That last bit isn't really an issue. I only use one a few times a year and I can still reliably find an ATM and if not, can always ask at a gas station. It isn't like banks have cash anyways - at least not here.
With the ubiquitous use of credit/debit/gift cards used as payment, and now digital payments being used/accepted, ATMs are the modern day pay phone. In true dystopian fashion, cash is heading towards one of those signals of illegal activity.
During the construction boom in Vancouver, they were stealing backhoes and front end loaders and using them to rip the machines right out of the bank walls.
We live in a weird world where blowing up money containers to get the money inside will only net you a meager $2mio over 15 ATMs while getting people to click on your scam crypto IPO link can easily net you $20mio in an hour.
> weird world where blowing up money containers…will only net you a meager $2mio…while getting people to click on your scam crypto IPO link can easily net you $20mio
Why is that weird? Local versus global distribution; plentiful versus scarce skill requirements; and experienced versus naïve adversaries.
> You think promoting a shitcoin requires more skills than blowing things up without blowing yourself up?
More or less skill is irrelevant.
There are more people who can blow up an ATM (or be trivially trained to) and collect the cash from it than there are who could do similarly for a cryptocurrency scam. (Few, if anyone, make $20mm simply tweeting promotions for other peoples’ coins.)
Depending on your nationality and location of commiting the crime though. If you're in a country that feels cyber crimes are actual crimes, you'd be screwed. If you're in a country that says as long as you don't commit these acts acts your country or fellow countrymen, you're good to go.
I was suggesting that useless ICOs or similar vaporware crypto projects are rarely considered crimes in most countries.
The ICO typically gives you a shitcoin in exchange. You technically get what you were promised. It's just that the utility for said shitcoin never appears, but that wouldn't count as a crime.
Making a blockchain-powered cat food company and raising tons of money from investors without delivering anything is not a crime either, that's the expected outcome for 90% of startups.
Which is why all hacker shows dramatically use fake screens and what not and/or covered over with montages to speed things along. Real hacking is boring as fuck.
They mention they were training in utrecht. Last year, I saw a couple of guys at 3.00am at my street (twijnstraat) drive in a moped blow up a door of a graphics studio and steal all the digital equipments, Macs, etc. One of the guys had a industrial hammer with him. It was like a clockwork, came at dot at 3.00am in and out in 5 minutes.
I still think this city is quite safe. But incidents like these happen quite often city center.
I think some folks have this romantic ideal of going out with a double barrel shotgun, making an obnoxiously loud cocking noise (que movie clip), and upon seeing them, the bad guys flee and they get a medal and the keys to the city.
Which hey, maybe somewhere? But yes, it is not the most likely outcome, or frankly a good idea to try, even if legal in your particular jurisdiction.
Ideally response is either 1) it’s defended enough it’s not worth their time, or 2) evidence is recorded enough the perpetrators can be identified, then folks track them down and arrest them when they aren’t prepared for resistance and on guard and there is less of a chance of someone getting shot or blown up in a fight. Because that is a incredible amount of paperwork.
> If in case, I over power the person and harm the person. I am liable for the medical bill of the person I harmed
Laws like this seem insane. I'm strongly of the opinion that if you are the one choosing to attack someone else, you accept all risk and responsibility for the encounter. If the victim responds with lethal force in bonafide self-defense, then :shrug:.
My guess is the parent poster was assuming the concern with liability was if they were charged by someone with a hammer (unprovoked), and you are assuming the concern with liability was based on stopped the robbery - both seem like pretty legitimate readings.
In less populated areas, my experience has been that individuals pretty much have to take responsibility for intervening in things they see - since no one else is around or could be around to do anything in time - or quickly things get out of control in a wider sense. I have property in an area that it’s easily 45 minutes before you could get a police response to a real, active emergency just due to travel time from the station. If you don’t intervene in anything weird, even if it isn’t your property, then the whole area gets a reputation for lawlessness pretty quick and attracts more problems. The attitudes of the local law enforcement generally are friendlier too towards getting more help, as they are well aware of how little they can do without it. They also deal with fewer things like folks itching (or able) to sue, due to it often being poorer areas, and everyone being less up in each other’s faces all the time.
