especially when the motivation is something like drug addiction.
That is indeed the reasoning, but there is no good evidence that 3 strike laws reduce crime.
In fact multiple studies suggest that 3 strike laws have unintended consequences like increased fatal attacks on police, and twice sentenced criminals committing more serious crimes (because they will recieve a life sentence regardless of the seriousness of the offense).
When I was a young kid, my mom once told me that she never wanted to hear of me committing a crime I couldn't retire on. She doesn't remember saying it, this was an offhand statement when we saw a news item about someone stealing $20 from a gas station and doesn't really reflect how she looks at things AFAIK.
Oddly, it really stuck in my mind and was present when I decided not to be peer pressured into a few incidents. It changed the equation - it wasn't about fear of getting caught, which everyone was saying wouldn't happen, it became about BEING STUPID, which would be true regardless. What's more, it wasn't an outright "don't do this", but instead "do this only if" which also changed the evaluation (It wasn't "I must be good, always"). Of course, I never HAD the chance to do a crime I would retire on when I was a kid, so the end result was that I lived generally crime-free.
Later I developed my own sense of morals and criteria on why to do/not do things, but I really feel like that advice helped me avoid potential problems in life before I reached that point. I recommend the advice to all new parents, though I don't think anyone has taken me up on the advice yet :)
I have a vague memory of getting the same advice at some point. It really is useful, and for more than simply returning a "do not do this" for effectively everything; in my experience it's also a forcing function for deeper risk-reward analysis. In my case that analytical mindset expanded to cover to more than just "should I commit this crime or crime-ish thing". Should I grab an extra cookie from the jar? Should I rush across this street instead of walking down to the sidewalk to reach a crosswalk? Should I commit this bad code to get the patch out faster? Etc.
The hilarious thing, of course, is looking at the news and seeing so many people commit crimes that they actually could retire off of... and then fail to retire, keep committing crimes, and get caught. Also a useful life lesson!
I'm actually surprised the youtube-guy doesn't go back to the police at this point, because what they have stolen is a prototype-product, which is worth whatever the inventor says it is worth; Anyone taking this package is committing a felony at this point - which might be worth these lazy-ass cops' time.
> I'm actually surprised the youtube-guy doesn't go back to the police at this point, because what they have stolen is a prototype-product, which is worth whatever the inventor says it is worth
No, it's worth whatever a court determines the fair market value is.
Stealing mail is a federal offense, so it doesn't matter what the state laws are. Now that applies specifically to deliveries by USPS ( Theft or receipt of stolen mail matter generally [1]). Stealing shipments by UPS or FedEx can also be considered a federal offense if the package crossed state lines during shipment (Theft from Interstate Shipment[2]).
This fear of the cops is only a thing if you actually believe the cops will respond. Package thieves know the average response time will give them plenty of time to get away. These types of videos just re-enforce that to any would be thief. The amount of news coverage with video evidence showing the thieves NOT getting caught does not give pause to one thinking "maybe I can get away with it too".
I know I've made lots of comments about police response in this thread, but I'm not trying to come across as too negative. However, there's a reason this type of crime is prevalent. Police cannot be everywhere all of the time. At this point in time, I personally would be more worried about the homeowner staging a trap with a shotgun rather than a glitter bomb. That would be legal in Texas.
I think a way to aerate the fart spray into the glitter as it launches out would be a nice touch, not only would the glitter get on everything, it would smell bad and be hard to get out.
As a European, I'm surprised that the postal services in the US just leave the packages outside, rather than ringing the doorbell and/or delivering it to a neighbor.
Over here in The Netherlands, pickup points are common (my local groceries store is one), you can choose your delivery time (also in the evening) and they will deliver it to a neighbor when I'm not home.
Why not avoid this whole problem with any of these options?
You can totally have them delivered to a store for pickup and there's even Amazon Lockers in some places to make it easier. You have to request it though and in most cases you'll have to do that after the package is shipped because Amazon will use whoever is cheapest to ship a particular package.
Half the time they'll just leave a not in the post box saying delivery attempted and to pick it up at the post office. Most new communities are switching to locking post boxes which have parcel lockers so that does help a lot. Problem is theres usually only two parcel lockers and during holidays they just toss the box at your door.
This does happen in many places, but I think you underestimate how much of the US is spread out over large areas. Suburbs are huge places. For example, here in Chicago, the suburbs extend for at least 20 miles in every direction... so to say this is an "Easy" challenge to solve is underestimating a bit for companies like Amazon or organizations like USPS.
Nobody's home during the day. What neighbor? How do you know which neighbor will be home, or which neighbor to trust? When 90% of your package recipients are not home, you spend 3x as much time per package delivery.
Carriers offload responsibility by allowing the sender or receiver to opt-out of signature/package acceptance, so why would they care?
Just one data point, but I've been having packages delivered to my home my entire life and never had a single one go missing. Seems like a really high cost to prevent something unlikely.
On the other hand, I had never had a home or vehicle broken into until someone smashed my car window last night at the movie theater. So, there's a first time for everything.
You can specify a neighbor in an online form. A commercial entity on the ground floor may be generous enough act as "neighbor", accept the packages in bulk and put them in the stairwell of the building.
If neither of that works you still have pickup points in shops or dedicated lockboxes[0] in central locations.
Huh, I haven't heard of shipping companies that allow you to designate a neighbor. That's cool.
I've not shipped to myself using an Amazon locker since I've never had an issue with package theft, but if a package is worth more than $500 or $1000 I'll often have it sent to my office, which I suspect is what most people do if possible.
If you're not in they try and leave the package with a neighbour. If that doesn't work, they'll try again, and if you're not there again, try for for a neighbour again. If that fails for a second time, they leave it at a nearby depot for you to pick it up.
I've never heard of a package being stolen here in the UK.
I agree with all of your points except for the package theft one.
The package theft "solutions" proposed really are insanely inconvenient and unworkable* in most suburban environments. I've seen all of the reasons listed many places here, so I won't bother rehashing them. If I'm at work on Tuesday, for example, a redelivery attempt on Wednesday doesn't really help, does it?
* unworkable in the sense that they're less efficient than the alternative of just allowing the rare package theft to occur
My local Caltex/7-11/Fuel Stations all do package holding here in Aus, I honestly had similar thoughts until they started doing it. In the last 12 - 18 months I'd say I've had completely seamless package delivery because of it.
Thinking about it a bit, I bet one reason package holding isn't more popular in the US is the (very Australia-like) combination of suburbs, and people driving to work.
Assuming your employer allows it, it's convenient to have packages sent to work, AND if you drove a personal car to work, it's easy to drive your own package home. This equation gets flipped if you use transit or live in a multi-unit building where it might get easier to just hold it "downstairs".
I guess one reason it's less common over here is because it rains a lot, and it's a lot harder to leave a package in plain sight.
In Bristol, I've known a few people have packages stolen from porches or from under recycling boxes/bins, so it definitely does happen. My parents found someone in their hedge a few months ago trying to get one of their parcels.
Dutchman here too. They don't usually deliver to a neighbour (hate it when they do that) but they just take it back to the parcel center, try again tomorrow, and if again unsuccessful you can just pick it up at your nearest parcel center. I don't keep track of different companies, but pretty sure it's DPD and PostNL that do it that way.
Choosing when they deliver either costs money (when you can choose during checkout), or you have to create an account and agree to some funny terms (I'd happily save them the trip, but they won't allow me to tell them without agreeing to a whole litany of things).
My experience has been that it depends heavily on who's doing the delivery.
US Postal Service staff usually do ring the doorbell when leaving packages, and, if nobody answers, they will make an effort to leave it in a concealed location if that's possible.
UPS and FedEx people in our area typically leave it by the door without ringing the doorbell, but usually do still try to conceal the package.
Amazon delivery people typically leave it out in the yard, next to the sidewalk.
I'm guessing the difference has a lot to do with the deliveries-to-time ratio that each company's drivers get.
It's funny because I really feel like I had a big downgrade when I moved from Japan to Germany. In Japan they ask you what times you expect to be home and they try to deliver it then. If you are not home, they come back another time. If they try several times and you are not there, then the package is returned. I was shocked when our packages were left with a neighbor here (why would you leave my stuff with a stranger?) and another time was left in the garbage storage area with a note in our mailbox.
I think Europe would have been a lot cooler if I had moved from the US straight there instead of coming from Japan :/
I'm guessing people with a gambling streak and zero morals would be drawn to it. Think about it: you never know what you may get. Could be a valuable watch, could be some desk pencil holder.
My grandpa has pomegranate trees on his property that have been stolen from a few times. It's heartbreaking cause of the amount of work he puts into caring for them. And these trees are picked CLEAN with nothing left behind which is just cruel.
Wtf? Are people stealing them to eat? To sell? I mean, I have a small amount of sympathy if someone needs to feed their family and can't afford food, but if someone is just trying to make $10, that's really sad.
it's surprising and sad how 'average' the thieves all seem to be; i expected to see somebody down on their luck, not a guy in a lexus or with a $2000 bike in his room. im trying not to jump to conclusions about humanity. please help.
There was a news story last winter about a wealthy woman (in a new Lexus, in fact) who died while trying to steal clothes from a charity used-clothing drop box. Apparently she was standing on a stepladder with her head inside the box (it's designed to be theft-resistant) and slipped off the step ladder and was strangled.
Watch the video. The phones are hidden, and the fart spray is designed to make the thief get rid of the package as quickly as possible rather than taking it apart to see what might be inside.
Probably not. Likely these were second-hand phones, so not terribly expensive. Also because they are phones, they can upload "to the cloud" automatically, have GPS and cell tower triangulation for accurate location reporting.
They were LG phones, you can see the logo in the video. He mentions a wide lens and I think that started with the LG V30. $249 on ebay, so that is close.
Adds too much friction to the system. Yes theft adds friction too, but the relative effects of each are weighed and the lowest cost option wins. If they don’t do it this way, a competitor will, and then that competitor will win.
Plus, the options you mention are always available for special cases, and are sometimes used.
As a random delivery person do you know the neighbor's relationship?
If you know both parties personally maybe you can, but that's a rarity these days for anyone outside of certain companies. Amazon's ad-hoc delivery service never sends the same person twice.
If I’m not home then I get the package delivered to a post office or more commonly the shop on he corner (a network of thousands of little shops acting as pickup points). I think it’s a good trade off between convenience and safety.
What delivery options do large online retailers in the US offer if you absolutely don’t want a package left on your porch?
Here it’s usually
- directly to pickup point: free for orders over say $50 or $100, otherwise $10
Part of the reason, at least in some cases, must be apathy and laziness. USPS never rings my doorbell when they deliver, nor will they put the package anywhere it's not easily visible from the street, despite there being a couple of easy ways to do this.
It does seem like our package receiving system needs updating in light of the huge rise in package deliveries. Maybe it's time everyone should have a large package delivery box similar to a mailbox where packages can be securely deposited out of view.
Packages used to require signatures more often but it's a pain to both parties because that requires either evening deliveries to catch people at home more often or for people to stay home which is only an option in a small number of jobs. So now it's only for very expensive items generally.
As for delivering to neighbors you have the same problem of actually finding a neighbor that's home and then you've got the chance of dishonest neighbors.
Most packages I get delivered they will tuck it in the most out of the way part of my side porch so they do try but only to the point it causes them hassle. If it's a flat envelope package they'll tuck it between my storm door and the actual door too provided it's unlocked (sometimes).
It's really a question of priorities I think and the raw numbers where package theft is relatively rare. For the delivery company their job is done when the package hits the correct doorstep so there's not a huge incentive for them to go around hunting for a neighbor to give it to or find a clever hiding spot, both of which would eat up time.
I would like people to stop doing this childish nonsense. There is a guy who does "Operation Krampus" every year and brags about putting gifts out filled with cat shit. And people think he's so funny and cool. Thing is, he could be spending his time doing something uplifting and productive instead of being a low-life asshole himself.
It's not funny, first of all. It's childish. It isn't in keeping with the spirit of the holidays. The holidays are about giving, not being assholes to the less fortunate. Thieves deserve what they get, but seriously, if you were looking at how to spend your time over the holidays, why not volunteer or donate and forget about the lowlifes? They are punished enough just by living, and no childish bullshit is going to deter them from their behavior. Set a good example for others this holiday season and don't give in to childish pranks that just further tear down our society.
While yes he could be volunteering but it's hard to "forget about the lowlifes". These people are stealing and you don't really just forget about packages disappearing off your porch. You may not agree with his tactics but I don't believe his pranks are furthering to "tear down our society" especially not anymore than the criminals that are stealing.
I can't believe I got downvoted for what I said. This country is truly lost.
Stealing is bad, I am not defending thieves in any manner. What I am saying is that people are spending time and effort in all the wrong ways, an idea I stand by.
Bullshit glitter bombs are not making our lives better--going out and volunteering and helping kids not become fucking miserable thieves is how we move forwards.
By the way, glitter bomb guy now has to worry about his house burning down because one good turn deserves another and you have NO IDEA how the criminal mind works and what lengths people will go to fuck with you if they have a vendetta that you caused with your shitty little glitter bomb. You start something, you better be ready to end it.
You did not watch the video. Some of the theives caught on video live in nice homes. And yet they're stealing packages from a stranger's doorstep. Why?
Probably because they think they won't get caught. Having things doesn't necessarily mean you also have morals or ethics; it just means you have more to lose.
Stealing a package might not even be the worst thing they did that day. Maybe they also fired all their company's in-house maintenance staff, and replaced them with contractors that cost half as much, in order to get a one-time bonus of $500. Maybe they pitched a censored and backdoored search engine for China, because Google backed down on that (for now). The world is full of heels.
I think you just have a different sense of humor than many others.
This project has clever engineering, excellent presentation, tackles a problem that many of us have to deal with during the holidays, and ... it’s funny.
Personally, I think this is a very effective deterrent in a system that no longer effectively punishes crime of $200 electronics. The only question in my mind is how to make it scale.
I think punishing bad behavior, even sporadically, is a moral good. It will in turn help people not do immoral things and make the world a better place.
In the Netherlands, when I order a package and no one's at home when it's delivered, it either gets delivered to my neighbors or to the post office, with a note of where to pick it up.
It's never left at my door AFAIK.
It is depending on your location and which carrier is delivering the package. In a city you wouldn't typically see the package left on the doorstep. However out in the suburbs they get left as there is still a peculiar notion of wholesomeness.
>there is still a peculiar notion of wholesomeness
It's less to do with wholesomeness than it is with a lower population density (there's also a lower crime rate in general in the suburbs, though it's less of a difference than it was 25 years ago).
In the suburbs you have far fewer people walking past your doorstep--fewer crimes of opportunity. You're also much more likely to be noticed as being out of place if you're driving around a quiet neighborhood looking for packages.
