An American tourist was harassed but not physically injured. He has evidence (some hearsay/unverifiable) that random McDonalds employees destroyed property, but it's going to be annoying and difficult to prove anything.
I wouldn't expect a lot of help. Imagine if a random Albanian had a similar problem with NYC McDonalds employees and called the NYPD. The police don't support the assault, but they're not going to leap to attention over it.
This has always been my experience with Police in foreign countries.
They are polite, friendly, and genuinely wish the incident didn't happen. Once they ascertain nobody is really injured, etc. there is not a whole lot they can do.
This is a really disturbing story. I hope you get a satisfactory resolution.
Anyway, there has been a trend recently with regular HN'er saying that people should stop using HN as a way to get justice. "HN is not your mommy".
I strongly believe that this is exactly the time that HN should step up, upvote this story, and ensure to it that a guy who creates the technology he wears see's some kind of justice.
These things are also more than just justice. It's helpful to get some insight into the nature of a big company, so that you can make your own personal decisions on whether you want to continue to do business with them in the future.
I'm the person who wrote the "HN is not your mommy" comment, and I'd like to take a moment to clarify a bit what I was trying to say with that.
Most importantly, I definitely wasn't decrying all instances of people bringing a situation that has gone some flavor of shitty to the attention of HN. In fact, it's in no small part the fact that the HN community is so willing to help one another out that keeps me here — particularly among the alumni, but I think their conduct just sets the example for the rest of us.
That said, I've started to feel a few times lately like that willingness to be helpful is being taken advantage of — or at least people are trying to do so. The "I didn't win the contest! Waaaah!" was just the most egregious example I'd seen in some time, and I felt the need to call it out. Given that it was the highest rated comment I've ever posted on HN, I'm clearly not alone in that.
This situation isn't remotely the same. This is a clear-cut case of ignorant idiocy escalating into physical assault, and the louder and more forcefully the fact that that kind of thing is fucking wrong gets shoved in McD's face, the better.
It's hard to ever say one use-case/situation is wrong, another is right. The ends justify the means... etc. yaddy yadder ya...
I also wasn't looking to single you out.. I know it was a high voting comment since it was at the top of the thread, so clearly did resemble a large portion of the HN's sentiments...
But, all the same, I just want to make the point, HN-community should try and step up in this situation, right?..
I would imagine a lawyer at any of a number of the nations larger law firms would take this on for you on contingency given the rather large sums that McDonald's might be forced to spend settling this with you.
These firms are pretty approachable - don't go the local small-fry ambulance chaser, they won't know what to do.
WHAT?! I can't believe this happened and truly hope you can find these people.
From the sound of your story, it sounds like those three were probably not actually affiliated McDonalds. Were you confident that even Potential Witness 1 was a true employee? Sounds like a scam and heist, but very strange since multiple people involved were wearing (seemingly) legitimate McDonalds clothing. Although, I would note that they were not wearing the uniform that the cashiers were wearing, which may give more weight to the conjecture that they were just lurking in plain site waiting to mug or rip someone off.
I hope you find these guys and they get whats coming to them.
Here in England the managers of a McDonalds wear different clothing items to the peons, it's plausible that the people involved were either managerial staff or possibly security? The fact that perp 3 is carrying janitorial equipment would indicate he is indeed part of the store.
I find it really hard to believe that Steve Mann would have some kind of medical condition that would lead a normal Dr. to prescribe that Steve Mann wears the computer vision glasses that Steve Mann invented.
I'm sorry he was harassed, but this story really smells of one of the oldest ways to gain media attention on the internet:
Step 1: Get screwed by a big company (this is the easy part)
Step 2: Write a blog article documenting how you got screwed
Step 3: Submit story to slashdot, digg, reddit, etc.
Keep in mind people, before you start blowing up about this "injustice" that we're only hearing one side of the story. And frankly, I'm of the opinion that cases of assault are better handled by police and courtrooms than blogs and internet mobs.
Also, the fact that the retribution Steve Mann is demanding, is that McDonald's repairs the glasses that Steve Mann invented is, well, a fantasy to say the least.
I think he's well within reason. If you were assaulted by a cashier at McDonald's, would you just ignore it and continue on? I'm pretty sure I would try and get the perpetrators fired and possibly charged, and have the company pay for any damages to my property.
I agree, he is well within reason to get a lawyer and sue the pants off of McDonald's in civil court if his case is accurate as he describes it.
He's not asking for that though. What he basically wants is a public apology and for McDonald's to FIX his glasses. This is laughable.
Notice how all aspects of this story point to how awesome his glasses are: "they help with a medical condition", "having them fixed is more important than money", "they saved photos of a crime, even after they were broken"...
You are completely misreading him, as far as I can tell.
He says:
I'm not seeking to be awarded money. I just want my Glass fixed, and it would also be nice if McDonald's would see fit to support vision research.
Which means in any sane interpretation to be that he wants McDonalds to pay for whatever it costs to repair or replace his property, but he is not seeking punitive damages for the assault, he just wants his glasses fixed. And he thinks it would be nice if McDonalds made a gesture of donating something to vision research, to show they are actually sorry.
"I also contacted the Embassy, Consulate, Police, etc., without much luck."
He said he already tried getting law enforcement involved.
Maybe he plans to use lawyers as a last ditch effort, if his internet plea doesn't work? I would think it's a bit extreme to involve them first before trying to just settle things with McDonalds directly.
The useless pedant in me is thinking that the difference is:
1) pay for damages: provide monetary compensation for materials, labor, etc to have the experimental device replaced or restored to working order
2) fix his glasses: McDonalds takes the glasses, performs all operations in house at a corporate location, and return the device in working order.
The rest of me rejects the pedant, saying the effects of both are the same, therefore they are effectively the same statement, which I am pretty sure is reasonable and the intended meaning of those "discrepancies". :)
If you ask for that first, and don't get it, it also adds more bite to a suit later.
The infamous hot coffee MacDonalds case involved a woman who had first asked MacDonalds (or that franchise, not sure) to pay her medical bills (around 20 grand iirc for extensive second and third degree burns) and they refused. It was only after that when she sued, got a list of other complaints about the temperature and won a large judgement (reduced on appeal).
According to the HBO documentary "Hot Coffee," which is excellent, by the way, even after she sued she didn't request damages beyond medical costs, rather they were awarded by the jury.
I'd like to point out that this is a huge understatement. Roughly 10 times more people are killed on the roads in each year than have died as a result of terrorism on us soil (or us airplanes) in the past 50 years.
I'm trying really hard to understand why these glasses cannot be removed from his body. They are glorified video goggles...not an EEG connected to his brain. There is no good reason that they need to be bolted to his head. Hell, even gluing them on is excessive.
Until someone can provide a good reason why this would be chronically implanted into him, I think this all smells like hype to me.
And why no pictures of the guy trying to grab his goggles off his face? Surely there would be a snapshot somewhere of that?
From reading the New York Times article, it doesn't sound like Mann had any "implants" "forcibly removed". It sounds like they tore electrodes off his body. In other words, they pulled tape off his skin, and it caused bleeding. Unpleasant, sure, but it's not like they strapped him down and used a drill to extract chips from his brain. More like they pulled off a Band-Aid too fast.
The reason that he ended up in a wheelchair was that since he no longer had his cyborg navigation gear, he supposedly got confused while walking around the airport and hit his head on a pile of fire extinguishers. I don't even know where to start with that one.