In urban environments, there are often dedicated folks nearby (as in a few minutes response time), and everyone tends to be tenser - and the problems are often less ‘help me, I’m stuck in a ditch’ and more ‘semi-insane and/or drunk people getting in a fight in a public place’, and more people have the resources and/or access to lawyers to make things a nasty mess. So in general it IS better to call in the specialists who are used to dealing with it, and stay out of the mess if you can.
I think it's unreasonable to expect a victim to assume that the assailant won't harm them. Moreover, the victim has a right to their property and safety--it's insane that we would put people in a situation where they have to choose between loss of property/safety to preserve the safety of our assailant. The assailant has all of the agency in the situation--only the assailant can choose to avert the situation--so the assailant should bear all of the responsibility for the encounter. If they're killed in their enterprise, so be it.
Many disingenuously respond to this with some variation of, "but theft doesn't deserve the death penalty!" Of course, I'm not advocating for the death penalty for thieves--defense isn't about justice or sorting out what anyone deserves, it's about preserving one's rights (including one's right to life). How we charge thieves in courts is a different matter.
Getting charged for bonafide self-defense is pretty uncommon, unless you're like carrying a gun and executing them after the conflict is over or something like that.
Not "we often ... too" but that cases of convicting people for bonafide self-defense are actually very rare and we mostly do it for people who were closer to murder than self-defense.
That's a rather privileged take. Businesses are people's livelihoods and even when insured, insurance doesn't necessarily cover all tangible and intangible costs, if it covers anything at all. Not to mention rate increases.
Property is an extension of person, because we spend portions of our finite lives turning effort into tangible goods.
The problem with the "human life is worth less than property" attitude is that there is always a contingent of the population which is not hesitant to take advantage of such kindness. Especially when you start mixing cultures. The only deterrent that such people recognize is the threat of violence.
This isn't justification for extreme punishment legal punishment, but it is moral justification for deadly violence in immediate response to ongoing theft of the output of one's labor. Otherwise you are sending a message that people are essentially free to take from you and your community, because arrest and prison are not a sufficient deterrent for some groups of people.
If you work for an hourly wage, theft of your property in a very real sense is theft of hours of your life.
I think you have it exactly right with "privileged take". Salaried with PTO and direct deposit makes it feel like money just magically appears in your bank account.
And if you really cared about savings hours of life for people working hourly wage, you'd be in favor of increased crackdowns on white collar crime over theft.
More money is stolen from hourly workers in the form of wage theft than from robbery.
If thieves have repeatedly shown that "proportional" (i.e. nonviolent) deterrents do not phase them, what do you do? Let them steal as they please? Close down your stores? Ruin what could be a high trust society?
When people care so little about your livelihood and your cultural rules, violence becomes an acceptable deterrent. And people who take issue with this perspective seem to act as though thieves have no control over their actions. It's actually very simple: if you don't want to risk being shot at, don't steal from people. The majority of burglary and robbery in the US is emphatically not committed out of desperation over food and/or shelter. Welfare covers that.
> If thieves have repeatedly shown that "proportional" (i.e. nonviolent) deterrents do not phase them, what do you do?
How about a sentence of 20 to life? Even if that's still not enough to be effective as a deterrent, it means you won't have repeat criminals, since they'll still be in jail for their last crime.
In practice law enforcement requires tens of minutes to respond. Watch youtube videos of thieves in Walgreens to see the result; nobody is afraid of getting caught.
You are there, it's your stuff. You should be able to defend it.
A punishment similar to murder for breaking & entering and theft?!
Picture this: you catch a group in the act, they now have a choice: 20 to life if they leave you alive and able to report who they are or kidnap/maim/kill you so they have less chance of getting identified (if they are, the punishment is no worse, if they aren't they get away: so the range of possibilities is 50% better).
Would still push people towards the worse crime to cover their tracks I expect, and wouldn't be a full deterrent because it doesn't account for people acting under duress that is more dangerous in their mind than what the law is threatening.
Furthermore, there is a cost to keeping someone locked up for 10-to-20. Do you want to pay that out of your taxes? Because that is where it would come from.
> But clearly the punishments we have now are too lenient to be effective.