Generally because people don't want it. Shipping used to be a lot stricter about signatures, etc, but people usually aren't home when the packages get delivered, and package theft isn't a significant enough problem to make the extra security worth the inconvenience.
He left a bright white box out that looked like it contained electronics in a very exposed spot easily visible from the street. Typically it's a more subdued brown box and the delivery guys will try to tuck it in a little so it's not quite as visible. He was hoping for this outcome and that affected the results.
He did this after he got his normal deliveries stolen as well. Which where presumably packaged in a subdued brown box and then delivered in that same easily visible spot.
The United States is big, with many different areas that have different levels of crime. Sometimes with affluent areas in walking distance of destitute areas, which is a whole other problem. One location being robbed repeatedly is not surprising, and not significant. If it were, Amazon would be requiring signatures instead of just sending you another one when something goes missing.
Amazon requiring signatures wouldn’t much help in preventing the problem. They’d just get a signature from the thief “just returning home” in the front yard, find out later that it wasn’t a match, and then... nothing, really. They’d know the buyer wasn’t liable, I guess? Doesn’t do anything for them, loss-prevention-wise; they still owe the buyer the thing they ordered.
What Amazon is doing is much more clever: whenever possible, they’re now recording the serial number of the product they ship to you. This way, if the police find it when busting a fence, they can (hopefully) get the fence’s providers out of them and then actually bust them, too (because now they have real physical evidence—along with testimony—that that particular person stole a particular thing.)
A park ranger named Roy Sullivan was struck by lightning six times in eight years. Clearly this is a major problem!
Roughly one third of Americans have ever had a package stolen. (https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2017/11/20/package-...) It’s not that big a deal. For people who want to avoid taking chances with it, there are various options to avoid it. Not that they should have to, but there are many bigger problems to worry about.
I am home during the day (yay remote work!) but they (UPS) give a quick knock and set the package down and go to leave. Genuinely shocked when I open the door.
> but people usually aren't home when the packages get delivered
I still don't understand why this hasn't been 'disrupted' by a company providing evening deliveries. They could do business delivery during the afternoon and then switch to residential.
Because then they would have only 2 or 3 hours to deliver all their packages? (I'm assuming most people would want to get their packages between 8pm and 10pm)?
Amazon is renting vans from Uhaul here to get all their packages out to houses. They are delivering (probably) 12 hrs a day not even including the Fedex, UPS, and USPS deliveries (I'm not sure how they decide which option to ship with).
There is way too much volume to fit deliveries into times when people are home.
Remember a lot of people in the US are in single family homes detached from another home. When I lived in a condo or apartment they could other leave a special key for big boxes in your normal mailbox. You would leave the key in the special mailbox for later. Or they would put it in your rental office. Large condos will have a concierge that will handle it for you.
Usually UPS will put it somewhere out of sight if they think it will be an issue.
>When I lived in a condo or apartment they could other leave a special key for big boxes in your normal mailbox. You would leave the key in the special mailbox for later. Or they would put it in your rental office.
Exactly this. I sorta hate it, we have 2 boxes for like 12 units and one of the boxes keys was lost before I moved in so we have 1 box for 12 units with people getting packages almost daily it means I have to rush home and rush to the office to get my packages.
Since moving in it's considerably cut down my Amazon purchases, unless I can time them to arrive on Saturdays or Sundays when I'm home. I'll actually delete my cart sometimes if something isn't going to come on a Saturday or Sunday haha.
Requiring the package to be signed for is an option; most people don't want it because going to the post office to pick up your package is a huge pain, and thefts are pretty rare.
The real solution would be a simple box on your porch that only opens once without a key, of has a one-way mechanism, or that the delivery guy has a one-time code for. These have been tried in various forms, but they never catch one.
I've had bad experiences with packages that require signatures. UPS drivers consistently leave the package on the porch without a signature even if one is required. DHL tries to deliver 3 times then returns the package to sender, ignoring the online form you can submit to request they deliver on a specific day or hold at warehouse. Haven't tried Fedex. USPS is pretty good about about getting signatures or holding at the post office, and have more convenient locations compared to the private services.
That type of delivery is an option for more expensive goods. You can also sometimes pay more to require a signature for delivery.
Overall the rate of package theft is low though, so people prefer the convenience and low cost of normal package delivery.
The US is big and diverse. Most areas have little to no package theft. However, if your home has a very exposed front porch and you live in an affluent area very near a not so affluent area, theft can be more of an issue.
This also happens in the US if the delivery person feels the package is not secure(or because signature confirmation is needed) they will leave a note and you can pick it up at the depot. But many people would rather avoid the inconvenience of picking it up and have the package left on the door because package theft is relatively rare. If you live in an area where package theft is a problem you probably live in an apartment building with a secure space for packages, or you can have packages delivered to your work, or delivered straight to the post office to pick up.
In a lot of places in the US, people don't know their neighbors, or at least, not well enough to trust them to care for their belongings. Kind of depressing to say, but still true.
> In the Netherlands, when I order a package and no one's at home when it's delivered, it either gets delivered to my neighbors or to the post office, with a note of where to pick it up. It's never left at my door AFAIK.
> How is this not an option in the US?
In the US, there are at least four major carriers and in my experience only the official postal service does a decent job automatically delivering to nearby location (the local post office) if they can't hand-deliver to a person or a secure location. Some apartments complexes also have locked drop boxes that only the postal service can use.
UPS lets you set your default drop off to a nearby shop (but then you never get anything at your home), Fedex makes you manually change the delivery location while the package is in transit if you won't be at home. If the latter two attempt a delivery at your door and don't want to leave it, you have to wait until the next day for redelivery or drive to their inconveniently-located distribution warehouse to pick it up.
Amazon has their own delivery service that they use preferentially, and they rely on nonprofessional gig-economy labor, so you're lucky if your package isn't literally tossed at your door. They'll always leave the package at your home if that's the destination. If you don't want that, you have to set your delivery location to a locker, if one is available nearby.
I forward all my UPS packages to a local grocery store and pick up from there. If I don't do this, UPS will try to deliver up to 3 times and then leave it in a remote warehouse for me to pick up.
I think if you have get the note, you can do this for that one package but for all you need to create a UPS account.
Since the USA is a car culture, you can safely ship to work and put the packages in your car trunk after you commute. You can ship to home the low value packages and if theft isn't common enough for you and amazon will just reship you on the rare case that it gets stolen.
This breaks down if you don't do car commutes although, in urban places like NYC & SF or can't ship to work.
What is a goods-in? Google doesn't show anything that makes sense in this context.
At work, there are people who work at the shipping department and then deliver the packages to people's desks. AFAIK they are paid to do this job and seem somewhat peppy compared to other similar staff in the company.
Considering the views / subscriptions are the main motivation here, it might justify the expenses poured into this project – that is, it would be quite a waste if all that effort went into the build just to have no one actually take it off the porch.
If actors were used, it would explain the lack of police involvement (it's easy to say, "police weren't interested" ).
An obvious consequence of it being a production without disclosure is the copycats that this will spawn.
Edit: just to add a bit more food-for-thought in response to comments such as, "why do that to your own car?" or "why get sprayed with fart spray": what makes you believe it's their own car (could be a beater picked up for a few hundred dollars) or that the fart spray actually smells?
Which doesn't happen at all incidents. E.g. the last thief who opens the package in his house doesn't complain about a smell at all. So chances are that this is staged.
I doubt Mark would be staging things. He works for Nasa and worked on some big projects there and is a pretty smart guy. I can't see him being the kind of person looking to just make some viral fake video. But up to you to make that call if you want to think that. This is one case where I doubt it's staged.
I've had the same thought when I first saw it. Some suspicious things: thieves talking to themselves, that lady throwing the box into her own garbage bin, zero attempt at disassembly or closer inspection of the box, no police involved.
Also GPS is just not that good for locating anything of that size in given circumstances, and it would not have worked in the parking garage.
Too many things could have gone wrong here, but they did not. The design is subpar in my opinion, for somebody who worked on a Mars rover. Custom printed board plus a bunch of smartphones, seriously?
> Custom printed board plus a bunch of smartphones, seriously?
Why wouldn't you use this? Seems like if you want to push video data over the cell phone network then using some cheapo android phones with data sims is by far and away the simplest and most robust solution? Anything you build yourself to do that job is gonna be way more prone to error?
A lot of people talk to themselves. Most small-time thieves are not known for incredible intelligence. If you look close enough to realize it has cameras, you might realize you are on video and should get rid of it quickly. Consumer products are far more reliable than rolling your own solution nine times out of ten. Had he failed to recover the device, the video still would've been pretty cool.
If it's traceable, throwing it in your own trash isn't much worse than throwing it elsewhere, since it already has the coordinates of your house anyways. GPS works fine on small packages and a lot of businesses/products exist specifically to take advantage of this. Also note that as full-featured smartphones, he's likely got the full power of Google Location Services in play, which can identify what floor of a building (or parking garage) you're on, and of course, even if it failed to get signal in the parking garage would surely show location up to the parking garage. Inside a parking garage, a bright white box is not hard to find. Also, he has four GPS devices facing different directions, so he's got a lot of backup for failure here.
>Too many things could have gone wrong here, but they did not. The design is subpar in my opinion, for somebody who worked on a Mars rover. Custom printed board plus a bunch of smartphones, seriously?
What would you propose? The best design is often the easiest/cheapest one, and this looks like pretty simple.
I guess technically, you only need one cellphone (one camera + battery + 3G modem), and the other three sides could have been implemented as action cams connected to the phone over a USB hub.
One phone (or one phone’s SD card) may not have had the IO bandwidth to receive video from four cameras at once, though.
What hardware hacker doesn't? I have at least 2 Android phones and one Windows phone lying around my house in various states of functionality. Hell, I've got $200 Peltier coolers and $400 peristaltic pumps in boxes somewhere sitting unused.
I don't even know what this Mark person did, but going by comments here, if I wanted to build something similar, the only thing I'd have to go out and buy would be the glitter stuff.
Don't discount the stuff us weirdos have in our basements :-)
GPS and phone location (via wifi triangulation) would have easily led him to the parking garage. After that, it's just a matter of driving around in the parking garage until you see the box that got thrown out of the car.
Well shit, I was just writing up a huge post exposing the guy on Reddit, and I've noticed that the scenes and timings in the video did not match with what I have downloaded.
Turns out, Mark himself has already admitted that 2 scenes were staged, supposedly all because of a dishonest "friend" whom he paid to place the box on his porch.
Wiretapping is the recording of a telephone conversation (or modern equivalent). If it’s not a telephone conversation, it’s not subject to the law’s consent requirements.
How does Amazon and Google get away with it? When you put their listening devices in your home, do you sign a legally binding contract? Honest question, I've never bought one.
If a contract is sufficient, does it have to be signed in writing or witnessed? If not, then could he have a sign at his door stating that acquiring the package provides consent to monitoring?
Is there a lawyer here that could answer those questions, pro bono?
[Edit] Maybe it would be sufficient to put wording on the box that basically says, "by touching or taking this packages.... yada yada..."
One of the first rules of the legal system is that you don't get to violate the law. This INCLUDES the situation where someone else violates the law first.
In many places this principle is repeated. For instance, you DO NOT get to bump someone's car if they run a red light for instance.
(and no, EVEN the situation where you literally had no choice still isn't an excuse. There is only the small "non-exception" that earlier laws can override later laws. For instance, keeping someone safe takes precedence over obeying traffic lights. If you can avoid an accident by running a red light you MUST do so. There is an explicitly defined order in which laws can override one another, even though I would strongly agree that it's not exactly a clear thing)
So the thief (or whoever) can sue this person for things like willful damage to property, violation of privacy, ... and that the package was stolen won't be a valid defense.
Ah, see, but lack of enforcement from the police goes both ways!
If the police are unwilling to go after petty theft cases, why would they bother with the even smaller crime of "wiretapping" thieves?
Is the opportunist thief likely to have the resources to go after you for this? Almost certainly not.
And even then, it is additionally unlikely that a judge and jury would convict and punish someone. Stories, narratives, and being perceived to be "in the right" go a long way in the criminal justice system, which is enforced by people, not the legal words on a piece of paper.
Well, it's not that simple. The thief could simply sue under private law (private law = anything that's not criminal law). Privacy violation, for example, is private law. Damage to property, is both criminal and private law. There's certainly options.
Granted, the author of the video cannot be sent to jail in such a case, but it is a near-certainty that he'll have to pay.
Second, I don't think the odds of the police pursuing this are quite as small as you perceive them to be. For one, the thief may BE a police officer. What do you propose happens then ? Do you think criminal police officers just arrest themselves ?
I mean, I sort of understand the "the law is just under all circumstances and the law sees all" train of thought, all nice, safe and secure. In reality, law is an imperfect and sometimes outright malicious system implemented by imperfect and sometimes outright malicious people. So I'd be interested in your opinion of what happens if the thief is an ill-tempered police officer, with the predisposition of Joe Arpaio towards you. You might note that this person was not just any police officer, but a 24-year sheriff (chief) of the police of a 4 million people county, including a large city. Those people are part of the police too, and can be very high up in the police force.
> judge and jury
Jury is only in criminal law. In other words, only if you're sued by the public prosecutor. Otherwise, no jury trial. And good luck convincing the jury if a police officer is testifying against you. I will say, it's not impossible. However, ...
> Stories, narratives, and being perceived to be "in the right" go a long way in the criminal justice system
Can I just say, I pity your lawyer if you ever apply this way of thinking in an actual case. In short: it does not. Police and public prosecutors are evaluated on their conviction rate (just ask a police officer. You should be very surprised that he knows that figure in the first place). There's even bonuses for achieving certain conviction rates (and of course you get fired below ...). Secondly there's a sort of constant "contest" between officers for the highest conviction rate. In the criminal justice system, therefore, the primary driver of who the police pursue is whether they believe they'll get a conviction. Nothing, and I do mean absolutely nothing, else.
(That doesn't mean they don't apply sanity, but realistically, if that happens, it's the officer on the ground and they are under VERY high pressure to do "something", like arrest someone. "This guy is not innocent, let's arrest him" definitely happens regularly. If the officer on site doesn't just let you go, it is utter folly to count on anyone else in the criminal justice system to take stories or narratives into account)
> The thief could simply sue under private law.... There's certainly options
But they won't, because they are a desperate individual who is going around stealing packages from people. The kind of person who does this is very unlikely to have the money to sue someone.
They will instead just run away as they are probably just afraid of getting arrested themselves. Someone who has stolen one package has probably stolen dozens. Rationally or not, they'd probably just be afraid of getting caught for all their past thefts.
> . In reality, law is an imperfect
Indeed it is imperfect! Which is why someone who "wiretaps" desperate thiefs is almost certainly going to get away with breaking the law.