And another comment, which may explain the doctor's note:
Years and years ago, when the earth was new, I was an undergrad at MIT and then-Media-Lab-graduate-student Mann spoke in a class I was taking. At the time, I believe he was trying to recruit people to do heavy-duty graphics work (i.e. when he moves his head side to side, his camera is taking discrete pictures of a room/building/whatever at different angles. He was working on algorithms to put them all together and make them coherent). Anyhow, the point is, I distinctly remember him saying that he got nauseous when he removed his visor. The reason was very simple. He spent all of his waking life (outside of the shower) in a 2D world. His body was so used to it, that living in 3D took some serious getting used to, and he would feel sick. My guess is that this is what happened. Ever feel like your eyes need some adjusting after staring at a 2D object (such as a movie theatre screen) for hours at a time? Now image doing that 24/7 for years and trying to re-adjust to the real world.
In regards to that slashdot article's comment, the comparison to watching a movie screen doesn't really explain it for most of us, I think.
There was an experiment[1] that had participants wear vision-inverting glasses for a while. Eventually they started seeing everything right-side up through the glasses. In fact, their vision was upside down after they removed the glasses!! Although they re-adjusted after a little while, it'd certainly explain Mann's temporary disorientation and the subsequent need for a doctor's note.
Also, it'd be weird to conduct such experiments on yourself and not expect weird stuff like this to happen to you from time to time, especially when visiting foreign countries.
[1] George M. Stratton. Some preliminary experiments on vision. Psychological Review, 1896.
I have read the cited paper, and seen no mention of what you described to be there:
>As to the relation of the visual field to the observer, the feeling that the field was upside down remained in general throughout the experiment.
>On removing the glasses on the third day, there was no peculiar experience. Normal vision was restored instantaneously and without any disturbance in the natural appearance or position of objects.
"Determined to find results, Stratton wore the telescoping glasses for eight days straight. By day four, his vision was upright (not inverted). However on day five, images appeared upright until he concentrated on them; then they became inverted again. By having to concentrate on his vision to turn it upside down again, especially when he knew images were hitting his retinas in the opposite orientation as normal, Stratton deduced his brain had reprocessed his vision and adapted to the changes in vision."
So perceptual adaptation is real, it just takes like a week to really kick in. For someone who had been wearing these glasses for years, I'm sure the effects would be much more intense.
EDIT: The paper that the follow up results were in might actually be "Stratton, G. (1897). Upright vision and the retinal image. Psychological Review, 4, 182-187"
I admit I'm not used to citing academic papers, I heard about this experiment back in high school anth/soc/psych so I just did my best to find a semi-credible reference.
The human visual system adapts to its inputs. If you wear glasses that flip whatever you see upside down you'll be confused for a few weeks, but eventually you'll adapt and at that point removing them will render you unable to see properly. I'd expect the same thing to happen with visual augmentation of the sort that Prof. Mann is wearing here. That is, without all the extra visual cues he's getting he'd have a hard time parsing normal vision.
I don't see in the article where the writer claimed there was a prescription involved. Just documentation that probably described things like what the purpose of the glasses was, how they were physically attached to his skull (that might require a note from a normal dr. perhaps?) At any rate, in a foreign country I would imagine it is a good idea to carry plenty of documentation for an augmentation like this just as with one's controlled medications. My two cents, I am sure he is on the level and definitely deserves some sort of acknowledgement and perhaps an apology from McD's.
> I find it really hard to believe that Steve Mann would have some kind of medical condition that would lead a normal Dr. to prescribe that Steve Mann wears the computer vision glasses that Steve Mann invented.
Not necessarily as huge a coincidence as you seem to think. If Steve Mann has a medical condition that is not easily rectified by existing technology, and assuming Steve Mann is reasonably intelligent, then it's no stretch of imagination that he might be compelled to do research on something that personally impacts him. Since he's a professor at the University of Toronto, I don't find it hard to believe that he is reasonably intelligent, and so this is not necessarily so hard to believe.
But on a second reading, it doesn't seem like he even necessarily has a medical condition. He refers to a doctor's letter which is for explanatory purpose. Since this device is apparently permanently attached to the skull, no doubt a doctor was involved at some point. In other words, Dr. Mann has done research into augmented vision, created a device, and had the device installed onto himself. While potentially risky, we all know people do far crazier things.
Which isn't to say that this isn't a media attention grab, but it's not as farfetched as you make out.
Maybe, maybe not (I'm not a doctor and don't want to speculate) but they would absolutely write a letter to document/certify a visual disability and describe potential accommodations that might be used.
That is prima facia absurdity. It's like saying "no doctor would just prescribe pain killers without checking for addiction signs", yet it happens all the time. There is a phrase for it - doctor shopping. How hard is it to believe some techie doctor would allow, or formalize a guy doing potentially important research on himself, particularly if it is presented well by a competent scientist.
I should clarify: no doctor that wants to keep his license would prescribe this device. Doctors can (and do, when caught) lose their licenses (temporarily or permanently) if they get caught prescribing drugs for off-label purposes.
Documenting a medical condition which could be addressed by the use of the device is a very separate issue for medical and legal purposes.
He is one of the most major researchers of this kind of device that does have direct and obvious applications for all sorts of forms of visual disability, and he is also one of the major long term voluntary scientific test subjects for it. Of course he carries a doctors note for the device, given a major part of the intention is intended as long term-medical research.
As for the demand for money to pay for the cost of replacement, it is hardly a fantasy given that this is probably their liability and they clearly can afford it.
This explanation is so uncharitable it crosses over into implausible. It's not "the easy part" to get random McDonald's employees to behave as extremely as this.
Well if McD have a policy of not allowing photography of their staff in their outlets then it's easy.
McD worker: "sorry sir you can't take pictures or video of our staff"
person with recording device: "I'm not taking any pictures this is a medical device"
worker: "it looks rather like a Google glass recording device; you were recording the servers at the counter just now weren't you, I'm afraid you'll have to leave"
person: "no I won't I'm not recording anything these are just my glasses, see I have a doctor's note" [passes note carefully made to look fake but actually having real content]
worker: "sorry, please leave" [attempts to remove what he believes to be Google glass device as the person moves towards him aggressively]
It probably didn't go down like that but why is it such a stretch to believe it did?
If you developed a solution to your own medical problem, why wouldn't you get a prescription for it? The prescription gives you the right to use it.
It's a bare website (not a blog post) with nothing but a story and some contact information. If you know of a way to make this not "smell of one of the oldest ways..." do let us know.
Obviously we need to keep that in mind, but you're talking about the difference between one man's photographically documented account of an event and a theoretical response form a multi-national fast food chain's Public Relations team.
He is coming to the internet because he can't get his case handled in the way he wants to.
Obviously they aren't qualified to fix his glasses and that was a cheeky way of saying he wants them to pay for it.
All in all, he is a respectable human, who has compelling evidence of assault, who has not gotten the justice he thinks he deserves. Would you like him to give up?
What I don't understand why clearly things have been manually blacked out (or whited out in this case). Why not show their face?
I agree this story smells in a dozen different ways. Rather than the mafia I'm wondering if Steve Mann is perhaps seeking to establish some documentation in order to assert IP rights against a very wealthy company which has made very public announcements about glasses that augment your vision and take pictures of what you see.
For that reason I think we'll see more on this story.
Your argument is that because Dr. Mann is an academic he wouldn't sue Google? On the contrary for someone who has put as much of his life into augmented reality, to see Google Glass hit the press where essentially this giant $250B company is going to change the world with his ideas? Especially where he is the sole inventor and assignee?
I don't know about you but that movie has played out so many times as to be cliche. Generally the professor's college is the one doing the suing as they get assignment rights to research but that doesn't seem to be the case here.
I'll be the first to admit I'm awfully cynical about patents these days, and I sure as hell know that if some patent litigator saw Mann's patent he would ask Dr. Mann if he was being compensated by Google. If not that same litigator would probably have a moment of giddyness as he offers to get him that compensation. Could be a big payday, and money is a powerful motivator.
I'll take it all back if Mann says that Google has already licensed the patent. Otherwise my bet is on the legal sharks.