People still steal in places where the punishment is losing a hand or being stoned to death. What do you propose that would be a greater deterrent than those?
That's a very "my shit is more important than your life" take.
I might risk myself to save lives, but not to save stuff, even a business. And I certainly wouldn't expect or even want others to risk injury or worse to save my stuff, or even my life for that matter.
> Property is an extension of person
Property lost can be regained. Life lost saving property or time lost recovering from serious injury trying to save property, not so much so.
> The problem with the "human life is worth less than property"
What you are suggesting I'm saying is the exact opposite of what I am saying. Human life is not worth risking to save property. Heck, human injury is hardly worth it in most cases.
>The problem with the "human life is worth less than property
Sorry, meant to write the opposite
>Property lost can be regained
The life force (time) spent generating wealth represented as property cannot be regained.
>my shit is more important than your life
More like "my shit is more important than your life while you are disregarding my right to property and robbing me". Yes, your life is worth less if you're stealing for profit. Just as your life is worth less if you murder someone, though obviously not to the same degree.
But I can't stress how easy this is; if the potential thieves know that they may encounter lethal force while thieving, they will be less likely to take the risk of such antisocial behavior and, more importantly, they know what they're risking when they decide to take time and effort from you. This doesn't even get into theft of sentimental property.
It doesn't quite matter if the punishment is disproportional to the threat when the laws and social norms are very clear: don't steal from other people. Especially when such threat of violence also acts as the only effective deterrent.
> such threat of violence also acts as the only effective deterrent
People still steal in places where the punishment is losing a hand or being stoned to death. What do you propose that would be a greater deterrent than those?
> Last year, I saw a couple of guys at 3.00am at my street (twijnstraat) drive in a moped blow up a door of a graphics studio and steal all the digital equipments, Macs, etc.
There is an ongoing arms race/feud of sorts between Apple Stores, which sport beautiful glass facades, and thieves with SUVs, which they use for drive-in theft.
It's puzzling to me though since so many of the pilfered devices are display models which are supposed to brick themselves after removal, etc.. Perhaps they are sold to people who break them down and resell the components, or shipped abroad for remanufacturing/resale (and avoidance of IMEI blocks.)
Apple, for its part, just rebuilds (and possibly reinforces) the facades, perhaps adding some steel bollards or concrete barriers until the next drive-in.
Let me be the one to say "good". These gangs have been responsible for dozens of detonated ATMs in the region where I live (Germany, close to the Dutch and Belgian border). I don't believe anyone has been seriously injured yet, but many of these ATMs are embedded in ground floor stores, with the rest of the building being apartments. These heists will have the shop completely bombed out, and sometimes will leave the rest of the house uninhabitable, so it's easy to imagine what it might do to an inadvertent bystander.
Well, I was reading the comments to find out. But there are only jokes, people celebrating the happening, and a somewhat interesting thread from people that didn't know that crooks explode ATMs everywhere.
And now it's out of the frontpage already. So, no, I don't think I was lacking imagination.
I live in Brazil, and here we often think that this kind of stuff doesn't happen in Europe, or is very, very rare. Reading the comments here about Germany, the UK, the Netherlands, I'm reminded that it isn't so.
90 comments
[ 4.7 ms ] story [ 62.3 ms ] threadAnyway, it’s crazy that there are so many ATM attacks there when the number of ATMs is already so low…
Cash machine thefts: What is going on? [April 2019]
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-northern-ireland-47872288
Nice one! :)
https://youtu.be/eerQydNx-WU?t=43
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/11/world/middleeast/suicide-...
Why is that weird? Local versus global distribution; plentiful versus scarce skill requirements; and experienced versus naïve adversaries.
You think promoting a shitcoin requires more skills than blowing things up without blowing yourself up?
More or less skill is irrelevant.
There are more people who can blow up an ATM (or be trivially trained to) and collect the cash from it than there are who could do similarly for a cryptocurrency scam. (Few, if anyone, make $20mm simply tweeting promotions for other peoples’ coins.)
I think most HN users would be above-average successful at white-collar crimes, especially if those involve technology.
I see no reason for any correlation between HN readership and aptitude for blue-collar crimes.