Lots of people in this thread are talking about how the police just won't care if you bring them irefutable evidence of theft. If police don't care about that, what do you think is the likelihood that they will care about illegal wiretapping of thiefs? I'd guess that the answer is "a very low likelyhood".
> In other words, only if you're sued by the public prosecutor.
But you won't be sued by a public prosecutor or targeted by the police. Because they have better things to do with their time. They aren't even going after the thieves, if you will remember!
> For one, the thief may BE a police officer
This is extremely unlikely. Instead the thief is probably going to be some desperate individual or homeless person with no ability to go after you for "wiretapping".
My whole point is that if nobody is getting arrested for the theft, the chances of the police bothering to go after people for wiretapping is even less likely. And the desperate thief won't have the money, resources, or motivation to pursue you in private court.
If it is so easy to get away with theft, then it is certainly going to be much much easier to get away with wiretapping thieves.
> > The thief could simply sue under private law.... There's certainly options
> But they won't, because they are a desperate individual who is going around stealing packages from people.
The reason we know about the common law status of booby traps is that trespassers (including burglars) have sure after being injured by them.
So, no, I don't think your “porch pirates won't sue because they are desperate enough to steal” argument is convincing. Especially given that porch pirates often aren't destitute, and theft isn't always motivated by desperation.
Not a lawyer. Consent to recording does not need to be made by written contract.. Simple transactional agreement, like saying "OK" on the phone, or by purchasing a device intended to record you, is sufficient.
The stink thing could be fake (we can't tell from the video only) and the glitter on a car, well, maybe there are desperate people out there that will gladly take US X,000 for the trouble.
It would be funny if this spawned a bunch of copy cats which then drives down the incidents of package theft because thiefs are paranoid of getting prank packages.
I bet somebody will soon start selling this as a product. And people will just send them to their friends instead of targeting package thiefs. "Pranked you bro!" Then there will be a bunch of backlash.
If this was staged, this guy is a fantastic actor. The shot of him “being out of his comfort zone” when retrieving the box, in particular, would have my sincere respect if it were not genuine. That is professional grade acting. Something you generally don’t find in YouTube click bait fakes.
That's exactly what made me think it's staged. Despite stating contrary, he seemed incredibly eager to drive to an unknown location, and hop out of his car without scouting the direct vicinity. How could he have known the thief wasn't still hanging around? Someone willing to steal might also be willing to mug and/or physically retaliate against the person who just glitter bombed them coming to pick up their package.
What's the crime? Stealing something that is less than $1000? They could have stolen that from the front of a store and if they weren't detained by a store cop, the police won't do anything typically.
If they plead guilty, they probably would just get a small fine, not worth the time of a detective to make the case.
Serious question then... what's the deterrent? Sounds like a person could spend all day looking for packages, resell the contents, at the risk of just paying a small fee if one happens to prosecute...
Welcome to the reality. Typically, the criminals are caught with lots of items, and there's theft and possession of stolen property. Or if they are stopped, they are also carrying drugs and they'll get charged with that.
Edit: Also, its not so easy to sell a bunch of random things for the cash. For every iphone that might get you a 100 or so in one transaction, there's a bunch of random things that you might get you $20 if you spend a day trying sell them.
I'm describing the reality of the world we all live in. Even if its not their first time, they'll be out in a day or two, maybe not even that. Its just packages, most of them under $100, no one in harms way, no drugs, no guns/knives. Even if they broke down your door when you weren't home and went inside to steal your package, there's going to be no APB on their license number, no road blocks, no helicopter sent out to see where they are.
My time in retail quickly taught me that unless you catch and hold a perpetuator, nothing will happen to them.
"We have them on tape! I ran outside and wrote down their license plate?"
"What was stolen?"
"$250 worth of goods!"
"Meh, we know the guy, but if its under a grand the DA won't do anything. Since we know him, we'll tell him to avoid your store, if he does show up again and steals something, we can get him on trespass and stealing, the DA might do something then.
The fact is some people live 100% on small thefts, small odd jobs paid in cash, some begging. They'll be living with their parents at 30-40, with no assets in their name, borrowing cars to get around. There is no down side in swiping a few packages besides the pain in turning that into cash, which is the only disincentive to them stealing.
In California (and some other jurisdictions have similar rules), police cannot, by law make a warrantless arrest for a misdemeanor (with some specific exceptions, none of which is applicable to the pattern of offense at issue) unless the crime occurred in their presence, and prosecutors generally do not pursue misdemeanor warrants except in conjunction with broader investigations.
(If the offense occurs in the presence of a non-police witness, something that a casual observer would describe as a police arrest may occur after the witness reports to police, but that's actually a citizen’s arrest by the witness with police assistance. But a camera isn't a witness, and, as for police misdemeanor arrests, a citizens arrest for a misdemeanor also requires the offense to have occurred in the presence of the arresting party.)
I’ve had my house robbed, and had evidence from the bank when the robbers tried to use the checkbook to send money through Western Union. They had photos, state issued identification, address, etc of the people collecting the payments. The assigned detective would not read an email or respond to voice mails. The detective said he was too busy to read emails.
Not sure that’s the piece of evidence to hang my hat on that this might be a hoax.
You can try to press charges yourself. The police really don't want to help in such cases but I've found that once they know you are serious and have the proper evidence/witnesses they will at least steer you in the right direction.
You can't press charges yourself. You can go directly to the DA with your evidence and hope they press charges, but there is no role for you as a citizen to instigate a criminal preceding.
Getting robbed is just the opening salvo in getting fleeced. The second round is the insurance company. Yes, I know insurance fraud exists, so one way the insurance companies "protect" themselves is to issue a check for a fraction of the value of the items stolen. They know most people will not replace the stolen items. If you do replace the items, then you have to re-submit your claim with the receipt to show it was actually replaced. They will then decide if they want to reimburse the difference from the original payout.
You're also left pretty defeated with the lack of response from the police, then you have the beat down with the insurance company. Asking the individuals to go after a civil suit is just too much. Had I known about it, I might have done it. The police nor the insurance ever suggested this was possible. Even still, what are the odds of actually receiving any payment from a civil suit win?
My 'sue them' should have almost had a /s on it. It would be pointless suing someone with little or no assets. Its the only thing you can do, by yourself, within the courts as a private citizen.
Think of the number of people living in a large city, and compare that to the number of police officers in that city. It is a tiny percentage of "trained" people asked to protect the citizens. There is only so much you can do, only so many places you can be at one time. An investigation looking into stolen property requires so much effort for so little return. I would be very interested in knowing the number of open cases at any one time a single cop is expected to have to handle. I'd be willing to bet we'd all be surprised by the number. Just like any other profession, as you become senior, the tendency to become jaded is probably even more likely as a cop. We all want them to solve our specific need just like an episode of CSI or whatever, but that's not real. Being too busy to read email sounds just like a guy that is just waiting out his time for his pension. Oh, and there is a significantly larger than 0 percent chance that as they go about doing their job that they could be harmed if not killed. Would you be willing to take on that risk for something like stolen personal items that is covered by insurance?
I'd be honestly be concerned about retaliation. The people that got hit with the glitter bomb can probably trace back where they found it, and have already demonstrated a lack of strict attention to the law.
> it's their own car (could be a beater picked up for a few hundred dollars)
At least one of them was a fairly nice looking Lexus.
Feels real to me generally — actors are usually easy to spot, and these would be surprisingly good actors.
The police are not going to do anything in my experience.
I literally caught someone in the act of stealing a package and the police specifically told me to do nothing and file a report. I submitted clear video of a face and apparently this was a known thief to others in the neighborhood, so I even gave them the person's name. They're still stealing packages 6 months later. The police tell me there are warrants pending.
It's easy to say, because after a while it kind of just rolls off the tongue. If there's no blood, my experience says police aren't interested. And in some jurisdictions, it better be a lot of blood.
most people still seem to think of youtube as home movies. they dont understand its ursurped traditional "television", and all the strings attached to that (its media -- it's not reality! it's a "reality show")
there are many comments here that read something like, "mark wouldn't do a fake video..." as if they know mark personally. it's like debating if tom cruise really shoots people in mission impossible.
you can debate this if you want, maybe mark's followers really do "know" what, how, and why he posts to youtube. but please never stop 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 and questioning
Well one, he's not a prank channel. He's a serious professional that even showed video of people stealing his package that started the whole idea. He then went as far as to machine parts, have a custom pcb manufactured etc. Then he contaminated cars and residences with glitter, yeah good luck talking random friends to let you bomb their cars and houses with glitter.
I mean, the dude worked for JPL for almost a decade and has his work on Mars, he already gets tons of views and has a history of deep-diving projects. He's also a tv host. He's also a former TED speaker.
Guy has better things to do than stage videos for YouTube.
> You think he can get a decent engineering job, especially for a government agency, in the future with a viral public hoax on his record?
Who cares? Those are arbitrary rationalizations that didn't necessarily factor into the creator's reasoning; you're simply projecting post facto reasoning that supports your preconceived conclusions. People who fall for scams and fakes use this same flawed reasoning all the time: "would he really lie about this? It can't possibly be worth it, I have considered all possibilities and have perfect information, there is no way that someone would do something that is obviously a bad choice from my perspective"...
He literally says it's not a prank video, that he doesn't do that. He has a solid reputation both as an engineer and as a YouTuber for being scientific and factual, 4 videos ago he showed a fake video from another YouTube user and explained how to help yourself determine when a video is fake...
His videos already get millions of views - his top 5 are nearly 1/4 of a billion views at 99 million, 46 million, 32 million, 31 million, 28 million, even his less popular ones easily clear multiple millions.
Unfortunately, it's becoming a pretty common problem. Here in Portland, the police is understaffed, largely because the hiring process is insane. (It can take a full year to complete the background check - so onboarding new officers is a slow process.) Thus, they prioritize responding to violence or possible major damage - given the high number of homeless addicts on Portland streets, it's unfortunately frequent. Even home break ins wont warrant much investigation time, just a report, unless there is a violent act to go along with it.
So, I have no problem believing Mark when he said police weren't interested. It's definitely par for the course here in Portland. I would imagine that in other areas, it's similar.
We have a lot of homeless people in our area just walking around. I see "package stolen" notifications on Nextdoor pretty much every other day.
personally i hope its staged. from both a legal and safety stand point id be freekin sweating everyday thinking all those fools would come kill me or file suit of some bogus injury charge for disrespecting them. he put it up on the tubes with his name etc. so dumb if its not staged.
It sounds so whiny when they start their message decrying that they'll get downvotes for something.
Its even worse when its not something they will get downvotes for.
That's when you realize that they probably get downvoted a lot because of how whiny they are, only they always blame it on some other aspect because they have no self awareness.
There's plastic free glitter[0], which I've seen used at environmentally considerate festivals. He should use that for his pranks.
I hope campaigns against single use plastic become more mainstream soon, and that will not happen without it being talked about more, so thanks for raising the point.
I think, of course depending on country, most trash is burned. Assuming they vacuum it up and put it in the trash, the microplastic bit shouldn't be a problem, the the CO2 emission might.
Yes, he did a great job on design and construction.
But I wonder if sought legal advice before implementing. Because, as others have noted, I gather that booby traps are illegal in the US. Maybe this one is benign enough, but I rather doubt it.
Also, while it's true that thieves aren't so likely to press claims, what about parents of juvenile thieves?
I really enjoyed the this. The insane over-engineering, the well thought out details (like the 30sec fart-spray to get them to ditch the package, maximising chances of recovery), the harmless-ness of it. Loved it! :D
Hmm, I'd be worried about retribution. Spread glitter in someone's car, they might come back and torch your house. Assuming they can remember where they grabbed the package from.
I'd be worried as well. Even if the criminals didn't remember where they got the package, now the video is going viral and it looks like the shows his home address on a map.
Edit: as someone pointed out it's not his address. I just re-watched the video and it's written on the map that it's not actually his house address.
That's amazing. He goes through a lot of explaining how he used the address for the label and I thought it was weird that he was showing us where his house was on a map.
When my wife worked as a prison nurse, her porter was an arsonist, doing 25 to life. Torching your ex-girlfriend's home with her inside it is looked upon dimly by the courts, even if she survives.
This needs careful consideration if you ever decide to do it. Depending on the local criminal culture they could exact revenge. Then also know where you live and can do a lot worse things than taking a package. Police might later be involved but it might not be worth it. You are dealing with people who have no qualms stealing so it's not too crazy to expect other rash and illegal acts from them.
I can also see some intrepid crooks suing for glitter damaging their eyesight permanently or some other bullshit claim. Some attorney or DA might decide to get free publicity and see if they can swing a "injured by booby trap" case.
> You are dealing with people who have no qualms stealing, it's not too crazy to expect other rash and illegal acts from them.
In more then one instance the thief opened the package at their house. So its fair to say he knows where they live too. Also, very clear HD video of their faces and vehicles. And there is no way all the glitter is going to get cleaned up - so more evidence of who they are. And home security cameras with more images of them. Not to say these idiots are smart enough to let things be at this point - but if they do retaliate, there is a very high chance they would be caught.
As for your comments about liability. Yeah, that sounds entirely plausible.
Sadly, a video of a random figure with face obscured throwing a rock through your car window isn't going to get the police involved. Even with a GPS location of someone you pranked with a package, if there's no evidence directly tying the two incidents, the police aren't going to waste resources doing CSI on it. They'll just write you a police report so you can get your insurance paid.
Disturbingly, the accidental message of this glitterbomb booby-trap video is that you will probably not face legal consequences for stealing packages from peoples' property in broad daylight, so even the best security cameras are effectively useless.
That was my takeaway from this. It just gives the package thieves more reason to do it because, even if they do get caught on video, there's nothing that's going to be done about it.
Well, if someone goes and grabs 10 packages, and they have 15 random things, 14 of those won't be worth selling for $. If I think about the last 10 things I've ordered, and my thinking of my last garage sale. Nothing was really that valuable that there would be an easy sell.
I would expect the fact that most packages are of low value to increase theft, not discourage it. Lower-value packages carry even less chance of repercussions, and incentivize thieves to steal even more packages to make sure their effort is worthwhile.
Just really difficult (time consuming) to convert a pack of dog bones, a cheap bike light and a random tshirt (last 3 things i've ordered) into $. I think most of those items would just get tossed if they aren't of immediate use.
One thing I hadn't thought of though, is that these items might just be accumulating in someone's horde. Filling up some house or rental storage.
I think people in TX and FL would have a hard time defending themselves with Stand Your Ground because a central part of that defense is proving that your only other option would be retreat. An unarmed package thief pretty much negates that as a defense.
This isn't something new... After having property stolen a few times in the US it's apparent that the police are not there to assist with petty crime _at all_. Even when there's video footage/evidence to be reviewed they can't/won't be bothered and will likely just send a LEO out to fill out a police report for the formalities.