If there were to be a legal dispute, surely actual patents and research papers would be the documentation you crave, and not an after-the-fact, sole author web page on a very loosely related topic?
> Your argument is that because Dr. Mann is an academic he wouldn't sue Google?
I think the argument was that he hardly needs an altercation at a McDonalds in 2012 to establish documentation. He's been doing the wearable computing stuff for decades, publicly.
Jeez man, anybody who has anything to do with wearable computing these days knows all about Mann's work. I'm sure the Google Glasses people know all about it too; I'd be shocked if they did not. He's just too well known. Stop tilting at windmills.
If your employer allows it, browse the US patent office [1]. That is a search for 'google' and 'glasses' in any patent application. Then go to the link the US PTO maintains which cites references to Dr. Mann's patent [2]. Of the 34 patents that reference Dr. Mann's work, not a single one is a Google patent associated with Google Glass.
So while "anybody who has anything to do with wearable computing" knows about Dr. Mann's work, apparently those same people at Google seemed to have missed that connection when the started filing patents about wearable displays.
So, I agree with you. Everybody working with wearable computing should know about Dr. Mann's work. And anyone putting out a 'revolutionary product' which looks strikingly similar to the Eyetap product would, acknowledge that debt and perhaps show how they learned from what had gone before.
> What I don't understand why clearly things have been manually blacked out (or whited out in this case). Why not show their face?
Perhaps because it is Europe?
I recall reading news articles a few months ago about a case in Europe where a man robbed a bank, and the police had surveillance photos of his face and wanted them shown on the news on TV, and the TV station blurred the photos because their interpretation of privacy laws was that since the suspect was merely accused, not convicted, it would violate his privacy to show his face.
I don't see how you are drawing this cynical conclusion. I didn't read much self-promotion at all in the article. It doesn't even explain what the device corrects with his vision. The focus of this story was his experience. I know I'd sure as hell want to tell the world about such abusive behavior if I didn't get a response from the police, embassy, or McDonalds. You could start a fight, trying to snatch somebody's glasses off like the first perpetrator did.
Wow, sorry to hear about the assault and damage to your property. That is quite a way to wreck an otherwise pleasant vacation. I will say that I am glad to hear that I am not the only one to have been treated in a rather hostile manner at a McDonald's in Paris. My wife and I went there on vacation a few years back. My wife was filming my clumsy handling of the french language as she made me order (she is actually quite good at french) and an "employee" took her camera, shoved us out of the restaurant and then smashed our camera on the side walk. I'm not sure what they think they are hiding.
There must be something in the water there because we had eggs thrown at us from an upper floor apartment walking down some sidewalk in Paris (I guess our speaking English to one another was offensive?). We always spoke French when interacting with francophones. Visiting the more rural places in France was pleasant though, and the people were more friendly.
Were you in Paris? Seriously, we had no problems anywhere else we went. It was just Paris. We visited Nice, Lyons, and Toulouse on our trip and had lots more fun in those places.
As someone who has actually done this (I was with my parents), I can tell you that the Parisian McDonald's is, in fact, different from the American one.
I think that the one in Beijing was different, too, but I didn't get to go into that one.
Complain to the Olympic board as McDonalds are a sponsor of the Olympics and the Para-Olympics.
In parallel write/email to the newspapers etc.
Also talk to your embassy who can advise how to proceed in other ways.
You have a vision problem and need a visual aid to combat that disability. McDonalds not only commited assualt but also did it systematicaly and premeditated way indicating they are not a suitable sponsor for the para-Olympics.
If they won't deal with this issue responsibly, then sod em and shame them as publicly and in as many ways as possible; you have done nothing wrong, nothing and they are all to blame so shame them.
Also few links on FB and twitter with liberal abuse of #mcdonalds #imlovinit #mcd and the like will soon garner this issue the attention it needs and deserves.
You could see a lawyer, but it's hard to find one who can deal with this. I'd go the press/PR route (then a good lawyer will come to you) as your doing but with a few nationals who will happily run this story. Now is a good time given there large marketing event called the Olympics, leverage this time and educate McDonalds.
Last time I went to McDonalds security told me the toilets were for customers only too which I pointed out that in a civilised World we wash our hands before we handle our food and I had no desire to take my food into the toilet or leave it unattended as I had no confidence on the security being able to saftly protect my food/possesions. He appologised and I left to eat elsewere.
Drifitng off topic, but the Paralympics are already sponsored by ATOS, the company the UK government has put in charge of taking social security from the genuinely disabled.
And what might that percentage be? Seeing a number of moochers feigning disability for unearned dole outs, is surely the most common disgust of our times.
And if one is disabled, they should not expect to be given free handouts from money forced out at gunpoint. They need care and consideration and all volunteer help they can get.
Its time to realize that Government should be the institution for one thing and one only. Protection of individual freedom. And nothing else.
Seeing a number of moochers feigning disability for unearned dole outs, is surely the most common disgust of our times.
If you really think that is true then you possibly need to get out a lot more, we got this whole banking crisis, massive depression and unemployment, corrupt politicians, ecological collapse, huge civil unrest across previously stable democracies and loads of wars and all sorts of crazy shit going down.
On second thoughts, scratch that, could you please stay indoors. It is probably for the best.
Thanks but no thanks, and I could do as I please. Not that it is any of your business.
But lets see what we got on your list:
- whole banking crisis,
last I checked my savings bank account was secure. And although my livelihood may be intricately connected to Big Banks, I don't think all the banks in the world are going bust. Nor is the age old concepts of banking. A lot of things which is complex and serious here, but definitely nothing here which disgusts me
- massive depression and unemployment,
This is an era of massive changes, but there will always be human activity. No matter what cooked up and muddled GDP numbers say. Again no disgust.
- corrupt politicians,
the moochers are a result of their policies, and they enable the corrupt politicians. So this is along the same lines as the disgusting stench of moochers.
- ecological collapse, huge civil unrest across previously stable democracies and, loads of wars and, all sorts of crazy shit going down
more serious issues, and a lot of call for action. But disgust? Whom are we kidding.
Looks like you have a problem reading the import of the message. Maybe you sympathize with the blood sucking moochers, or maybe you are one of them. Whatever it is, the only thing more disgusting than the dole out leechers are people who knowingly give them unearned, undeserved virtual credibility.
The disgusting stench of moochers, as you so delightfully put it, by which I am guessing you mean the unemployed, is largely the end result of the automation of production starting with the agricultural revolution, and not a creation of the welfare state, which is merely a societal bulwark against violence by people who think, probably correctly, that bored people are very dangerous when they get hungry, so you either lock em up, or make sure they get fed.
Personally I would pay everyone dole, unless they really don't want it. Call it a national dividend and make it a function of GDP per person. No chance then of a benefit trap, and an incentive to work on things that benefit the wealth of all.
Also, on paper, as far as I can tell, it would cost roughly the same as the current system anyway, seeing as, at least in the UK, the bureaucracy of organising the benefits system costs multiple times the amount actually paid out in benefits.
Plus, the UK benefits system actually underpays, on average, when you sum the figures of accidental underpayments vs accidental overpayments and outright fraud, so there are actually more people not receiving benefits they are legally entitled to than there are people involved in illegally obtaining them.
Now cheer up and learn to mooch a little. You are obviously working far too hard, on stuff you don't enjoy that is making you angry as hell, and in this day and age, you don't really need to. Sorry for suggesting you should stay indoors, go live on a beach and make kites for a summer while drunk or something like that instead. You owe it to yourself.
no, by moochers I mean people who live off unearned income. In this context, from forced government dole outs.
> the bureaucracy of organising the benefits system costs multiple times the amount actually paid out in benefits.
you got any citations for this?