Go to a hobby store and by a model rocket fuse.
Wake up at 3:00am stick them into the ATM and get money.
A lot of aptitude needed isn't there?
You can't be a coward though.
Most HN readership can't do either. Unless you call pretending they use AI or AR or chatbots or big data as white collar crime.
Maybe sucess chance is higher than with crypto, but the faiure is much worse
The kind of explosives you would normally use for this are not difficult to handle or deploy, anyone with access to google can figure it out.
I think HN users in general would be much more inclined to do at least a little bit of research, unlike most blue collar criminals.
The ICO typically gives you a shitcoin in exchange. You technically get what you were promised. It's just that the utility for said shitcoin never appears, but that wouldn't count as a crime.
Making a blockchain-powered cat food company and raising tons of money from investors without delivering anything is not a crime either, that's the expected outcome for 90% of startups.
I still think this city is quite safe. But incidents like these happen quite often city center.
I hope it is one of those guys.
What do you expect a neighbor to do regarding a violent gang that blows up a door, takes 5min to do its thing, and proceeds to vanish in the night?
Personally, I take way more than 5min to get up the bed.
Which hey, maybe somewhere? But yes, it is not the most likely outcome, or frankly a good idea to try, even if legal in your particular jurisdiction.
Ideally response is either 1) it’s defended enough it’s not worth their time, or 2) evidence is recorded enough the perpetrators can be identified, then folks track them down and arrest them when they aren’t prepared for resistance and on guard and there is less of a chance of someone getting shot or blown up in a fight. Because that is a incredible amount of paperwork.
If something like this happens call the cops and watch so that you can act as a witness if necessary. Not much else you can do.
1. When a person charges you with an industrial hammer, Run.
2. If in case, I over power the person and harm the person. I am liable for the medical bill of the person I harmed.
3. Offices here are most likely insured.
Laws like this seem insane. I'm strongly of the opinion that if you are the one choosing to attack someone else, you accept all risk and responsibility for the encounter. If the victim responds with lethal force in bonafide self-defense, then :shrug:.
Stuff especially expensive stuff owned by a business is generally insured (like in the case of the computers here)
In less populated areas, my experience has been that individuals pretty much have to take responsibility for intervening in things they see - since no one else is around or could be around to do anything in time - or quickly things get out of control in a wider sense. I have property in an area that it’s easily 45 minutes before you could get a police response to a real, active emergency just due to travel time from the station. If you don’t intervene in anything weird, even if it isn’t your property, then the whole area gets a reputation for lawlessness pretty quick and attracts more problems. The attitudes of the local law enforcement generally are friendlier too towards getting more help, as they are well aware of how little they can do without it. They also deal with fewer things like folks itching (or able) to sue, due to it often being poorer areas, and everyone being less up in each other’s faces all the time.
In urban environments, there are often dedicated folks nearby (as in a few minutes response time), and everyone tends to be tenser - and the problems are often less ‘help me, I’m stuck in a ditch’ and more ‘semi-insane and/or drunk people getting in a fight in a public place’, and more people have the resources and/or access to lawyers to make things a nasty mess. So in general it IS better to call in the specialists who are used to dealing with it, and stay out of the mess if you can.
Many disingenuously respond to this with some variation of, "but theft doesn't deserve the death penalty!" Of course, I'm not advocating for the death penalty for thieves--defense isn't about justice or sorting out what anyone deserves, it's about preserving one's rights (including one's right to life). How we charge thieves in courts is a different matter.
I think that's safely out of bounds of "bonafide self-defense" :)
Like the recent case where the guy was shot while they had their hands up and were backing away from the person with the gun.
You: "we often charge people for attacking people too"
I'm not sure if you think you're rebutting my point, or if you're just going off on an unrelated tangent?
Real life is not like TV land.
Property is an extension of person, because we spend portions of our finite lives turning effort into tangible goods.
The problem with the "human life is worth less than property" attitude is that there is always a contingent of the population which is not hesitant to take advantage of such kindness. Especially when you start mixing cultures. The only deterrent that such people recognize is the threat of violence.