The police are a business and if there's not money to be had (traffic citations, parking tickets, etc.), or violent crime happening, you are the lowest possible priority. Source: personal experience + have worked with a couple of police depts many years back (not as a LEO). The only exception here is if you're a reasonable sized business - they tend to take cases like retail/corporate break-in seriously.
TLDR: Agree. People wouldn't do this if there were a real legal cost.
If you look into civil forfeiture it's a racket... and directly infringes on our rights. Even in cases where there is NO wrongdoing you usually have to go through lengthy processes in order to get your property back, and even then you're considered lucky to get the majority of it back (if at all).
Effectively you are guilty until proven innocent with stuff like this on the books. I just find it funny that the same people who yell about "freedom" and "liberty" in this country are the ones who glorify the police as if they can do no wrong.
I was also thinking about this. Identifying glitter could be an interesting product, because it's so hard to get rid of all of it. ex, you could embed short DNA plasmid UUIDs in the plastic.
How long until we hear of a person who included a gps unit in their bait package, but instead of taking it to the police, went to the person's house with a gun. The police would get involved at that point, though I wonder if it would be hard for them to find the perpetrator since there wouldn't be any obvious link between the two individuals if they didn't know about the gps bait package.
I suspect this type of crime is more the realm of opportunists rather than hard-core criminals who would exact revenge.
One could argue that so called 'hard-core' criminals were once and in some cases still are opportunists, even if the outcomes of their crimes might or might not be more severe than stealing an Amazon package from someone's door step.
That aside though, I'm curious:
What makes you think an opportunist who clearly has the time and means to swipe packages from someone's door while they're at work wouldn't take similar time and opportunity to conduct other forms of petty deviance like vandalizing the car of someone who blasted them with glitter? They clearly have no qualm or compunction with theft, is avenge-fueled-vandalism that far up the logic latter to next steps?
> On the one hand, I suspect this type of crime is more the realm of opportunists rather than hard-core criminals who would exact revenge.
Eh, somewhere in between. Back when I lived in Oakland (where there was/is a serious package theft problem) everyone in the neighborhood knew who stole folks’ deliveries (camera systems are basically free these days). It happened daily and the cops were too busy fending off corruption and sex trafficking scandals to give a damn. 20% of the time it was some high schooler and you would yell at their parents and get your shit back. 80% of the time it was semi-organized teams of people from a few towns over who would roll up to the end of the street in plate-less cars and drop a couple dudes off on foot. Dudes on foot would walk down the street and grab packages off people’s porches while the car would drive up to the next intersection. Dudes hop in the car, car hits the freeway and is in another city (and soon County) in no time.
Definitely intentional crimes (these things take planning, including networks to fence the stolen goods), but if you yell at them they just move on the next house without retailiating. The second you start harrasing people and causing a ruckus the police have fewer excuses to ignore the issue, and your easy source of cash is gone.
I learned from Nextdoor, that a neighbor of mine put cat litter in an amazon box, and later found out her car's driver side window busted in and the litter dumped on the seat. I now just have packages sent to lockers and UPS/FedEX access points, and I know a few who have packages delivered to their office.
The crappy part is that she captured clear detail of both events but police couldn't be bothered. Nest and Ring have been doing their part to fight back, allowing people to publicly post and set up neighborhood watches against porch pirates et al, but there's still a ways to go before security camera footage can be sent to the PD and automatically identify the offender via facial analysis.
That is a real shame. If the police are not going to mediate property disputes between people, they take a lot of risk those disputes will escalate into violence. Perhaps really-good passive defense is enough (e.g. package lock boxes) but I also hope the police understand the deeper reasoning around their position and role.
Having lived in a "3rd world" country, I know the police there is useless, but it's interesting how things like resource issues (not enough manpower) is slowly turning living standards of rich countries like the US and UK towards "3rd world" levels.
Most departments are understaffed. Turns out all the negative press against police is having long term impacts on how many kids want to grow up and become a police officer.
Also property crimes always take a backseat to more violent crimes.
In many cases the police and sheriffs themselves are not hiring because they are faced with choice of keeping high pension payouts or hiring more people
Also, the background check process is intense, (and deals with the exact same understaffing problems) and it turns out that most people aren't willing to wait for nine months to get vetted for an entry-level job.
In some areas perhaps. In my neighborhood the police respond to any property crime, and pretty fast at that. But ... maybe we are just boring.
Perhaps there are some areas in the US where this is a problem, but I don't know if it's safe to generalize that the US is degrading to third-world status just yet.
Well given the police in the US works at city level, if you are in a suburb that's not "the capital city" your police might be bored enough to go for every call, things like "suspicious person walking on street"
My dad used to say "there's few things more dangerous in the suburbs than a bored cop".
Been involved in some of those interactions while walking home in my own neighborhood. They're not pleasant. One involved handcuffs and a 30 minute sit on the curb while my backpack was searched. Yes I'm referring to these past incidents in plural for a reason. No, the complaints to the city and precinct didn't do anything.
I'm not going to go on some kind of "all cops are bastards" bend here, cause that's not the case and this isn't the forum for it, but I've had more bad experiences with the police than good ones.
None of them resulted in an arrest or charges filed (this is excluding moving violations because death, taxes and speeding tickets; I was a 23 year old driving a Mustang lol) since none of the interactions involved me doing anything illegal. After a few experiences like that you learn to keep an eye on a police officer when you see one, but there's no urge to make your presence overtly known to them either.
Conversely, I grew up in a pretty rough area of Philadelphia and had nothing but good experiences with police. They're usually pretty cool and active in the community. If you're not selling crack or in the middle of stabbing some guy, you're already better than 99% of the people they have to deal with on a daily basis.
Yep. I live in Hillsboro, a pretty quiet suburb of Portland. Police here are so bored that when a bunch of drunk teenagers were acting a fool on our street, they sent three cop cars to grab the kiddos and drive them back to their parents' houses.
Head over to Portland, and the cops are so overloaded with dealing with more serious crimes that they won't even respond to auto theft.
I would definitely call the police for package theft in my town, and I'd have a good expectation that they'd assign an officer to watch for crime patterns and get the guys.
In Portland, I'd be duplicating this guy's glitter bomb.
> If the police are not going to mediate property disputes between people
The police exist to maintain order on behalf of the State, the civil justice system exists to mediate property disputes between people. There is sometimes some synergy between the functions, but they are very different.
Maybe with ubiquitous accurate facial recognition we could name and shame these individuals. You could then be walking around and identifying criminals as you go, denying them service, food, shelter, or water. We could create isolated communities of criminals, wall off the rest of the world, and deliver ourselves from evil.
Nah, to do that you need to curtail people’s freedom. What I’m proposing is simply that we privatize large parts of society and exclude people from the private areas based on their tendency to be bad actors.
It’s not about restricting freedom. It’s about enabling free safe association for everyone who opts in. Like a massive HOA.
They’re welcome to it elsewhere. I’m not going to give it to them. You also won’t have the situation where you see them in immediate danger because you’re not going to give them access to your area.
Obviously, you have to help if they’re right in front of you, but there’s no obligation for me to help feed a starving family in Appalachia now and I don’t think there will be one in the situation I’m describing. So all you have to do is ensure you’re never in a situation where you can help someone in immediate danger.
Haha, Revealed Preferences show that people don’t abhor them as much as they say. They choose to live there for all the lovely things they provide and enforce.
Do they choose to live within HOA neighborhoods, or do they have little choice given that over half of the residential homes in the USA are bound by one? I would like to see if your source claims people like the HOA or if they are forced to tolerate them due to lack of options.
Developers love HOAs, they initially (until the development is largely sold) completely control them and they are a tool for maintaining the image they want to sell later units. No one is forcing developers to have HOAs. (If there is policy favoring them, it was lobbied for by developers.)
The 2nd-6th amendment have not exactly been effective at protecting the human rights they affirm at the state and city level. Where I live I have to get permission from the government (good luck if you're not white) to own the tools to defend myself from physical harm and the government can stop me and seize my property on a whim.
I believe we need more defense in depth. We need our human rights to be protected by every level of government and informally by society itself.
What I’m proposing is simply that we privatize large parts of society and exclude people from the private areas based on their tendency to be bad actors.
Have these people been convicted of crimes?
Because if they haven't, then yes, actually you are absolutely advocating restricting freedoms, and stumbling dangerously close to advocating redlining which has been illegal in the US for decades.
Edit:
Pardon my double post, I think a page got stuck loading on me somewhere.
An individual private citizen not letting you onto their property is categorically different from the state passing laws dictating where individuals who aren't prisoners, captives or wards of the state may travel, commune, and reside--and it's an astonishing notion that anyone would try to conflate one with the other and expect to be taken seriously when they say it's "not about curtailing freedom".
A word of advice then: best state that immediately from the very beginning next time, instead of equivocating your way around the point for days. The minute you start talking about "curtailing freedom" there is one inextricable link that conjures in the mind from this type of language: the state.
Backing off it once the horse has been beaten into putty to say "oh I wasn't talking about the state" just looks like you're doing all of this for sport and not attempting to hold an actual meaningful position before finding a convenient escape hatch out of the discussion.
You mean like the system in China? No thanks. Never underestimate the propensity of any government to violate human rights when given the power to do so.
If a choice has to be made between the two, a government that respects human rights is far preferable to a country without crime among citizens.
Yeah, dude. It would be awesome. I could instantly know if you’re a douche or a nice person, refuse service to you because you parked across a handicapped spot for no reason, or just choose to have conversations with the best people and ignore all the boring dudes.
Ooh! And we could expand it! What if it could identify for us who is republican or democrat, who is jewish or catholic, who is some other demographic? That would be terrific, wouldn't it?
I mean, sure, right? It's like living in a big mansion with your friends and choosing who gets to visit. I think that's perfectly okay. If you want to restrict me out I'm okay with that.
I wonder if this would make a good startup. Allow people to share footage of thieves stealing goods. Allow varying levels of geolocation and let people suggest identities. Not sure what other precautions would be needed to protect from misidentification.
Rental fees from people who want to put out exactly these kind of packages to deter theft. You'd need a high deposit to cover loss of the device. On the other hand mass-producing it would certainly allow both economy of scale and substituting lower cost parts than (for example) an off-the-shelf cellphone for video capture and streaming.
Have your neighbor contact her State Representative or State Senator. Police know their budgets will get screwed if they piss off these people.
Twice I have emailed the police and CC the Mayor of my city. I got a sorry can we meet in person response in an hour. The Sargent on Call was eating humble pie when he was called in and got chewed out by the Mayor and the Police. (Story a neighbor I don't know was physically assaulted by his girlfriend and she ripped his shirt and scratched him up. I stopped him from destroying her and going to jail. I called the police and no one came. We walked over to the station with 3 police cars sitting outside and were turned away.)
> there's still a ways to go before security camera footage can be sent to the PD and automatically identify the offender via facial analysis.
Be careful what you wish for. I don't want the police to be able to perform accurate facial recognition at the kind of scale you're talking about, even if that would make it harder for thieves to steal packages.
> I don't want the police to be able to perform accurate facial recognition at the kind of scale you're talking about
Amazon is helping cities and counties implement Rekognition systems fairly cheap with cameras tied to criminal databases. It's happening. They've done it in Washington County, OR, Orlando, FL, and others [1]. Amazon is also teaming up with law enforcement to install Ring doorbells with cameras (Amazon owns them) hooked up to the same type of system.[2] Palantir Systems (CIA backed) have done similar in NYC[3] and even doing PREDICTIVE crime analysis in New Orleans[4] and Chicago [5]. In the case of New Orleans, the public and city counsel was not even made aware. Only the mayor knew. Yes, be very, very careful what you wish for.
This is weird. I live in Washington County Oregon. There are stories everyday on nextdoor.com from neighbors trying to get the Sheriff's office to look at their surveillance video of crimes being committed, but the police aren't interested. They usually post the video clips on nextdoor and these aren't grainy videos but super clear recordings that should make it easy to identify the perpetrators if they really are using the Amazon system.
A surveillance panopticon isn't going to make package theft any more of a priority than it is now; the issue isn't an evidence one but a priorities one, and more evidence doesn't change this.
If you're having stuff delivered by USPS, you can also use General Delivery service [0][1] to have items held for you at the post office. It doesn't seem like something that should be used too frequently, though, and not all post offices will do it, and some might charge for it. [1][2]
The point was that the package owner can make the situation worse for themselves by engaging in a revenge scheme. It highly depends on the local criminal culture. I some countries, I can see a gang deciding that the homeowner needs to be "taught a lesson". Police might catch them even, but the package owner might be in the hospital or morgue by then.
(Shrug) There are worse things than glitter. If I order a gympie gympie plant on eBay and someone steals it off my porch, for instance, I can hardly be held responsible for the outcome. The police will just laugh at the thief, the doctors and nurses will stifle a chuckle or two of their own, and the jury in a civil trial isn't likely to be sympathetic.
You are dealing with people who have decided the expected value of a package on a porch is positive, even though they are not the legal owners of that package.
> You are dealing with people who have decided the expected value of a package on a porch is positive, even though they are not the legal owners of that package
Just not sure I'd trust them them to decide that exacting revenge on me for setting off a glitter and stink bomb in their car/house would have a negative expected value?
Another thing that's risky about this approach is, depending on your jurisdiction, recording an individual (audio or video in some cases) without their consent is a felony.
In California, New York and Rhode Island it's illegal to place a hidden video camera in a place where people have a reasonable expectation of privacy. These would be considered hidden video cameras. Not sure the severity of the charges in those states, but in other jurisdictions recording audio of conversations without all-party consent violates wiretapping laws and is a felony.
The thieves are the ones bringing the camera into their privacy zone, not the person who made the package. The thief, in committing the theft, explicitly consented to taking an unknown item into their possession.
But the person who built the device did so with the intention of recording people in private spaces. The person committing the theft did not explicitly consent to being recorded in a private space. They are still being recorded unknowingly by a device designed to do that.
What I'm saying is; the thief broke a law but the person making the recordings could have also broken laws as well. Two wrongs don't make a right, and all that. Just seems like a good gag for YouTube but a bad practice to encourage.
Thief: Your honor, this man illegally recorded me in my home without my consent.
Judge: You mean the package you stole recorded you for the purpose of identifying you as the thief?
Thief: ...
Judge: Get the hell out of my court room.
Even in two-party consent states, I can't envision any situation in which a person would actually be punished for recording in this way. Remember that laws are meant to be interpreted by a judge or jury in the context of the alleged crime, not applied to every situation where they can possibly fit.
In fairness to the other side, I think the glitter-in-the-eye part is where an issue might arise. I don't agree that the privacy thing would hold up for shit, but courts have ruled against folks setting up booby traps on their property in the past.