> so there are actually more people not receiving benefits they are legally entitled to
the whole of your argument and point of view, is based on legally instituted perverse "benefits". We have instituted morally corrupt systems of welfare and people nowadays take it as a matter of fact.
> Now cheer up and learn to mooch a little
Thanks, but no thanks. You obviously feel a lot better if you spread your moral corruption to every one else. I work for my own bread.
I work, sometimes when I have to and sometimes when I find something interesting to do. The thing is, so many well paid jobs seem to consist largely of ephemera, while the people I see doing useful things within society are usually paid less. So I wonder how many of the people who are employed in the ephemeral economy, could stop pretty much everything they are doing in their job and society would be no worse off and in many cases wouldn't even notice.
Indeed and ATOS IT recently were crying they needed more pay and were shouting about it. Now if they were told there appeal for more money would take at least a year to be heard and in the meantime that they would not get paid anything until that appeal for more money. Then that would of been karma and a fair approach.
Ironicly I know of three people who attended a ATOS medical. One had cancer (turned out to be terminal), one had MS and the other had phsical injury including 2 fingers missing. They were all deemed fit for work apart from the one who could clearly not hold a long-bow due to the missing fingers, least thats the funny take on it. Do wonder if the French are still pissed that we let so called pesants goto war with longbow's and is the origins of the two finger jesture in the UK as a sign to the French we can still use the long bow. Those captured by the French would have there bow fingers cut off and thus a display of those two fingers was born as a in your face gesture towards the French.
Back onto the offtopic subject you may be intersted to look up how many of those deemed fit for work have died shortly after there income was cut off. If it was in any other country it would be called genocide etc.
This brings us nicely back on-topic in saying that descrimination of disabled people in any shape or form is more of a issue than race descrimination thesedays. If people are asked about Hitler and World War II and gas chambers then they go on about the victimised Jewish people and how bad it was for them (and it was a bad thing). Nobody mentions how disabled people were also given the same treatment. Church's, many still accepted forms of estabilshments have and some still do descriminate against disabeled people. Even hospitals. This I have witnessed many times personaly and it is utterly disgusting. There is one small plus side though. That is you can more easily identify genuine people from those who operate such double-standards and in that can avoid them.
ATOS is mearly a knife edge away from being audited at a level that will embarass and shame them. McDonalds are no better but sadly don't cash in on Goverment contracts so in that are sadly immune to alot of bad PR, historicaly they have done some major crimes.
Can someone illuminate why a recording device would illicit such a harsh reaction? I can understand businesses wanting to avoid someone stand there with a video camera, but does France take this more seriously?
There are (sadly) thousands of such stories, YouTube videos, etc. about photographers getting assaulted and intimidated when legally taking photos in certain areas. This is basically the same thing at an even more technological level.
My speculation on this: A lot of people in security have such boring jobs that even if they don't feel intimidated by photographers, they relish a chance to play big, get a buzz out of the day, and look like they're "doing their job."
Security personnel often react irrationally to photographic equipment. The only unique thing here is that in this case the equipment was attached to his head.
Try it sometime - just take a video camera and point it at someone and see what their reaction is.
Now do this for everyone you ever meet, all day every day, in a strange country, and you see that although violence is rare you've increased the number of opportunities for violence to happen.
No one at an ordinary McDonald's would even notice such a device. Ergo this was not an ordinary McDonald's, but one with security people looking for cameras. Why would a McDonald's have security people looking for cameras? Possibly because it was a mafia front. If you wanted to launder money, a fast food restaurant in a popular location would be a good place to do it.
The way the employees behaved is consistent with this explanation.
Edit: I should have said no more than that the excessive reaction of the security people suggests there may be something dubious happening at this McDonald's that they don't want filmed. But there are other less dramatic things they might be doing besides money laundering: using undocumented labor, for example.
This is what came to my mind as well. I can't decide whether or not the comment is supposed to be serious.
On one hand, I can't think of many above-board reasons that a restaurant employee would tackle you for having a tiny camera, or rip up medical documentation. On the other hand, the jump straight to a mafia seems a leap too far. Yet if we are going to speculate, I don't see a criminal explanation as significantly more plausible than others.
To demonstrate one of my own: Perhaps they'd recently had a bad rating/inspection from the French/Parisian health department (replace with proper name), and were really worried about some undercover story by local news stations. A bit extreme to use physical intimidation, but perhaps the manager is on the verge of losing the place?
Most sensible explanation so far. It accounts for why they would be worried about hidden, automatic cameras much more than the ones regular tourists have, where you can see when they're taking a picture or getting a good video angle. Also, most tourists don't take pictures of what's going on behind the counter, so you can catch someone trying to overtly do that, but a hidden camera would make that harder to spot, leading management to be more paranoid about built-in cameras.
On top of that, "concern about the health department" has a much higher prior probability than "mafia collusion with major fast food chain".
What does strike me as odd is that it seems pretty likely that a McDonald's at tourist central would have to have a lot of pictures taken of it and in it and around it. It seems like that wouldn't even come close to being unusual.
Granted, not usually by someone with the camera literally attached to his head.
I thought I was saying the same thing: that yes, tourists are expected to be everywhere at the McDonald's, taking pictures, but if they start to do it in a strange way (i.e., target the "boring" stuff in the kitchen), or have stuff that looks like a hidden camera, then management may freak out.
Page is down, but doesn't Occam's Razor handle this situation adequately? He ran into a random violent asshole. It can happen anywhere at any time to anyone.
That's because, like the majority of people, you are probably quite bad at understanding both randomness, and the normal behaviour of violent assholes.
Um, sir, I have more than a layman's understanding of randomness, thank you very much. This is Hacker News; all kinds of people post here.
I'm not even sure what you mean by "random" in this case; we're talking about one event. I didn't say anything about the distribution of violent assholes in McDonalds or France in general. It certainly wasn't "random" when the first violent guy brings over other employees who happened to also be violent. I don't know about France, but in the US, there are strict laws on what a commercial establishment can do to get someone off the premises. Now, mafia-run operations aside, most places would just ask you to leave and threaten to call the cops if you remain.
Was just meaning that randomness tends to be clumpy and that violent assholes are more likely to be violent assholes when there are a few of them around, so the fact that they were three of them does not particularly decrease the chance of it being a random incident in comparison to there only being one violent asshole.
It only takes one random violent asshole in a position of authority to incite his underlings. That might not be the whole explanation, but the fact there were three of them doesn't mean much in a situation where one of them is likely to be in charge of the others.
Actually Perp-3 wasn't violent, as far as I could tell from the story. I think he mainly called him "perpetrator" because he was close, stood around, didn't do anything and seemed to be okay with what happened.
And of the other two, Perp-1 seemed to have been the manager, while Perp-2 was a customer (judging by the shades in his hair, and the "meal" in front of him).
I'm guessing the customer felt paranoid from the camera and complained to the manager.
What about French laws related to health (are they like NYC and trying to enforce health policy through food ingredient restrictions?) Could that be something they would not want getting out by accident?
What about French labor or immigration law? Could there be some violation that they didn't want documentary evidence of?
McDonald's as a corporation protects the intellectual property of their operations with great effort (but usually in the court of law--as when a manager might try to start their own burger place using the official playbook). Not sure what competitive advantage he could get from a few minutes in the store, though.
But all of these really hinge on the employees thinking that the wearer a) wasn't a government official or inspector (confrontation would just bring more heat and/or b) that the wearer was of lower or weaker status. Mall cop enforcing a poorly understood "no pictures of the mall" policy over-zealously seems like the most likely case--maybe rooted in anti-terrorism paranoia.
(Or else maybe the guy made the mistake of ordering a Royale with Cheese and these employees were not Tarantino fans...)
McDonald's are not really "easily" franchisable. You can't just write a check and buy a McDonald's franchise. You have to be an owner-operator, not an owner-investor. You have to go through crew training, learn all the positions, work as a shift manager, and go to Hamburger University among other things (in addition to having the money), before you are granted a franchise.