This isn't justification for extreme punishment legal punishment, but it is moral justification for deadly violence in immediate response to ongoing theft of the output of one's labor. Otherwise you are sending a message that people are essentially free to take from you and your community, because arrest and prison are not a sufficient deterrent for some groups of people.
I think you have it exactly right with "privileged take". Salaried with PTO and direct deposit makes it feel like money just magically appears in your bank account.
And if you really cared about savings hours of life for people working hourly wage, you'd be in favor of increased crackdowns on white collar crime over theft.
More money is stolen from hourly workers in the form of wage theft than from robbery.
When people care so little about your livelihood and your cultural rules, violence becomes an acceptable deterrent. And people who take issue with this perspective seem to act as though thieves have no control over their actions. It's actually very simple: if you don't want to risk being shot at, don't steal from people. The majority of burglary and robbery in the US is emphatically not committed out of desperation over food and/or shelter. Welfare covers that.
How about a sentence of 20 to life? Even if that's still not enough to be effective as a deterrent, it means you won't have repeat criminals, since they'll still be in jail for their last crime.
You are there, it's your stuff. You should be able to defend it.
I've seen those videos, but aren't almost all of them from places where the DA refuses to prosecute even when the thieves do get caught?
A punishment similar to murder for breaking & entering and theft?!
Picture this: you catch a group in the act, they now have a choice: 20 to life if they leave you alive and able to report who they are or kidnap/maim/kill you so they have less chance of getting identified (if they are, the punishment is no worse, if they aren't they get away: so the range of possibilities is 50% better).
Would still push people towards the worse crime to cover their tracks I expect, and wouldn't be a full deterrent because it doesn't account for people acting under duress that is more dangerous in their mind than what the law is threatening.
Furthermore, there is a cost to keeping someone locked up for 10-to-20. Do you want to pay that out of your taxes? Because that is where it would come from.
> But clearly the punishments we have now are too lenient to be effective.
People still steal in places where the punishment is losing a hand or being stoned to death. What do you propose that would be a greater deterrent than those?
I might risk myself to save lives, but not to save stuff, even a business. And I certainly wouldn't expect or even want others to risk injury or worse to save my stuff, or even my life for that matter.
> Property is an extension of person
Property lost can be regained. Life lost saving property or time lost recovering from serious injury trying to save property, not so much so.
> The problem with the "human life is worth less than property"
What you are suggesting I'm saying is the exact opposite of what I am saying. Human life is not worth risking to save property. Heck, human injury is hardly worth it in most cases.
Sorry, meant to write the opposite
>Property lost can be regained The life force (time) spent generating wealth represented as property cannot be regained.
>my shit is more important than your life More like "my shit is more important than your life while you are disregarding my right to property and robbing me". Yes, your life is worth less if you're stealing for profit. Just as your life is worth less if you murder someone, though obviously not to the same degree.
But I can't stress how easy this is; if the potential thieves know that they may encounter lethal force while thieving, they will be less likely to take the risk of such antisocial behavior and, more importantly, they know what they're risking when they decide to take time and effort from you. This doesn't even get into theft of sentimental property.
It doesn't quite matter if the punishment is disproportional to the threat when the laws and social norms are very clear: don't steal from other people. Especially when such threat of violence also acts as the only effective deterrent.
People still steal in places where the punishment is losing a hand or being stoned to death. What do you propose that would be a greater deterrent than those?
Nothing in the above suggested that wasn't going to happen though, so the question feels a bit deliberately point-making-for-points-y.
There is an ongoing arms race/feud of sorts between Apple Stores, which sport beautiful glass facades, and thieves with SUVs, which they use for drive-in theft.
It's puzzling to me though since so many of the pilfered devices are display models which are supposed to brick themselves after removal, etc.. Perhaps they are sold to people who break them down and resell the components, or shipped abroad for remanufacturing/resale (and avoidance of IMEI blocks.)
Apple, for its part, just rebuilds (and possibly reinforces) the facades, perhaps adding some steel bollards or concrete barriers until the next drive-in.
I imagine it become news because that one person was exceptionally annoying. I still didn't understand why people here found it interesting.
I would suggest this is a serious lack of imagination on your part rather than the rest of the HN viewers being flawed.
And now it's out of the frontpage already. So, no, I don't think I was lacking imagination.