100% agree. Any kind of booby trap that does more than make annoying sounds is a liability, even if it's in your own home. It's also important to note that in two-party consent states the camera footage wouldn't be admissible in court for prosecuting the thieves, so as an actual deterrent that part is pretty low unless you're going for social shaming or something.
Not here either - I can take a photo of anyone in the street. However, I can’t mount a fixed surveillance camera on my house and do the same (for some reason).
This is Swedish law (or at least clear authority guidelines). I can’t find an English link but if you absolutely don’t believe me I could translate (but just want to make sure you didn’t think I was talking about US law before I waste that effort :D )
"Camera surveillance of a location where the public has access. Permission 8 § Camera surveillance is required for a surveillance camera to be posted so that it can be directed to a place where the public has access."
Ah, ok, I thought you were somewhere in the US, in which case whoever told you you couldn't have an outdoor camera was lying to you. Thanks for clarifying.
If the camera is visible and not pointed where it can see inside a neighbor's window, you're fine for video. For audio you probably want to restrict it to inside your home.
There might be a technicality here, though. The camera is 'hidden' in a place with no expectation of privacy -- his porch. It's the thief who places the camera in a place where privacy might be violated.
Great thinking. If you steal someone’s camera, and move it, and film yourself in a private location doing an indecent act, can you turn around and sue the owner of the camera for breaching your privacy? You had no permission to move the camera in the first place.
I'm skeptical this applies to someone coming onto your property (let alone coming with malicious intent). Do trespassers have a reasonable expectation of privacy?
I was referring to the parts of the video where they brought the device into their car or home. This was obviously designed to continue recording the thieves in those private places. It just seems like a bad idea to me.
They don't have a reasonable expectation of privacy on the porch, where it was placed. The criminal act which they performed caused themselves to be recorded in a place where they might expect privacy, so I don't think they would have a valid complaint against the package owner.
people have no reasonable expectation of privacy when entering another person's private property. Even if they were invited, you can record in your own house without worry.
That's not entirely accurate. It depends on where you are and what the video camera is recording.
I'm also not sure that creating a hoax device with the intention of surreptitiously recording individuals that also damages their property and releases a chemical agent would be considered strictly "a security camera".
There can likely be no expectation of privacy trespassing on someone else's property.
but, for the package. Can you have an expectation of privacy when opening an unknown-thing? The device isn't recording until it is opened. I could see logical arguments on both sides. But, since the audio/visual recording doesn't start until they open the thing it might be on the safe-side of wiretap laws?
These are good questions, it's just my go-to line of thinking when I see surreptitious recording devices. Is this legal and is there liability?
Recording audio without two-party consent in my state is illegal and only just recently were there any court cases where recording police officers without their knowledge wasn't prosecuted as wiretapping.
I'm not sure you have an expectation of privacy with stolen goods.
Booby traps causing injury are illegal everywhere.
Calling a smell a "chemical agent" is just inflammatory. Everything is a chemical, sure, but there is no chemical reaction involved here. Would you call perfume a "chemical agent"? It's just something that smells bad.
The only danger would seem to be getting glitter in their eyes.
Someone could be allergic to this stink bomb, I know that it's unlikely, but you still have to consider that when thinking about possible liability issues
My intention isn't to be inflammatory, but booby-trapping an aerosol spray can to release a spray designed to make someone uncomfortable just isn't a smart thing to do. Even if you think you're getting one over on a thief.
If someone designed a trap to spray perfume on an unsuspecting person, I would describe it similarly.
And you know were they live also. One side has much more to lose than the other. The guy can exert devastating social damage in the life of the thieves just showing the videos in their street, to their landlord, or filtering it to a friend in the same school, not to mention uploading them to internet. Their faces are clearly seen on film stealing. Their address is known. In some cases even their cars are known also.
The logical step for a smart thief would be to move to easier targets and avoid bothering a guy able to spend six entire months building a very complicated plot to seek exact revenge.
now that the video has gone viral, this guy is potentially in big trouble. booby traps are illegal per se. and if someone claims latent injury (eg glitter in tear duct) ... watch out.
he has also inspired people to make their own booby traps.
It doesn't apply in the US, but I'd be cautious of a claim under the Occupiers' Liability Act under English Law. It covers all persons, including trespassers:
939 comments
[ 4.1 ms ] story [ 319 ms ] threadI would love to see a thief try and bring that case...
EDIT:
NAL but... It's my understanding that the likelihood such a case is brought is small
1. Because it pretty much guarantees the alleged perpetrator will have charges brought against them and
2. Contributory negligence would make that case very hard to win.
It is my understanding that yes there have been cases where such cases are brought before a court, but they are infrequent, and not easy to win.
Certainly if you caused someone harm using one it would be illegal in the sense that causing someone harm is illegal anyway, but a harmless trap like this one doesn't seem to me that it would be illegal. I'm not a lawyer though, so I'd be interested to see if there is some law I'm not aware of.
The Geneva convention, for starters.
It's also a five second Google search: https://definitions.uslegal.com/b/booby-traps/
Which Geneva Convention applies to non-state actors not acting in the context of international or internal war? Please quote specifically the relevant provisions making it applicable to that case.
> It's also a five second Google search
Well, yes, that that's all the effort you devoted does explain the rather giant hole in your argument.
Is the full statement. Individual state laws vary but it's important enough to be international law was the point.
From the article:
>If a person sets up such a trap to protect his/her property, he/she will be liable for any injury or death even to an unwanted intruder such as a burglar. It is illegal to set a booby trap on one's own property to prevent intruders.
> Is the full statement.
And that statement is wrong, AFAICT; the Geneva Conventions do not address the conduct at issue here, whether “for starters” or otherwise.
They might prohibit somewhat analogous conduct in a very disanalogous context [0] but context and conduct are not orthogonal considerations in law.
[0] or, maybe not; the specific instrument you are probably thinking of is Amended Protocol II to the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons; it does address booby-traps, but the device at issue here is not a booby-trap as defined in that protocol (not designed to kill or injure).
Seriously?
That betrays a total lack of comprehension for this entire discussion and the law.
The fact is, booby traps which cause bodily injury (including paintball, very easily, without protective equipment) are definitively illegal in most jurisdictions. This is the truth whether you spend 5 seconds or 5 hours googling.
Do better, all of you.
But the Geneva Convention? lol.
The point is that at some point an "innocent" citizen crosses a line and is no longer innocent. We are just debating where the line should be.
Is the death penalty issued for thievery?
That depends. Are we talking about a thief who was accidentally killed in a brawl with the property owner (or the troublesome death-by-glitter scenario that some in this thread are so concerned about)? Or a property owner who subdues, binds, and executes the thief? I'm open to arguments that it should be illegal to use lethal force against thieves when it's 100% clear that the thief poses no physical danger to the victim. I also believe that the property owner generally bears responsibility if their traps or other defenses are mistakenly employed against an innocent party. But in general, any injuries a thief incurs during a theft should be his own responsibility, and I'm okay with a world in which thieves live in fear of committing thefts.
I don't think anyone would disagree that generally stealing is wrong and people who do it in general deserve to face consequences. But the consequences should be proportionate to the crime. I don't think anyone deserves to die for petty theft, regardless of circumstances.
It seems like you are suggesting that if someone takes a $50 package off of my front porch, and then I come outside to confront them, and in the altercation this person makes a threatening gesture towards me then I would be within my rights to use lethal force.
That seems like a disproportionate escalation to me.
Anyway I think we just disagree about some of these proportionality issues.
If someone steals something, that doesn't mean they automatically lose all of their rights to life and property simply because in your mind they are now a "criminal".
Why is that okay?
What happens if you put a car airbag in a booby trapped package, and someone steals the package and brings it home. Then later that day their child or spouse finds and opens the package not realizing it was stolen. Boooom, an airbag in their face and they're seriously injured.
We don't need a world where we're surrounded by booby traps. It's a disaster waiting to happen because there are countless edge cases that people wouldn't consider.
We're quickly moving towards a future with door bell cameras and facial recognition software. We also have more parcel lockers showing up in different cities and neighborhoods where you can have packages safely delivered, available for pickup 24/7. These are better alternatives than setting traps.
Proving things in court is much less efficient, and more likely to harm those who are innocent, than to make sure the crime is punished immediately.
I agree that traps are a bad idea because I don't trust most people to devise traps that don't harm innocents; however, this is markedly different than the argument that "when a trap hurts a thief, the thief bears no responsibility". Also, the specific scenario we're discussing is a thief getting a bit of glitter in their eye.
Anyway, I welcome any advancement that can help deter thieves (and/or make sure they're prosecuted) while protecting innocent bystanders. I'm not convinced pervasive facial recognition software is the key given the privacy concerns, but maybe it's inevitable. However, all of this is orthogonal to the question of who is culpable for injuries incurred by a thief during a theft.
What happens if I setup a machine to fire baseballs at high speed when someone touches my fake parcel? Some teenager comes to steal my package, catches a baseball between the eyes and dies or ends up disabled for life. I'm in the clear because the kid was a thief? Now, I don't think a thief deserves a payday when they slip on ice running from my property, but I also don't believe people should be free to create harmful traps without consequence.
What about those people that run wires across trails on private property? They've killed and decapitated people trespassing on motorcycles or 4-wheelers. Once again, don't blame the property owner that installed the invisible wire? They're in the clear because the person decapitated shouldn't have been riding on that private trail?
How about we don't try to harm thieves. We document and report the case to the police to the best of our ability. Yes, the glitter bomb is extremely innocent, but it's easier to say no to all traps than it is to define what type of traps are acceptable.
because the police are basically never going to do anything unless the squad car happens to roll by as the thief is running away with the package. you may as well send your documentation straight into the circular file.
now I understand that kids do dumb stuff from time to time. riding a dirtbike around someones fifty acre estate is not that serious, and could easily be done unintentionally if property lines are not well marked. going up to someones door/porch without an invitation is quite something else. if you can find a way to mess these people up without putting the mailman at risk, I am all for it. I would be very happy to live in a society where messing in/around a person's dwelling is understood to be a serious risk.
Then move to a state with liberal firearm laws. Seriously, It's amazing how much an intangible line on a map affects the behavior of people seeking to commit property crime in the state I live vs the adjacent state I used to live in.
Stop moving the goalposts, it makes you look silly.
And just for the hell of it, no, it is not categorically innocent even when talking about morals, either. Morality is, by definition, something that is personal to each person. Therefor there can be no such thing as "categorical innocence", as moral innocence will be different for each person.
And while each person may have their own opinion about morality, every society in the world has decided that theft is wrong enough to outlaw, so clearly morality isn’t purely subjective (certainly not by definition). Similarly, every society respects an individual’s right to defend themselves (note that “defense” here is defined as some minimal force required to confidently stop an aggressor thereby excluding things like executing an aggressor after he’s been subdued) so clearly this is moral as well.
Please don’t accuse me of moving goal posts. It’s clear that I haven’t. If you can’t participate in good faith this conversation is over.
Find one place where I said that the law is morally correct. I'll save your trouble: you can't, because I never did so.
So now not only are you moving the goalposts, but you're setting up a strawman. Nice. Two fallacies for the price of one.
This conversation has been about the law and legal liability since the beginning. Nobody brought up morality until you did in your attempt to, yes, move the goalposts. It is very clear that you have done so, and it's absurd of you to accuse me of not participating in good faith, when you're doing all you can possibly do to avoid admitting that your argument is ridiculous.
And yes, by the way, if you drive by someone knowing that by doing so you will launch debris towards another person in a manner that could injure them, and your car kicks up a rock and hits that person in the head, you would also be liable.
Innocence is also irrelevant, as you do not have the right to injure another person, even if they stole from you.
There is a reason we don't want a society where that kind of thing is OK.
EDIT> I think part of why the glitter fart bomb works so well is that it has a sense of humour, and that the designer doesn't come off as cruel.
In certain jurisdictions the ideological pendulum (closely followed by official public policy) has swung a little too far toward idea that criminals have no agency and are victims of an unfair system that forces them to commit crime to get by and that prosecuting minor crimes is a path to further criminality.
The idea is that by not prosecuting certain crimes we can prevent people from becoming criminals at the ground floor which will prevent them getting stuck in a loop where they can't get a real job and have to commit crime to survive and become a career criminal. While this is not totally baseless and is something I generally agree with there's a categorical difference between applying this thinking to victimless crimes and crimes with a victim (a trap which pretty much all real world implementations fall into).
In the case of petty victimless crimes where there's disagreement over whether or not the crime should be a crime at all (e.g. weed possession) having a don't prosecute by default policy is fine IMO. For petty crime with a victim that pretty much everyone agrees should be a crime (like petty theft) having a don't prosecute by default is stupid because it increases crime in order to score political virtue points for the people who implement it at the expense of the community as a whole (I'm looking at your SF and your failure to prosecute minor property crimes, yes I'm fully aware this will not be a popular opinion circa 9am and 12pm West Coast time).
But intentionally doing nothing about theft is just harmful. It rewards the crime and breeds vigilantism.
A lot of times people commit crime for the same reasons they eat unhealthy, fight with their family members, and get addicted to harmful behavior. They aren't thinking long term and they don't care about the consequences that much.
There is no political or economic system that you can design that will keep people from being stupid.
I have very different degrees of sympathy for these groups. The first group needs access to better options. The second group needs to be held accountable. The third group cannot really be allowed to participate in our society.
We might disagree on the prevalence of each group.
As an aside, I don’t know if it legal to ship scorpions.
That's easy, simply refer to Exhibit 526.5: Restrictions on Mailing Live Scorpions https://pe.usps.com/text/pub52/pub52c5_008.htm#ep203359
Dump 100mg of cadaverine in the thiefs car and they'll never use that car again. And possibly the clothes they wore at the time.
Or other chemicals.
It would be most exciting to find chemicals that yield strongest short-term effects without any damaging long term effects.
The packages were some rolls of vinyl, a box of sealed granola snacks, and some inexpensive jewelry, all rejected by the thief. If the person was homeless, I'm surprised they ditched the food, it was nutritious and shelf-stable. (I redelivered the packages.)
As far as I'm aware, it's the worst smelling chemical known to humans and has no damaging long term effects. You just have to be veeery careful about it unless you want to stink up the whole town by accident.
Kidding of course, but I it makes wonder how easy this would be for an amateur to synthesize. The consequences being making an entire town nauseous makes this whole thing pretty enigmatic.
A thief is already open to the idea of invading your personal space for gain, why not revenge?
I don't understand why everyone thinks the homeowners are helpless and just waiting to be robbed/vandalized/whatever.
Who wants to sign up for that?
Oh -- and to the engineer who made that: you've got a billion dollar idea on your hands if you include a camera that takes video from inside the device when it's opened. I can think of at least 14 people to whom I would send one of these for Christmas, birthday, etc.