I've looked into how McDonalds franchises work before and have learned about money laundering from Breaking Bad: how would using a franchise make sense? McDonalds (and most other franchise businesses) run very tight ships with stock (and marketing): if a business sells 100 burgers McDonalds is going to know, it seems that if suspicions were ever aroused with this McDonalds all the IRS (or whatever the french tax authority is called) would need to do is talk to McDonalds and compare what the franchise reports to McDonalds vs. what their accounts show?
You throw out the merchandise with the highest profit margins while reporting fake sales.
Bars are traditionally popular for money laundering because everyone pays in cash, liquor has absolutely insane mark-up, and it's really easy to pour it down the drain. I imagine a fastfood restaurant would not work as well, but who knows.
Plus if you're not automatically controlling portions, a bottle of liquor can have a very wide range of plausible drinks-sold-per-bottle. Probably by a factor of two or so.
Exactly. You can easily get a few hundred dollars from a single bottle if you do it right. Just think of all those 10-15 USD mixed drinks that have maybe a shot or two of booze in them.
Yes, depending on the drink. You could probably safely forge the accounting for that stuff though, and if not, that stuff is ultra cheap anyway. Soda-water, ice, fruit, etc could all be pretty much ignored.
Without further information I find this very hard to believe.
Laundering money through a fast food restaurant with a supply chain outside your control is a terrible idea. Franchises are required to purchase food centrally.
Q How much cash are you banking this week?
A 1,000,000 EUR
Q So you have sold 500,000 Big Macs.
A Yes
Q Can I see your invoices for 500,000 buns please?
The profit margin is not high enough for it to be worth ordering extra stock and throwing it out. The business would effectively be paying about 70% tax. That's not digestable, even to launder cash.
More plausible reasons: Running a McDonalds franchise and significantly and systematically under-reporting revenue using unauthorised suppliers. But to involve low-level staff would seem unlikely.
This isn't exactly covert surveillance. Some bored member of staff just didn't like the look of this American weirdo with a video camera for an eye, a piece of paper that he waves around and an attitude that he is entitled to buffer everything he sees anywhere in the world and then publicly blame an entire multinational for a minor, local incident. (Not my perception, but I think it likely that it was theirs.)
Whether it's money laundering or underreporting revenues, the implication is that something is awry at this McDonalds. The author is probably doing McDonald's Corp. a service by contacting them. They should address it, immediately.
Precisely. You could also put a kilo of cocaine into a cane or walker. Yet, assaulting every older/disabled person using such would be downright criminal.
Laundering is more often 15 percent. It might go up or down based on the local market, but ex-USA has the highest price I've heard of. Once the money was in France, I'd predict more like 5-10 percent, since the hardest step (initial; moving bulk cash out in the USA thanks to effective AML controls these days) is a lot easier in Europe (fly, boat to North Africa, or drive over relative open or at least "friendly" land borders in the East and Southeast.)
Usually for businesses you use nail salons, tanning, etc which have high labor and service components to price, vs. materials.
They do it by withholding ketchup and other condiments. ;)
I'm almost serious, because I was in this exact McDonald's in 1998 (I'm not making this up) and was verbally abused for asking for more than the provided two packets of ketchup.
In their defense, it was Bastille Day and more than a little bit crazy in there.
Actually, there was a well known Mcdonald's franchisee who had stores in the dozens who was later found out to have laundered millions through it. I don't have the case handy, but he was in what is generally known as the American South. It's hard to say what Mcdonald's region he was in, because they mix up their regions about every couple of years, and he ran stores in multiple states.
It's not an ordinary McDonald's; it's the McDonald's in Paris next to the Arc de Triomphe. Given its location next to one of Paris's largest tourist attractions, it probably serves a much larger number of customers per day than most other McDonald's locations, and it's a potential target for anti-American sentiment. These could both be reasons for enhanced security, although I'm not sure why they'd mind cameras. (OTOH, I'm also not sure why they'd mind cameras if it were a mafia front, since presumably all of the illegal things happen behind closed doors.)
But why would the Mafia care if you took photos? Money laundering would happen behind the scenes, in the accountants office.
Definitely agree that something is shady though. Not sure what, but this reminds me of a recent article on 'The Big Mac' index, which is used as an alternative measure of inflation. Perhaps McDonald's is under orders by the French government to prevent people from taking photos of their menus (and consequently their burger prices) to hide serious inflation problems. ;)
On a side note, if you are going to be in Paris on vacation, the food capital of the world, why the hell are you eating at McD's?
it's not a 'French McD' thing. There are also McCafes in Berlin and I believe lots of other places, they are not regular McDonalds and they oparate aside existing 'normal' McD restaurants. The one on Kurfurstendamm in Berlin is a friendly cozy place filled with books and vintage pictures, nice place to sit for a few minutes just like any other cafe. Nearby there is the classic burger-smelly McD with long queues.
But why would the Mafia care if you took photos? Money laundering would happen behind the scenes, in the accountants office.
In order to launder money you need to pretend you have more customers than you do have. A good way for the police/tax man to catch you is to record your business to prove that you don't have that many customers.
There's a lot of money-laundering fast food franchises. I remember a KFC in Baltimore where the skeleton crew that manned it were barely familiar with the menu, and maintained a largely empty parking lot at all times in what I would imagine to be prime chicken-flogging real estate (it was my neighborhood.)
They got a bit of unwanted attention a few years after I moved away when a junkie died in the single-occupancy bathroom and nobody noticed for three days.
Attacking people with cameras in a McDonalds, at a popular tourist trap, is not how any mafia front would behave if they wanted to last more than a week.
It is possible. There are many reasons people may have been nervous around cameras. They may have been doing a number of illegal or semi-illegal things, like dealing drugs, embezzling something or other, or even cheating on time-sheets.
And none of the above are that hard to believe. Drug deals especially happen all over the place and all the time.
A much more plausible explanation of a story posted by a newly created account to a popular tech aggregator about a technology which competes with (and possibly pre-dates) Google Glass, with a picture of Google Glass on the same page, is that a patent [1] suit is about to break out.
A cynic might think they were trying to harvest accesses from internal to Google IP addresses so that as of today they could show 'knowable infringement' aka treble damages.
A patent suit is always going to break out these days, in anything even remotely connected with mobile computing, so the correlation there isn't very strong.
[edit] The current pace of litigation seems to be leading towards some form of Kessler Syndrome - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome - but made of patents instead of orbital debris, that will finally result in all courtrooms in the world discussing nothing but technical IP cases.
My thoughts exactly, though my sentiment is that Steve Mann deserves some thought from Glass engineers.
I've been following his work for some years (decades) now, and while he is an "interesting" person, he has made many leaps in both design and tech involved, as well as testing.
1) A patent for the 'eyetrap' issued in 2003 with another 8 years or so to run.
2) A huge company with > $100B in the bank who has made a big publicity play betting on their technology that, on the surface clearly infringes.
3) No statements either from either party that a license is in place. In fact the Google Glass page should say "this device is covered by patents ..." but it doesn't.
If in fact no license exists, I see a table in the square with between 100M$ and a 1B$ sitting on it with nobody watching. I would not be surprised in the least that someone decided to try and take it off the table.
Your right they have been spending big chunks of late (I believe the Motorola deal recently closed so that 12B check had to clear the bank eventually).
I continue to believe that Google is perceived to be a 'high value' target by offensive litigators.
The technology used in eyetrap and Google's glasses is sufficiently different that I doubt the eyetrap patent is really being infringed by Google. I doubt Steve has the money or desire to take Google to court anyway, and probably holds the patent as a defensive measure against himself being sued by someone like Google.