So you'd have to admit to a felony to sue or press charges against box maker. Second when committing a felony, in many jurisdiction the felon is automatically on the hook for any further 'bad things' that happen during the crime up to and including deaths. So if the felonious package thief got in an accident while opening a stolen package, it could all fall on them as a matter of statute in many places.
https://definitions.uslegal.com/b/booby-traps/
There is nothing about his project designed to cause any bodily injury. This is a very important detail.
You can sue anyone for anything. That would be a very uphill lawsuit in normal circumstances (the thief is being negligent by trying to open a package in a moving vehicle and any harm is a result of that negligence). When you add in the fact that the package is stolen it's highly unlikely to succeed. However, I write this from a US perspective. If self defense case law is any indication I suspect that the thief may have a case in the UK.
I would be less worried about the thief's car and more worried about the car the thief runs into.
At the end you would just end up going to the police confess the crime, open the door to be prosecuted for other crimes. And yet end up proving nothing about the other person from whom you stole.
It would be shooting in the foot at epic proportions.
Petty thieves and burglars are pretty low priority for US cops, as long as it's poor people stealing from poor people. Thus you can have an entire class of people that can routinely steal anything they come across that isn't nailed down, yet never get caught. Because no one tries to catch them. And then they get jobs that give them access to things that are only lightly nailed down, because they have no criminal records.
The cops aren't really there to protect you or your property. They will if it's convenient, but if you need real protection, you'll have to pay someone and have a contract in place. Or just do what most people do: get insurance with a reasonable deductible and keep all your stuff locked up or nailed down.
I also know people working in the my county solicitor's office and a large amount of their caseload is prosecuting misdemeanor property crimes. I'm sure this varies by location, but I don't think prosecuting misdemeanor property crime is as rare as you think.
Additional, In most states the bar for felony theft is pretty low, and the way that the value is calculated makes it very easy to go over that limit.
For example, I knew a girl who stole some lip balm in high school, but several other girls she was in the store with stole items with a higher value. The DA lumped all of the items together and charged them all with felonies.
The reason why I know this should be self-evident.
I might also mention that if you know someone in the prosecutors' office, your experience will be very different from the majority of theft victims. Cases that never get referred to the prosecutor due to lack of evidence, due to lack of looking for evidence--or lack of taking the evidence when handed in on a silver platter--are not included in the prosecutors' caseloads.
If you have video evidence plus a person in custody, a license plate, or an address, there's a good chance of an arrest. If all you have is a picture, then they will blow you off.
>Cases that never get referred to the prosecutor due to lack of evidence
That's most cases of misdemeanor property theft though.
No evidence, video and no idea who the person is, or a he said she said between neighbors that's probably better dealt with through a civil case.
In the vast majority of these cases the problem isn't that the police/prosecutors are being wilfully ignorant, it's that there's nothing they can realistically do.
If it costs more to pay a detective 10 minutes to think about the case than it would to just replace the lost property, the naive case-by-case accounting says to just let it go.
The victim probably doesn't care about a successful prosecution. They might just want to recover their property. They want their bike back. Or their catalytic converter. Or their phone. Or their laptop. Or their dog. Catching the crook is nice, but it isn't the victim's first priority. They just want to be made whole again. They feel that they have already paid for the police protection via taxes, and are frustrated when they can't collect.
But the cops don't want to dick around with solving petty crimes. And they don't want to spend $10000 to recover $200 worth of property, and possibly still not have enough evidence to convict. They certainly don't want to give their only physical evidence back to its rightful owner, and then not have it available for a trial later with clear chain of custody. They also feel that they have already allocated their entire budget, prioritizing more serious crimes first, and that focusing their limited resources elsewhere could reduce public safety.
I'm not judging the cops here, just saying the priorities are not aligned in the petty theft victim's favor, with reasonable arguments possible both for and against the rigorous pursuit of petty crimes.
As a general rule, an individual cannot count on the cops to help them. With anything. Especially if you're not white. So you don't even call them, unless someone is dead or about to die anyway, or you absolutely have to for your insurance claim. Handle your own vigilance, buy property insurance, and let the crooks choke on your glitter.
No, as he stated in the video, the police said it just wasn't worth their time.
I wonder if an industry of decoy packages will spring up, maybe "sticky" or "smelly" glitter. Or heck just go full ink bomb.
I wonder where the law stands on this? Can you really be liable if someone steals your property then causes property damage using it?
> A booby trap may be defined as any concealed or camouflaged device designed to cause bodily injury
It doesn't apply.
IANAL - but I'd suppose they could sue you and may even win but it's not going to do much for their public image in the best case and the worst case they get prosecuted for theft.
The recipient certainly can't help that someone left a package outside. If the loss is for the recipient, then I can certainly understand the vigilantism, but that's a pretty awful system.
I'm glad I can usually pick up my packages at my neighbours'.
Is there any legal jurisprudence about this? It feels to me like the delivery service should be responsible.
The sender and the sender's agent (shipping company) own the package until it is delivered. That's why the sender insures it and insurance payments go to the sender.
But often it is more complicated than that, because there's a commercial contract between the sender and the recipient that also has to be taken into account.
I'd call it a legally grey area, with the commercial sender often likely filing an insurance claim and re-sending the lost merchandise.
Really I think that's more a customer service nicety than anything the company would be legally required to do. Seems like everyone has done their part to fulfill their obligations once the package hits your doorstep.
In later videos he had license plates--that's an easy arrest, and I'd bet they'd take that video a bit more seriously.
“Hello officer, I made a booby trapped package and I...” gets tased “argh no you don’t under- “ is handed off to the secret service
I doubt the cops would look kindly on what is at best (funny) vigilante justice, at worse a violation of some federal law.
The more I think about this, you could probably make a much safer solution for less than a few dollars if you forego the video capture. Is there a safe non-toxic stinky oil? All you would need is a box that once opened, is very difficult to put back together, that holds stinky oil.
I would probably also put wording on the package that says, "By taking or opening this package, you consent to recording and agree to manage the discharge of a very stinky oil. The opener of the packages assumes all responsibility and liability for any damage that results from touching this package".
Source: what my teenage self thought was a hilarious prank got to the attention of the FBI. Although the matter was cleared up in the end, being interviewed by an FBI agent at 17 taught me not to count on the understanding and second degree of law officers.
There's a reason why materialism is bad.
>homeless are generally not thieves as if they could steal they wouldn't be homeless in the first place
The less sense it makes. I 100% do not understand what the OP was trying to say with that. It's nonsense if you really evaluate what it's saying.
Wasn't a homeless person, but in St. Louis Missouri a house isn't out of the question.
If getting that $200 meant risk to you (someone confronting you, someone else taking your money, risk of an officer giving you a beat down), would you still take it?
It doesn't take a lot of risk to offset the "value" of stealing $950 labeled-worth goods (which will net you <$250 in cash).
If you're trying to say the risk isn't worth it, sure, you're right. And the average person wouldn't do it. But plenty of criminals don't live their lives by such risk/reward calculations. Roughly 5% [0] of people in prison in the US have decided to disregard the risk/reward ratio and go ahead with relatively small scale thefts.
[0] https://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_offen...
Some will not be dissuaded from crime. The rest of us deserve to live apart from them.
In fact multiple studies suggest that 3 strike laws have unintended consequences like increased fatal attacks on police, and twice sentenced criminals committing more serious crimes (because they will recieve a life sentence regardless of the seriousness of the offense).
Relative value of time and money might be different outside of this bubble.
Oddly, it really stuck in my mind and was present when I decided not to be peer pressured into a few incidents. It changed the equation - it wasn't about fear of getting caught, which everyone was saying wouldn't happen, it became about BEING STUPID, which would be true regardless. What's more, it wasn't an outright "don't do this", but instead "do this only if" which also changed the evaluation (It wasn't "I must be good, always"). Of course, I never HAD the chance to do a crime I would retire on when I was a kid, so the end result was that I lived generally crime-free.
Later I developed my own sense of morals and criteria on why to do/not do things, but I really feel like that advice helped me avoid potential problems in life before I reached that point. I recommend the advice to all new parents, though I don't think anyone has taken me up on the advice yet :)
The hilarious thing, of course, is looking at the news and seeing so many people commit crimes that they actually could retire off of... and then fail to retire, keep committing crimes, and get caught. Also a useful life lesson!
No, it's worth whatever a court determines the fair market value is.
Maybe you do have to argue the point in court, but 6 months of R&D is easily worth way more than $1000.
[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1708 [2] https://www.justice.gov/jm/criminal-resource-manual-1333-gen...
I know I've made lots of comments about police response in this thread, but I'm not trying to come across as too negative. However, there's a reason this type of crime is prevalent. Police cannot be everywhere all of the time. At this point in time, I personally would be more worried about the homeowner staging a trap with a shotgun rather than a glitter bomb. That would be legal in Texas.
One Judeo-Christian take on it: "The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?" - Jeremiah 17:9
Over here in The Netherlands, pickup points are common (my local groceries store is one), you can choose your delivery time (also in the evening) and they will deliver it to a neighbor when I'm not home.
Why not avoid this whole problem with any of these options?
Carriers offload responsibility by allowing the sender or receiver to opt-out of signature/package acceptance, so why would they care?
Just one data point, but I've been having packages delivered to my home my entire life and never had a single one go missing. Seems like a really high cost to prevent something unlikely.
On the other hand, I had never had a home or vehicle broken into until someone smashed my car window last night at the movie theater. So, there's a first time for everything.
[0] https://i.imgur.com/F0sDNJO.jpg
I've not shipped to myself using an Amazon locker since I've never had an issue with package theft, but if a package is worth more than $500 or $1000 I'll often have it sent to my office, which I suspect is what most people do if possible.
If you're not in they try and leave the package with a neighbour. If that doesn't work, they'll try again, and if you're not there again, try for for a neighbour again. If that fails for a second time, they leave it at a nearby depot for you to pick it up.
I've never heard of a package being stolen here in the UK.
Overseas viewer: "This literally never happens here. Try solution (a), (b), or maybe (c) and see if that helps?"
America: "Yep there is no solution in the entire universe"
Substitute "package theft" for: Gun crime / public healthcare / public education / insert social issue here
The package theft "solutions" proposed really are insanely inconvenient and unworkable* in most suburban environments. I've seen all of the reasons listed many places here, so I won't bother rehashing them. If I'm at work on Tuesday, for example, a redelivery attempt on Wednesday doesn't really help, does it?
* unworkable in the sense that they're less efficient than the alternative of just allowing the rare package theft to occur
Assuming your employer allows it, it's convenient to have packages sent to work, AND if you drove a personal car to work, it's easy to drive your own package home. This equation gets flipped if you use transit or live in a multi-unit building where it might get easier to just hold it "downstairs".
In Bristol, I've known a few people have packages stolen from porches or from under recycling boxes/bins, so it definitely does happen. My parents found someone in their hedge a few months ago trying to get one of their parcels.
Choosing when they deliver either costs money (when you can choose during checkout), or you have to create an account and agree to some funny terms (I'd happily save them the trip, but they won't allow me to tell them without agreeing to a whole litany of things).
US Postal Service staff usually do ring the doorbell when leaving packages, and, if nobody answers, they will make an effort to leave it in a concealed location if that's possible.
UPS and FedEx people in our area typically leave it by the door without ringing the doorbell, but usually do still try to conceal the package.
Amazon delivery people typically leave it out in the yard, next to the sidewalk.
I'm guessing the difference has a lot to do with the deliveries-to-time ratio that each company's drivers get.
I think Europe would have been a lot cooler if I had moved from the US straight there instead of coming from Japan :/
Until you get caught.
Leasing a car isn't beyond the reach of petty criminals.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/viral-video-shows-man-getti...
seriously, pick up x4 $30 prepaid phones from walmart and they'll do the job perfectly
Plus, the options you mention are always available for special cases, and are sometimes used.
If you know both parties personally maybe you can, but that's a rarity these days for anyone outside of certain companies. Amazon's ad-hoc delivery service never sends the same person twice.
What delivery options do large online retailers in the US offer if you absolutely don’t want a package left on your porch?
Here it’s usually
- directly to pickup point: free for orders over say $50 or $100, otherwise $10
- to door, or pickup point if not home: $20
Very rarely is there free delivery to the door.
As for delivering to neighbors you have the same problem of actually finding a neighbor that's home and then you've got the chance of dishonest neighbors.
Most packages I get delivered they will tuck it in the most out of the way part of my side porch so they do try but only to the point it causes them hassle. If it's a flat envelope package they'll tuck it between my storm door and the actual door too provided it's unlocked (sometimes).
It's really a question of priorities I think and the raw numbers where package theft is relatively rare. For the delivery company their job is done when the package hits the correct doorstep so there's not a huge incentive for them to go around hunting for a neighbor to give it to or find a clever hiding spot, both of which would eat up time.
It's not funny, first of all. It's childish. It isn't in keeping with the spirit of the holidays. The holidays are about giving, not being assholes to the less fortunate. Thieves deserve what they get, but seriously, if you were looking at how to spend your time over the holidays, why not volunteer or donate and forget about the lowlifes? They are punished enough just by living, and no childish bullshit is going to deter them from their behavior. Set a good example for others this holiday season and don't give in to childish pranks that just further tear down our society.
Also, I found his prank funny.
Stealing is bad, I am not defending thieves in any manner. What I am saying is that people are spending time and effort in all the wrong ways, an idea I stand by.
Bullshit glitter bombs are not making our lives better--going out and volunteering and helping kids not become fucking miserable thieves is how we move forwards.
By the way, glitter bomb guy now has to worry about his house burning down because one good turn deserves another and you have NO IDEA how the criminal mind works and what lengths people will go to fuck with you if they have a vendetta that you caused with your shitty little glitter bomb. You start something, you better be ready to end it.
Stealing a package might not even be the worst thing they did that day. Maybe they also fired all their company's in-house maintenance staff, and replaced them with contractors that cost half as much, in order to get a one-time bonus of $500. Maybe they pitched a censored and backdoored search engine for China, because Google backed down on that (for now). The world is full of heels.
I think you just have a different sense of humor than many others.
This project has clever engineering, excellent presentation, tackles a problem that many of us have to deal with during the holidays, and ... it’s funny.
I think punishing bad behavior, even sporadically, is a moral good. It will in turn help people not do immoral things and make the world a better place.
How is this not an option in the US?
It's less to do with wholesomeness than it is with a lower population density (there's also a lower crime rate in general in the suburbs, though it's less of a difference than it was 25 years ago).
In the suburbs you have far fewer people walking past your doorstep--fewer crimes of opportunity. You're also much more likely to be noticed as being out of place if you're driving around a quiet neighborhood looking for packages.
This guy had his package stolen many times in a short space of time. Seems like the problem is pretty bad?