Sort of FYI, plaintiff lawyers in the US may choose to work on a contingency basis if they think there is a big payoff at the end, no cost to the plaintiff, just let them sue on your behalf and they are off to the races.
The resemblance between Google Glass and his "Glass" is striking, but the use of the comparative picture and the emphasis on the similarity of the name is at odds with the main thrust of article describing the alleged assault, suggesting an ulterior motive.
If I wanted to show that my technology wasn't "super freaky out there" (which he could easily be accused of by people who don't slurp up Google press releases every day), what better way than to show that it looks almost identical to something that the all-trusted Google is going to be selling in the near future?
It is possible I'm not cynical enough, but if I were trying to gain sympathy for my cyborg-prosthetic plight, the more I could relate it to things people are already comfortable with, the better.
I think the simplest answer is the most likely: That franchise has bumped prices up above what McD's corp allows for and/or has figured out a way to game the computers so they are underreporting their revenue and thus are paying much less in franchise fees than they should be. Given its prime tourism spot, people don't complain, but if pictures got back to corporate, there would be problems.
First the original article was deep-linked into the eyetap.org site. Which is to say it didn't appear as a link on the front page, in fact I didn't find any inlinks to it until this story broke and those are from blogs etc. And it was posted by an account created to post that one link on HN (not like Dr. Mann or someone who regularly participates here stumbled across it and tried to link it.)
Now if Dr. Mann had a running blog about life as a cyborg or his thoughts on wearable computing, and this just happened to come up in that blog as "Oh the saddest thing happened ..." then it might feel more natural. It has since been converted to a one-entry wordpress blog.
As I've said elsewhere, we'll see what the next steps are. Eyetap has certainly gotten a lot of publicity out of the deal so I expect the press will follow up on any fallout here as well.
Seems rather tin-hatty. Is it not more likely that, being next to L'Arc de Triomphe, they simply have extra security for anti-terrorism purposes, and that's why they attacked the guy who was recording everything? I recall a similar incident at Disneyland after 9/11.
These guys even look like private security contractors, and their actions are more easily explained by the mindset endemic in that field than by criminal conspiracy.
I worked for Steve Mann about 15 years ago. Calling him the father of wearable computing is an understatement -- he was the father before it was even possible to create, and yet managed to make it happen essentially on his own a decade or more before it should have existed -- the JFK Apollo of wearables out of his own pocket.
However, he is probably not the least suspicious person when dealing with stupid rule following automatons -- a true hacker in that way. If anyone could make slightly scared and overly paranoid security guys worried, it is probably Steve. Super friendly if you engage with him, but not going to err on the side of social graces over pushing tech forward.
I am pretty sure this was an honest ignorant understanding by some worried people and sort of emphasized out of proportion -- I remember a similar incident at Boston Airport.
The incident at Logan airport was big news in Boston in 2007. It involved an MIT undergraduate wearing a piece of art on the front of her shirt that consisted of a circuit board and LED attached to a battery. It freaked out some airport staff, and the Massachusetts State Police came very close to shooting her:
Different incident from the Steve Mann airport incident. I actually think the Star Simpson incident was caused by her bring really clueless about how paranoid airport security are, getting a dumb guy scared, and then being as rude to security as many civil libertarians can be. (Star is also a friend of mine, and I think she is a lot less likely to almost get killed by security now too :)
I don't understand the benefit to ever being anything but polite to suthority, even while resisting (legally or beyond legally, depending on how important the issue is to you). I "opt out" of rapescans all the time, and am polite, and the whole interaction goes fairly well. (I think it is security theater, but invasive pat downs aren't always inappropriate; just when there is not enough benefit. I'd draw that line as search incident to arrest based on RS and PC developed normally -- just being a passenger on a flight doesn't make you all that much more likely to be a terrorist). Protest in court, in congress, on the Internet, and during the incident, but don't be threatening or rude.
Whenever the Star Simpson incident comes up, I'm surprised how quick people are to blame her. From the accounts I've read, I don't thing she did anything wrong, or even suspicious. (Contrary to reports, the "suspicious substance" in her had was a hardened clay sculpture, not something that could be reasonably mistaken for a block of explosive.)
Since you say she's a friend of yours and might know more details, I'm curious what you think she did wrong.
But this McDonald's is located at 140, Avenue Champs Élysées! It is arguably the one at the most prestigious location in the whole France. This is just one block away from the Arc de Triomphe, on Paris's most famous avenue. I have eaten there myself: http://goo.gl/maps/ofMu
I highly doubt it is a front for a shady business. It would be like claiming the Apple store next to Central Park, New York City, is a front...
Exactly. I think there are several other equally plausible explanations as to why this particular McDonald's would have security to prevent video surveillance.
It is also next to a number of the finest luxury retailers in the world...
The US middle to upper class generally seems to look down at McDonalds as being a place where the poor, fat, or simply lazy go to eat. That's just not the case in other countries.
I can only speak for Paris and Tokyo, and the very upper class may not eat there, but nobody else has a problem with it. It's not just American tourists keeping them in business.
You are taking it out of context. Point being that no celebrity worthy of videotaping would ever be spotted at McDonalds. So their crackdown on video cameras is unrelated to the proximity to the luxury shopping area.
I was actually suggesting they were protecting the neighbors from a potential highly sophisticated criminal mastermind casing the joint to conduct an Ocean's 11 style vault heist of the property next door by drilling through the wall, but I didn't know how to communicate that ;)
I agree. Rich folks don't go to McDonalds too often. However in Europe the brand is perceived a bit differently
If a customer was treated like this in an Apple store, you wouldn't call it a front, but it would be really strange. If a customer was treated this way in an Apple store, and Apple franchised their stores, and the owner of the franchise controlled the staffing, the argument would be valid. Apple and McDonald's can't really be compared the same way in the context of Paul's suggestion.
Isn't it more plausible that this is a key McDonald's location that has some kind of "experimental" menu that they use to test out new product ideas? so taking pictures of the layout or menu could potentially leak trade secrets.
The mafia idea seems quite far fetched, if only because you'd think McDonald's would do a fair bit of work to ensure none of their franchisees are using their brand as a front for organized crime.
Nonsense. I took a camera phone photo at a McD's in Hong Kong earlier this year and several employees freaked out and they all came over to ask me to delete it. Are ALL the stores with no-photo policies mafia fronts?
What did you take a picture of? I remember taking a video of several people sleeping in the back of a Hong Kong (Central) McDonald's and nothing happened. Perhaps no employee saw me?
In high school I worked in a McDonalds. There was actually a poster in the back that said cameras were not allowed on the property. This was around the time of 'Supersize Me'.
I don't remember exactly what the instructions said employees were supposed to do. I believe it was asking people to leave and refer them to McDonalds corporate PR for requests to take pictures. It definitely didn't say assault them.
Clearly these guys were acting way outside of what McDonalds intended for them to do, but I think McDonalds' silly 'no cameras' policy might have incited them.
Why would a McDonald's have security people looking for cameras?
Never been to France. Been to several McDonald's with security guards. I'm pretty sure they had CCTV. Not a front for money laundering - it was that kind of a neighborhood. Eastern Market has gentrified a bit since then ...
Anyway. A no-camera policy could be put in place to deter snoops. Guys working for the other team (Burger King). Maybe they had a bad experience with guys taking pictures of other patrons.
Call me crazy, but operating the highest profile McDonald's franchise in Europe is probably not the first thing I'd consider if I needed to launder some money.
But setting up a venture capital fund in Silicon Valley, given today's ridiculous valuations, seems like an excellent way to launder money.
So if we swap around a few of the particulars -- say, make the guy with the camera black, relocate the scene to the deep South, and then make the three perpetrators good old boys -- a fairly plausible hypothesis would rush to mind, even if it is outside the experience of the typical white American at the typical McDonalds. Mafia fronts certainly exist in the world, but they are probably greatly outnumbered by petty people who, given authority over someone they dislike (+), would abuse it if it were consequence-free.
+ It isn't even necessary to assume that the language barrier or anti-Americanism had anything to do with it. I mean, even in the deep South, a good old boy might try to rip a prosthesis off a black guy's head just because he doesn't like "weird Treky shit."
There are a lot of Moroccans in Paris, from what I understand. Wasn't that what those riots a few years back were about? The Moroccans immigrating but not integrating?
Well, the more people wonder whether French of Moroccan extraction really are French or Moroccan, the less French they are.
I'm French, of no extraction. Please stop. French of Moroccan extraction are French.
Regarding the riots, that's also not relevant to the discussion but because you ask, those riots where the results of 40 years of bad policies, social rejection and latent racism.
The reason I or anyone else would have, to bring up their ancestry is because of the apparent disconnect between the essential Frenchness one expects and the consistently abrasive conduct of some of these implanted peoples.
Take Mahiedine Mekhissi-Benabbad for example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCXtmmj7fJc
Isolated incident? Perhaps. Not part of a larger trend? Maybe.
After all the cake and watermelon, we know that it doesn't add up.
We all want to pretend that it ain't what it really is.
Just like we find ourselves aghast at Marine Le Pen picking up enough seats to front the third largest party in all of France in well under a decade.
Whatever "Essential Frenchness" is, it most certainly is not centered around the milieu of the "beur".
We agree that visitors don't come to France to be greeted by the likes of Galliano but they don't come looking for the likes of Salafists like Mohammed Merah either.
Get your act together before its too late.
You can only sweep these things under the rug for so long.
What I find elusive is this polite society's fevered need to stomp down any finger-pointing in the direction of certain sections of society.
If one were to take a look at their irrational phobia of discussion concerning these sensitive topics it would appear that this brand of furiousness at the very mention of something disagreeable is nothing but an outward veneer to fend off further pointed & valid accusations. It's weak weaponry. It shows you're on tenuous ground. It almost always indicates that you're defending the indefensible. That you're arguments are at best propped up by popular sentiments and not by objective observations. That anything found objectionable by the educated segments of a society is necessarily odious despite the facts.
Essentially you are admitting that you are racist and tired of being dismissed as such. You mention that our points are baseless and ignore tangible facts (which you have by the way failed to provide) and I'd like to bring to your attention that this is basically what racists are commonly accused of.
I would like you to understand that when in doubt and facing two choices one should always prefer what favours human beings over any sort of ideology or other minor consideration; no matter the price (I mean it this way).
But I find your way of reversing things funny and will dismiss you as being a troll and wish you good luck on your road. It's certainly a difficult one.
'Valid accusations'? You gave an example of one person being obnoxious and used it to condemn all others of the same origin. It is profoundly unscientific and illogical to build an argument the way you have.
Certainly they prefer to be friendly accommodated guests in a Parisian McDonalds...
(not that I find it a good idea to eat in McDonalds at all, especially when having the option of French cuisine..;)
Spent 2 weeks in France. The first week was spent partaking in the various options of French cuisine. With that first week being torturous, the second week was spent eating at McDonalds. At least the McD's there sells beer. :)
Some educated people reel in horror at the thought that they aren't all that different from normal people aside from the number of things they've crammed into their head.
I'd take it to mean the size of one's vocabulary in practice, not just the words s/he knows. There's obviously still no necessary implication that a swearer's vocab usage is worse than that of a non-swearer.
Strict logic aside, though, I've anecdotally observed that folks who swear publicly among people they don't know tend to swear easily and often, and given the inherent flexibility of most swear words, I think it's fair to say increased usage usually takes a toll on eloquence and creativity in diction. The relationship isn't necessary, but it's intuitive and observably common.
Interesting ideas, but I'm not convinced by your last point.
Amongst the people I know who swear with reasonable frequency, I don't see any correlation with lack of eloquence. Indeed, I can think without trying very hard think of published authors, professional screenwriters and famous Shakespearean actors who would fit into the "uses profanity reasonably casually" description.
Oh, I don't mean swearing and eloquence are mutually exclusive.
But eloquence isn't binary; it lives on a gradient. Where there's a common, monosyllabic, four-letter word, it could be displacing another with a fair likelihood of being more interesting.
In fact, I'd argue your Shakespearean actors are far more likely to be making a compromise than an ineloquent person who'd otherwise drop the modifier or use a simplistic alternative.
So they're not rendered ineloquent as people, of course; but less eloquent than they'd be without that crutch.
Nothing gratuitous about my use of those words. I thought carefully about using them, and I believe they vividly and correctly convey my vehemence and disdain for racists.
For insults, please refer to the other comment at the same level (which I upvoted and support).
I'll go even further and state that people like you are responsible for the situation. I live abroad and can tell you that latent racism kills all the respect I could otherwise have for Thai people. I'm not silly so I'll move back to France in the coming months (as a direct result of the above). Unfortunately for them, French of foreign extraction don't have the opportunity I have. I'd forgive them if they burnt the bulk of Paris: they are human beings and are being bullied by a society as a whole.
huh. I thought that France didn't have birthright citizenship like the US has. I thought they had a system more like what some of the more radical right wing parties in the US want, where your parent's status has something to do with it, you know, to prevent 'anchor babies.' Hm. According to the wikipedia[1], it's complicated, and I strongly suspect I'm missing some things. It looks to me like they have a 'right of blood' system until you reach the age of majority, then something a little more like a 'right of soil' system after that. I don't know about everyone, but I started working rather before I reached the age of majority. I mean, I wouldn't have starved, but my education would have been severely dampened if i was not able to get legal work until I was 18.
>It's quite simple actually : you're french if you're born on french soil or if one of your parents was french.
according to the wikipedia (which, of course, is not always correct) that is not an or but an and (at least, until the age of majority.) Even assuming that the wikipedia is correct in this case, there is a big difference between automatically gaining citizenship on your 18th birthday, and having a 'path to citizenship' and I have no idea where France is on that continuum.
Well, it has changed a lot, but you've got it. The Code civil articles 19 to 19-4 states that you are not French by birthright. If you were born in France, you become French at the age of 18 (automatically, no question asked) if you have lived at least 5 years (no need to continuity) in France since you're 11 (21-7 Code civil). And you can renounce to your french nationality in the 12 months after the automatic acquisition (until your 19 or the moment at which you join the military). For now, there is some shit about "path to citizenship" in the French law... but it's for adults asking the French nationality.
But, you can ask for the French nationality before, as early as the age of 13, if you lived there the 5 preceding years.
The difference is the automaticity, at 18 it's automatic, before that it's on request.
And under 18, everyone has more or less the same rights, not withstanding the nationality.
In America, many of what I would call the far right are advocating a similar system whereby you aren't granted citizenship at birth if your parents are not citizens, but gain it later on in order to fight "anchor babies" - the idea being that right now, if you are "undocumented" and you have a kid on US soil, the kid is an American right away, and sure, if you are a citizen, your mom can stay and take care of you, and as part of that, your mom gains a reasonable path to citizenship. (US immigration policy seems to be centred around uniting families.)
My reading of the French law makes it look like it would solve this "problem" as the kid isn't french, so you can deport the kid and their parents. Out of curiosity, am I reading that right? that if two undocumented immigrants have a kid and the authorities deport the newborn and the parents and manage keep them out of the country until the kid is 18, the kid is not french at all, even though she was born on french soil?
You are actually right, the European take on immigration is awfully right winged when compared to American... It's due to the way these nations built themselves. US is a country of immigration, it literally constructed itself upon it. While Europe is a place of emigration, immigrants always were looked upon as strangers lurking around. But France also being a latin country, kept something of the Right of the Soil, mixed with the Right of the Blood from northern and eastern European people.