What Amazon is doing is much more clever: whenever possible, they’re now recording the serial number of the product they ship to you. This way, if the police find it when busting a fence, they can (hopefully) get the fence’s providers out of them and then actually bust them, too (because now they have real physical evidence—along with testimony—that that particular person stole a particular thing.)
Roughly one third of Americans have ever had a package stolen. (https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2017/11/20/package-...) It’s not that big a deal. For people who want to avoid taking chances with it, there are various options to avoid it. Not that they should have to, but there are many bigger problems to worry about.
Also it's very unclear exactly how long any of this took there's no timestamps on any of the surveillance video. Could have been months.
I still don't understand why this hasn't been 'disrupted' by a company providing evening deliveries. They could do business delivery during the afternoon and then switch to residential.
Nightcall! I'll even throw a name in for free.
There is way too much volume to fit deliveries into times when people are home.
Usually UPS will put it somewhere out of sight if they think it will be an issue.
Exactly this. I sorta hate it, we have 2 boxes for like 12 units and one of the boxes keys was lost before I moved in so we have 1 box for 12 units with people getting packages almost daily it means I have to rush home and rush to the office to get my packages.
Since moving in it's considerably cut down my Amazon purchases, unless I can time them to arrive on Saturdays or Sundays when I'm home. I'll actually delete my cart sometimes if something isn't going to come on a Saturday or Sunday haha.
https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/2/18057034/amazon-day-prime...
Overall the rate of package theft is low though, so people prefer the convenience and low cost of normal package delivery.
The US is big and diverse. Most areas have little to no package theft. However, if your home has a very exposed front porch and you live in an affluent area very near a not so affluent area, theft can be more of an issue.
> How is this not an option in the US?
In the US, there are at least four major carriers and in my experience only the official postal service does a decent job automatically delivering to nearby location (the local post office) if they can't hand-deliver to a person or a secure location. Some apartments complexes also have locked drop boxes that only the postal service can use.
UPS lets you set your default drop off to a nearby shop (but then you never get anything at your home), Fedex makes you manually change the delivery location while the package is in transit if you won't be at home. If the latter two attempt a delivery at your door and don't want to leave it, you have to wait until the next day for redelivery or drive to their inconveniently-located distribution warehouse to pick it up.
Amazon has their own delivery service that they use preferentially, and they rely on nonprofessional gig-economy labor, so you're lucky if your package isn't literally tossed at your door. They'll always leave the package at your home if that's the destination. If you don't want that, you have to set your delivery location to a locker, if one is available nearby.
I think if you have get the note, you can do this for that one package but for all you need to create a UPS account.
This breaks down if you don't do car commutes although, in urban places like NYC & SF or can't ship to work.
It was a shitty minimum wage job and my responsibilities definitely didn't stretch to doing unpaid work for multiple people on top of my shitty job.
EDIT: Maybe this is just a lack of understanding of what happens in goods-in? Or working some place where your deliveries don't add much burden?
"Ship to us, and here's how to get automatic email notifications of when your package is here!"
At work, there are people who work at the shipping department and then deliver the packages to people's desks. AFAIK they are paid to do this job and seem somewhat peppy compared to other similar staff in the company.
Considering the views / subscriptions are the main motivation here, it might justify the expenses poured into this project – that is, it would be quite a waste if all that effort went into the build just to have no one actually take it off the porch.
If actors were used, it would explain the lack of police involvement (it's easy to say, "police weren't interested" ).
An obvious consequence of it being a production without disclosure is the copycats that this will spawn.
Edit: just to add a bit more food-for-thought in response to comments such as, "why do that to your own car?" or "why get sprayed with fart spray": what makes you believe it's their own car (could be a beater picked up for a few hundred dollars) or that the fart spray actually smells?
Also GPS is just not that good for locating anything of that size in given circumstances, and it would not have worked in the parking garage.
Too many things could have gone wrong here, but they did not. The design is subpar in my opinion, for somebody who worked on a Mars rover. Custom printed board plus a bunch of smartphones, seriously?
Why wouldn't you use this? Seems like if you want to push video data over the cell phone network then using some cheapo android phones with data sims is by far and away the simplest and most robust solution? Anything you build yourself to do that job is gonna be way more prone to error?
If it's traceable, throwing it in your own trash isn't much worse than throwing it elsewhere, since it already has the coordinates of your house anyways. GPS works fine on small packages and a lot of businesses/products exist specifically to take advantage of this. Also note that as full-featured smartphones, he's likely got the full power of Google Location Services in play, which can identify what floor of a building (or parking garage) you're on, and of course, even if it failed to get signal in the parking garage would surely show location up to the parking garage. Inside a parking garage, a bright white box is not hard to find. Also, he has four GPS devices facing different directions, so he's got a lot of backup for failure here.
What would you propose? The best design is often the easiest/cheapest one, and this looks like pretty simple.
There are ready made cheap boards with identical functionality to a cellphone, few dollars a pop. And yes, they run Android.
That said, this way he can claim it had something valuable inside in case it is still taken.
With a camera, battery and 3G modem? Got any links?
One phone (or one phone’s SD card) may not have had the IO bandwidth to receive video from four cameras at once, though.
I don't even know what this Mark person did, but going by comments here, if I wanted to build something similar, the only thing I'd have to go out and buy would be the glitter stuff.
Don't discount the stuff us weirdos have in our basements :-)
Oh man, watch the video on his YouTube. It's pure comedic gold. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoxhDk-hwuo
His design is just about right -- it's not overly complex and manages to do what it needs to do for a relatively low cost.
Are you a mechanical/electrical engineer? Not trying to be hostile, but what would you have improved?
What if the phones picked up WiFi networks around the garage?
Uh one guy very much starts manipulating the dispenser and trying to take it apart.
Turns out, Mark himself has already admitted that 2 scenes were staged, supposedly all because of a dishonest "friend" whom he paid to place the box on his porch.
Apparently it is.
https://gizmodo.com/viral-video-of-glitter-bomb-for-package-...
If a contract is sufficient, does it have to be signed in writing or witnessed? If not, then could he have a sign at his door stating that acquiring the package provides consent to monitoring?
Is there a lawyer here that could answer those questions, pro bono?
[Edit] Maybe it would be sufficient to put wording on the box that basically says, "by touching or taking this packages.... yada yada..."
One of the first rules of the legal system is that you don't get to violate the law. This INCLUDES the situation where someone else violates the law first.
In many places this principle is repeated. For instance, you DO NOT get to bump someone's car if they run a red light for instance.
(and no, EVEN the situation where you literally had no choice still isn't an excuse. There is only the small "non-exception" that earlier laws can override later laws. For instance, keeping someone safe takes precedence over obeying traffic lights. If you can avoid an accident by running a red light you MUST do so. There is an explicitly defined order in which laws can override one another, even though I would strongly agree that it's not exactly a clear thing)
So the thief (or whoever) can sue this person for things like willful damage to property, violation of privacy, ... and that the package was stolen won't be a valid defense.
Ah, see, but lack of enforcement from the police goes both ways!
If the police are unwilling to go after petty theft cases, why would they bother with the even smaller crime of "wiretapping" thieves?
Is the opportunist thief likely to have the resources to go after you for this? Almost certainly not.
And even then, it is additionally unlikely that a judge and jury would convict and punish someone. Stories, narratives, and being perceived to be "in the right" go a long way in the criminal justice system, which is enforced by people, not the legal words on a piece of paper.
Granted, the author of the video cannot be sent to jail in such a case, but it is a near-certainty that he'll have to pay.
Second, I don't think the odds of the police pursuing this are quite as small as you perceive them to be. For one, the thief may BE a police officer. What do you propose happens then ? Do you think criminal police officers just arrest themselves ?
I mean, I sort of understand the "the law is just under all circumstances and the law sees all" train of thought, all nice, safe and secure. In reality, law is an imperfect and sometimes outright malicious system implemented by imperfect and sometimes outright malicious people. So I'd be interested in your opinion of what happens if the thief is an ill-tempered police officer, with the predisposition of Joe Arpaio towards you. You might note that this person was not just any police officer, but a 24-year sheriff (chief) of the police of a 4 million people county, including a large city. Those people are part of the police too, and can be very high up in the police force.
> judge and jury
Jury is only in criminal law. In other words, only if you're sued by the public prosecutor. Otherwise, no jury trial. And good luck convincing the jury if a police officer is testifying against you. I will say, it's not impossible. However, ...
> Stories, narratives, and being perceived to be "in the right" go a long way in the criminal justice system
Can I just say, I pity your lawyer if you ever apply this way of thinking in an actual case. In short: it does not. Police and public prosecutors are evaluated on their conviction rate (just ask a police officer. You should be very surprised that he knows that figure in the first place). There's even bonuses for achieving certain conviction rates (and of course you get fired below ...). Secondly there's a sort of constant "contest" between officers for the highest conviction rate. In the criminal justice system, therefore, the primary driver of who the police pursue is whether they believe they'll get a conviction. Nothing, and I do mean absolutely nothing, else.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-7o9xYp7eE
(That doesn't mean they don't apply sanity, but realistically, if that happens, it's the officer on the ground and they are under VERY high pressure to do "something", like arrest someone. "This guy is not innocent, let's arrest him" definitely happens regularly. If the officer on site doesn't just let you go, it is utter folly to count on anyone else in the criminal justice system to take stories or narratives into account)
But they won't, because they are a desperate individual who is going around stealing packages from people. The kind of person who does this is very unlikely to have the money to sue someone.
They will instead just run away as they are probably just afraid of getting arrested themselves. Someone who has stolen one package has probably stolen dozens. Rationally or not, they'd probably just be afraid of getting caught for all their past thefts.
> . In reality, law is an imperfect
Indeed it is imperfect! Which is why someone who "wiretaps" desperate thiefs is almost certainly going to get away with breaking the law.
Lots of people in this thread are talking about how the police just won't care if you bring them irefutable evidence of theft. If police don't care about that, what do you think is the likelihood that they will care about illegal wiretapping of thiefs? I'd guess that the answer is "a very low likelyhood".
> In other words, only if you're sued by the public prosecutor.
But you won't be sued by a public prosecutor or targeted by the police. Because they have better things to do with their time. They aren't even going after the thieves, if you will remember!
> For one, the thief may BE a police officer
This is extremely unlikely. Instead the thief is probably going to be some desperate individual or homeless person with no ability to go after you for "wiretapping".
My whole point is that if nobody is getting arrested for the theft, the chances of the police bothering to go after people for wiretapping is even less likely. And the desperate thief won't have the money, resources, or motivation to pursue you in private court.
If it is so easy to get away with theft, then it is certainly going to be much much easier to get away with wiretapping thieves.
> But they won't, because they are a desperate individual who is going around stealing packages from people.
The reason we know about the common law status of booby traps is that trespassers (including burglars) have sure after being injured by them.
So, no, I don't think your “porch pirates won't sue because they are desperate enough to steal” argument is convincing. Especially given that porch pirates often aren't destitute, and theft isn't always motivated by desperation.
I don't think the video is fake, though.
I bet somebody will soon start selling this as a product. And people will just send them to their friends instead of targeting package thiefs. "Pranked you bro!" Then there will be a bunch of backlash.
No need to wait for that, it's already a thing:
https://www.ruindays.com/
Some have sent far...erm...shittier things in the mail:
http://time.com/3634443/cards-against-humanity-poop-black-fr...
Where is that stated?
If they plead guilty, they probably would just get a small fine, not worth the time of a detective to make the case.
Edit: Also, its not so easy to sell a bunch of random things for the cash. For every iphone that might get you a 100 or so in one transaction, there's a bunch of random things that you might get you $20 if you spend a day trying sell them.
That's a ridiculous question. It's theft. Which is illegal.
> If they plead guilty, they probably would just get a small fine
1) That's only if it's their first time.
2) It reduces future crime. With the current attitude (like yours) more criminals are incentivized to steal packages.
I'm describing the reality of the world we all live in. Even if its not their first time, they'll be out in a day or two, maybe not even that. Its just packages, most of them under $100, no one in harms way, no drugs, no guns/knives. Even if they broke down your door when you weren't home and went inside to steal your package, there's going to be no APB on their license number, no road blocks, no helicopter sent out to see where they are.
My time in retail quickly taught me that unless you catch and hold a perpetuator, nothing will happen to them.
"We have them on tape! I ran outside and wrote down their license plate?"
"What was stolen?"
"$250 worth of goods!"
"Meh, we know the guy, but if its under a grand the DA won't do anything. Since we know him, we'll tell him to avoid your store, if he does show up again and steals something, we can get him on trespass and stealing, the DA might do something then.
The fact is some people live 100% on small thefts, small odd jobs paid in cash, some begging. They'll be living with their parents at 30-40, with no assets in their name, borrowing cars to get around. There is no down side in swiping a few packages besides the pain in turning that into cash, which is the only disincentive to them stealing.
(If the offense occurs in the presence of a non-police witness, something that a casual observer would describe as a police arrest may occur after the witness reports to police, but that's actually a citizen’s arrest by the witness with police assistance. But a camera isn't a witness, and, as for police misdemeanor arrests, a citizens arrest for a misdemeanor also requires the offense to have occurred in the presence of the arresting party.)
I’ve had my house robbed, and had evidence from the bank when the robbers tried to use the checkbook to send money through Western Union. They had photos, state issued identification, address, etc of the people collecting the payments. The assigned detective would not read an email or respond to voice mails. The detective said he was too busy to read emails.
Not sure that’s the piece of evidence to hang my hat on that this might be a hoax.
https://blogs.findlaw.com/blotter/2015/12/pressing-charges-w...
You could sue them in court.
You're also left pretty defeated with the lack of response from the police, then you have the beat down with the insurance company. Asking the individuals to go after a civil suit is just too much. Had I known about it, I might have done it. The police nor the insurance ever suggested this was possible. Even still, what are the odds of actually receiving any payment from a civil suit win?
Generally, unless you know more then the insurer about your risk factors, and can afford to eat the loss, you should be self-insuring your stuff.
> it's their own car (could be a beater picked up for a few hundred dollars)
At least one of them was a fairly nice looking Lexus.
The police are not going to do anything in my experience.
I literally caught someone in the act of stealing a package and the police specifically told me to do nothing and file a report. I submitted clear video of a face and apparently this was a known thief to others in the neighborhood, so I even gave them the person's name. They're still stealing packages 6 months later. The police tell me there are warrants pending.
It's easy to say, because after a while it kind of just rolls off the tongue. If there's no blood, my experience says police aren't interested. And in some jurisdictions, it better be a lot of blood.
In a quiet small town it might get a detective assigned. In a lower-class urban neighborhood, well the cops have bigger fish to fry.
there are many comments here that read something like, "mark wouldn't do a fake video..." as if they know mark personally. it's like debating if tom cruise really shoots people in mission impossible.
you can debate this if you want, maybe mark's followers really do "know" what, how, and why he posts to youtube. but please never stop 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 and questioning
Well one, he's not a prank channel. He's a serious professional that even showed video of people stealing his package that started the whole idea. He then went as far as to machine parts, have a custom pcb manufactured etc. Then he contaminated cars and residences with glitter, yeah good luck talking random friends to let you bomb their cars and houses with glitter.
I mean, the dude worked for JPL for almost a decade and has his work on Mars, he already gets tons of views and has a history of deep-diving projects. He's also a tv host. He's also a former TED speaker.
Guy has better things to do than stage videos for YouTube.
> good luck talking random friends to let you bomb their cars and houses with glitter.
Right. Typically you pay an actor to do fake things that a real person would not be on board with.
You think he can get a decent engineering job, especially for a government agency, in the future with a viral public hoax on his record?
Yeah, probably not and YouTube isn't going to rake in money forever, not that he uploads often enough to be anywhere near a top earner anyway.
Who cares? Those are arbitrary rationalizations that didn't necessarily factor into the creator's reasoning; you're simply projecting post facto reasoning that supports your preconceived conclusions. People who fall for scams and fakes use this same flawed reasoning all the time: "would he really lie about this? It can't possibly be worth it, I have considered all possibilities and have perfect information, there is no way that someone would do something that is obviously a bad choice from my perspective"...
He literally says it's not a prank video, that he doesn't do that. He has a solid reputation both as an engineer and as a YouTuber for being scientific and factual, 4 videos ago he showed a fake video from another YouTube user and explained how to help yourself determine when a video is fake...
His videos already get millions of views - his top 5 are nearly 1/4 of a billion views at 99 million, 46 million, 32 million, 31 million, 28 million, even his less popular ones easily clear multiple millions.
Devil's advocate: sounds like someone knowledgeable enough to make a video that's can't be easily dismissed as a prank. :-)
So, I have no problem believing Mark when he said police weren't interested. It's definitely par for the course here in Portland. I would imagine that in other areas, it's similar.
We have a lot of homeless people in our area just walking around. I see "package stolen" notifications on Nextdoor pretty much every other day.
Personally, I'm still not going to perma-dye someone's car.
It sounds so whiny when they start their message decrying that they'll get downvotes for something.
Its even worse when its not something they will get downvotes for.
That's when you realize that they probably get downvoted a lot because of how whiny they are, only they always blame it on some other aspect because they have no self awareness.
There's plastic free glitter[0], which I've seen used at environmentally considerate festivals. He should use that for his pranks.
I hope campaigns against single use plastic become more mainstream soon, and that will not happen without it being talked about more, so thanks for raising the point.
[0]: https://www.ecoglitterfun.com/the-eco-bit
> > He should use that for his pranks.
I'm not.
And for the love of god, do not start comments out with "I know i'm going to get downvoted for this"
I flagged you just for that.
But I wonder if sought legal advice before implementing. Because, as others have noted, I gather that booby traps are illegal in the US. Maybe this one is benign enough, but I rather doubt it.
Also, while it's true that thieves aren't so likely to press claims, what about parents of juvenile thieves?
It seems like during the last clip the stink spray failed to activate for some reason?
Edit: as someone pointed out it's not his address. I just re-watched the video and it's written on the map that it's not actually his house address.
I looked it up a few months ago...and I recognized the google map as soon as it popped up on the video.
https://goo.gl/maps/1sytkJCxFqn
I can also see some intrepid crooks suing for glitter damaging their eyesight permanently or some other bullshit claim. Some attorney or DA might decide to get free publicity and see if they can swing a "injured by booby trap" case.
But hope your enemy doesn't have a porch camera...
In more then one instance the thief opened the package at their house. So its fair to say he knows where they live too. Also, very clear HD video of their faces and vehicles. And there is no way all the glitter is going to get cleaned up - so more evidence of who they are. And home security cameras with more images of them. Not to say these idiots are smart enough to let things be at this point - but if they do retaliate, there is a very high chance they would be caught.
As for your comments about liability. Yeah, that sounds entirely plausible.
One thing I hadn't thought of though, is that these items might just be accumulating in someone's horde. Filling up some house or rental storage.
The police are a business and if there's not money to be had (traffic citations, parking tickets, etc.), or violent crime happening, you are the lowest possible priority. Source: personal experience + have worked with a couple of police depts many years back (not as a LEO). The only exception here is if you're a reasonable sized business - they tend to take cases like retail/corporate break-in seriously.
TLDR: Agree. People wouldn't do this if there were a real legal cost.
This is the problem.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/sessi...
If you look into civil forfeiture it's a racket... and directly infringes on our rights. Even in cases where there is NO wrongdoing you usually have to go through lengthy processes in order to get your property back, and even then you're considered lucky to get the majority of it back (if at all).
Effectively you are guilty until proven innocent with stuff like this on the books. I just find it funny that the same people who yell about "freedom" and "liberty" in this country are the ones who glorify the police as if they can do no wrong.
Unless you're a career criminal who doesn't mind incidental murder charges, just write it off FFS.
On the other, glitter is actually quite polluting, so my preference would be some means of spraying the thief with brightly coloured dye.
One could argue that so called 'hard-core' criminals were once and in some cases still are opportunists, even if the outcomes of their crimes might or might not be more severe than stealing an Amazon package from someone's door step.
That aside though, I'm curious:
What makes you think an opportunist who clearly has the time and means to swipe packages from someone's door while they're at work wouldn't take similar time and opportunity to conduct other forms of petty deviance like vandalizing the car of someone who blasted them with glitter? They clearly have no qualm or compunction with theft, is avenge-fueled-vandalism that far up the logic latter to next steps?
So that the unwitting landlord can be penalised as well?
Eh, somewhere in between. Back when I lived in Oakland (where there was/is a serious package theft problem) everyone in the neighborhood knew who stole folks’ deliveries (camera systems are basically free these days). It happened daily and the cops were too busy fending off corruption and sex trafficking scandals to give a damn. 20% of the time it was some high schooler and you would yell at their parents and get your shit back. 80% of the time it was semi-organized teams of people from a few towns over who would roll up to the end of the street in plate-less cars and drop a couple dudes off on foot. Dudes on foot would walk down the street and grab packages off people’s porches while the car would drive up to the next intersection. Dudes hop in the car, car hits the freeway and is in another city (and soon County) in no time.
Definitely intentional crimes (these things take planning, including networks to fence the stolen goods), but if you yell at them they just move on the next house without retailiating. The second you start harrasing people and causing a ruckus the police have fewer excuses to ignore the issue, and your easy source of cash is gone.
The crappy part is that she captured clear detail of both events but police couldn't be bothered. Nest and Ring have been doing their part to fight back, allowing people to publicly post and set up neighborhood watches against porch pirates et al, but there's still a ways to go before security camera footage can be sent to the PD and automatically identify the offender via facial analysis.
Also property crimes always take a backseat to more violent crimes.
Some areas even murder is 60%.
A healthy society keeps people from committing crimes, not a giant police force.
Robbers and burglars usually get attention.
Petty theft that does not involve robbery or burglary doesn't, but there is a world of difference between the three crimes.
Perhaps there are some areas in the US where this is a problem, but I don't know if it's safe to generalize that the US is degrading to third-world status just yet.
My dad used to say "there's few things more dangerous in the suburbs than a bored cop".
Been involved in some of those interactions while walking home in my own neighborhood. They're not pleasant. One involved handcuffs and a 30 minute sit on the curb while my backpack was searched. Yes I'm referring to these past incidents in plural for a reason. No, the complaints to the city and precinct didn't do anything.
I have lived some places where the police culture was more toxic, definitely.
I'm not going to go on some kind of "all cops are bastards" bend here, cause that's not the case and this isn't the forum for it, but I've had more bad experiences with the police than good ones.
None of them resulted in an arrest or charges filed (this is excluding moving violations because death, taxes and speeding tickets; I was a 23 year old driving a Mustang lol) since none of the interactions involved me doing anything illegal. After a few experiences like that you learn to keep an eye on a police officer when you see one, but there's no urge to make your presence overtly known to them either.
Head over to Portland, and the cops are so overloaded with dealing with more serious crimes that they won't even respond to auto theft.
I would definitely call the police for package theft in my town, and I'd have a good expectation that they'd assign an officer to watch for crime patterns and get the guys.
In Portland, I'd be duplicating this guy's glitter bomb.
They're too busy training on their new hand-me-down military gear. Local cops need tanks to keep you safe, citizen.
The police exist to maintain order on behalf of the State, the civil justice system exists to mediate property disputes between people. There is sometimes some synergy between the functions, but they are very different.
It’s not about restricting freedom. It’s about enabling free safe association for everyone who opts in. Like a massive HOA.
Obviously, you have to help if they’re right in front of you, but there’s no obligation for me to help feed a starving family in Appalachia now and I don’t think there will be one in the situation I’m describing. So all you have to do is ensure you’re never in a situation where you can help someone in immediate danger.
I believe we need more defense in depth. We need our human rights to be protected by every level of government and informally by society itself.
It is a story as old as time.
Have these people been convicted of crimes?
Because if they haven't, then yes, actually you are absolutely advocating restricting freedoms, and stumbling dangerously close to advocating redlining which has been illegal in the US for decades.
Edit:
Pardon my double post, I think a page got stuck loading on me somewhere.
A word of advice then: best state that immediately from the very beginning next time, instead of equivocating your way around the point for days. The minute you start talking about "curtailing freedom" there is one inextricable link that conjures in the mind from this type of language: the state.
Backing off it once the horse has been beaten into putty to say "oh I wasn't talking about the state" just looks like you're doing all of this for sport and not attempting to hold an actual meaningful position before finding a convenient escape hatch out of the discussion.
Have you never dealt with an HOA in your life? Have you never known someone who has?
You mean like the system in China? No thanks. Never underestimate the propensity of any government to violate human rights when given the power to do so.
If a choice has to be made between the two, a government that respects human rights is far preferable to a country without crime among citizens.
The system takes a cut.
Crowd-sourced bounty-hunting.
Of course, once it becomes a cash transaction you're dealing with dispute resolution. "I said it was Fred" "It wasn't Fred" "Yes it was! Pay me!".
Have we learned nothing from Reddit circa 2013?
Twice I have emailed the police and CC the Mayor of my city. I got a sorry can we meet in person response in an hour. The Sargent on Call was eating humble pie when he was called in and got chewed out by the Mayor and the Police. (Story a neighbor I don't know was physically assaulted by his girlfriend and she ripped his shirt and scratched him up. I stopped him from destroying her and going to jail. I called the police and no one came. We walked over to the station with 3 police cars sitting outside and were turned away.)
Be careful what you wish for. I don't want the police to be able to perform accurate facial recognition at the kind of scale you're talking about, even if that would make it harder for thieves to steal packages.
Amazon is helping cities and counties implement Rekognition systems fairly cheap with cameras tied to criminal databases. It's happening. They've done it in Washington County, OR, Orlando, FL, and others [1]. Amazon is also teaming up with law enforcement to install Ring doorbells with cameras (Amazon owns them) hooked up to the same type of system.[2] Palantir Systems (CIA backed) have done similar in NYC[3] and even doing PREDICTIVE crime analysis in New Orleans[4] and Chicago [5]. In the case of New Orleans, the public and city counsel was not even made aware. Only the mayor knew. Yes, be very, very careful what you wish for.
[1] https://aws.amazon.com/rekognition/customers/
[2] https://qz.com/1495241/amazon-has-a-clever-way-to-catch-pack...
[3] https://gizmodo.com/how-palantir-is-taking-over-new-york-cit...
[4] https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/27/17054740/palantir-predict...
[5] https://www.theverge.com/2016/8/19/12552384/chicago-heat-lis...
Good.
I'm against theft, and also against Police and facial analysis mixing.
[0]: https://pe.usps.com/text/pub28/28c2_033.htm [1]: https://www.techjunkie.com/how-to-use-usps-general-delivery-... [2]: https://pe.usps.com/text/dmm300/508.htm#ep1052038
Just not sure I'd trust them them to decide that exacting revenge on me for setting off a glitter and stink bomb in their car/house would have a negative expected value?
I'm not saying the thieves are in the right here. Just that crimes don't usually cancel each other out.
What I'm saying is; the thief broke a law but the person making the recordings could have also broken laws as well. Two wrongs don't make a right, and all that. Just seems like a good gag for YouTube but a bad practice to encourage.
Thief: Your honor, this man illegally recorded me in my home without my consent.
Judge: You mean the package you stole recorded you for the purpose of identifying you as the thief?
Thief: ...
Judge: Get the hell out of my court room.
Even in two-party consent states, I can't envision any situation in which a person would actually be punished for recording in this way. Remember that laws are meant to be interpreted by a judge or jury in the context of the alleged crime, not applied to every situation where they can possibly fit.
Someone STEALS that device and moves it. The device's owner isn't breaking any law.
You are looking for problems where there are none.
"Camera surveillance of a location where the public has access. Permission 8 § Camera surveillance is required for a surveillance camera to be posted so that it can be directed to a place where the public has access."
Swedish: http://rkrattsbaser.gov.se/sfst?bet=2013:460 (poor) translation: https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=sv&tl=en&u=h...
(In separate guidelines it explicitly mentions the case of home cameras covering public area).
Which pretty clearly doesn't apply to out in the open in the middle of a public street.
I'm also not sure that creating a hoax device with the intention of surreptitiously recording individuals that also damages their property and releases a chemical agent would be considered strictly "a security camera".
There can likely be no expectation of privacy trespassing on someone else's property.
but, for the package. Can you have an expectation of privacy when opening an unknown-thing? The device isn't recording until it is opened. I could see logical arguments on both sides. But, since the audio/visual recording doesn't start until they open the thing it might be on the safe-side of wiretap laws?
Recording audio without two-party consent in my state is illegal and only just recently were there any court cases where recording police officers without their knowledge wasn't prosecuted as wiretapping.
Booby traps causing injury are illegal everywhere.
Calling a smell a "chemical agent" is just inflammatory. Everything is a chemical, sure, but there is no chemical reaction involved here. Would you call perfume a "chemical agent"? It's just something that smells bad.
The only danger would seem to be getting glitter in their eyes.
If someone designed a trap to spray perfume on an unsuspecting person, I would describe it similarly.
And you know were they live also. One side has much more to lose than the other. The guy can exert devastating social damage in the life of the thieves just showing the videos in their street, to their landlord, or filtering it to a friend in the same school, not to mention uploading them to internet. Their faces are clearly seen on film stealing. Their address is known. In some cases even their cars are known also.
The logical step for a smart thief would be to move to easier targets and avoid bothering a guy able to spend six entire months building a very complicated plot to seek exact revenge.
he has also inspired people to make their own booby traps.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attractive_nuisance_doctrine
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupiers%27_liability_in_Engl...