So it's quite bastard... problematic.
Your reading is quite unfortunately not totally correct. A child born or not in France is in theory undeportable, even if their parents are from Mars or undocumented (which seems to be the same to some people...). Actually, under 18 it's impossible to be undocumented... because there is no document to authorize a child to live in France, they all have naturally this right. No visa, nothing.
EXCEPT (there always a fucking horrible exception), if you came into France without requesting a Visa (that is not needed... but you must request it... go figure...) and entered France coming from another state of the European Union (thanks EU for your horrible immigration law). Then the kid can be sent back to the EU country he came from... which is free to deport the kid if the law of this country allow it. (Well except if he came into France without parents... then he is not deportable again).
But then the worse is to come. If the parents are undocumenteds... well, their kid is not deportable... but they are. It's been a long time France dealt with the "anchor babies"... and in the most hypocrite way. So the parents have a choice : Go with their children, or abandon their children... I kid you not. And I let you imagine what most of parents end up deciding... And no, the answer is not what most fox news talk show hosts would think, since they think that these parents only have those children to have documents.
It's sad... but we have problems with the far right since much longer than you... the damage they've done to our law is staggering.
So the final answer is yes. A kid of undocumenteds born in France, can be deported (""""at his parents choice""""), and then he will not be able to respect the 5 years requirements, and not be French at all.
I hope the actual administration is going to change something about that... but well.. I know the won't.
It's not their identity but their nationality that is seen as an issue by the op.
Identity in social science is a complex matter and trying to attack it with "most" is at best inaccurate. Please read the article on identity negotiation which will shed light to the picture.
Lots of British people consider themselves British first, European second. Or Welsh people consider themselves Welsh first, British second. People from Catalonia, may not consider themselves Spanish. Someone born in Ireland to Irish parents, but lived all their life in England might consider themselves Irish, not English.
Europe. It's a melting pot, always has been. There are lots of flexible definitions of nationality.
Its not useful to include the British to imbue some meaning to the conversation.
I single out British because although they claim to a governance described as unitary parliamentary constitutional monarchy they have some of the most decidedly backward understandings on race (esp race-based-class), ethnic origins (Highlanders vs rest), religious denominations (Protestant-Catholic strife) & the concept of nationhood in all of the western world.
For such a modern society their outlook on these matters is striking and confused.
For a nation that made its business to civilize more than half the world at one time, she shows some forbiddingly contradicting understandings on these matters.
> their outlook on these matters is striking and confused
Specifically are you referring to the outlook of politicians, the media, or some other entity? I know you started with 'the British' but surely you're not making sweeping generalisations about the 60 million people who live in the UK. That would be a wee bit racist don't you think?
> the more people wonder whether French of Moroccan
> extraction really are French or Moroccan, the less
> French they are
I'm not saying that it's right to try and exclude them. It's just as stupid as the people in American that want to shutdown immigration to 'dirty foreigners' (forgetting that their ancestors were 'dirty foreigners'). Someone that was originally from Morocco shouldn't be consider 'less French' than someone whose ancestors have been in France for generations, but you can't force this to happen by pretending that people have no past (i.e. country of origin).
Maybe the term 'French-Moroccan' has bad cultural connotations in France that you're trying to get rid of by burying the term, but the term itself, or the facts surrounding it are not inherently bad. If someone is "Chinese-American" or "Japanese-Canadian" or "Mexican-American", the term doesn't make them any less American/Canadian.
> Regarding the riots, that's also not relevant to the
> discussion but because you ask, those riots where the
> results of 40 years of bad policies, social rejection
> and latent racism.
I only bring up the riots with respect to where I got the information that Paris has a large French-Moroccan population.
The "country of origin" is very debatable. I consider myself Uruguayan because I was born here, but my great-grandparents were German. However, someone in Tuscany was asked, and he said "my family has only been here for four centuries". Should someone like Zidane be considered French, or "French of Algerian extraction"?
By the tuscanian's perspective, there are no Americans, only "American of Irish extraction" and so on, while over here we all consider ourselves Uruguayans.
Something you don't understand is that those terms ("Chinese-American") are an US cultural thing.
Many of my fellow countrymen (I'm from Uruguay) are extremely shocked when they go to the U.S. ... we've learned about at most 3 races, and you people have 16 !!! One of my teachers likes an anecdote where, when filling a form at San Diego University, he had to ask the clerk what "race" he was - the clerk decided he was "Hispanic", and then there was a sub-category "White Hispanic" or "Black Hispanic". However, he's descendant from Spaniards and probably the exact same racial composition as racists from California that despise "hispanics" (there was a genocide here in Uruguay and we don't have native blood, we're all descendants of spaniards, italians and other european countries, plus some descendants of slaves).
> It's just as stupid as the people in American that
> want to shutdown immigration to 'dirty foreigners'
> (forgetting that their ancestors were 'dirty foreigners').
That is a gross mis-characterization of the American attitude on immigration. Americans don't want to "shut down" immigration. We Americans take pride in our diversity of heritage and our openess to those who want to come to our country and be an American. Our objection is to people who come here illegaly. We object to those who come here and thumb their nose at the law, draw benefits from our government (and therefore depriving legal citizens of those benefits) and overwhelm our system.
Just so we're all on the same - very ignorant - page, are you talking race in 2012? Come on, todays French are a big mix of whatever. This mix is what is French.
That is just pure left-wing bullshit. If the integration has failed, it has failed. Don't try and smooth over stuff with the current year as an argument, it's just silly!
If you tried walk up the street (or even out of your apartment) away from your little tight and secure neighbourship and started looking around how people are segregated into the suburbs, creating alienation, poverty and criminality, you'd really not spew out that kind of one-liner hypocrite B.S.
It happened at few times too me that I experienced quite a 'macho' or aggressive behaviour 'from people of those cultures'. What would you expect, just be quiet?
I've experienced aggressive behaviour from a lot of white Australians. Should I make a judgement of the entire population based on those anecdotal experiences?
Aggression is everywhere, it has very little to do with your cultural heritage unless you're a bloody Spartan.
If you want don't want to be quiet about your racial prejudices, go find a forum for it. There should be plenty of mindless goons out there willing to discuss it with you. Try the youtube comments section.
You could also get a plausible explanation if you make the three employees drug-addled miscreants and the man with the glasses a vulnerable woman carrying and displaying large amounts of cash and the setting a back alley in Dubai.
This story is strange precisely because it is not a scenario where an explanation springs to mind. People are known to be petty and cruel to the point of assault, but people who are employees of a company like McDonald's in a city like Paris are not.
I took this picture in a Paris McDonalds about 2 weeks ago (near the Hotel de Ville, not the Champs Elysees location): http://cl.ly/image/1g1b3Q0j152V
Notice that the employee is covering her face. She yelled at me after I took the pic - "you can't take pictures here!". Why was she upset? Well in my case the girl covering her face in the pic was very pretty, I took it that she might be a fashion model or aspiring actress. When I ordered her co-worker was very pretty as well and was wearing what was obviously a wig.
Just a hunch, but the Paris McDonalds might offer their employees protection against cameras from tourists to protect the identity of their employees.
Not sure if there is anything to this, but from what I've heard, privacy laws in France are more strict than in the US, for example. That's in theory, in practice, not many people actually care. On the other hand, some do.
Also, in theory, if you shoot with a tripod, you would need to obtain permission from a ministry somewhere, but in practice, you will seldom get bothered by the police.
In any event, photographing people in public places in France will get you more dirty looks than they would in London or NYC, for example --even if most times you will not get any reaction.
I have never met any of these people; not at events, not at parties, not on vacation (to numerous countries). Where are these 'lots of people' besides at McDonalds France apparently? Most people I know would 'strike a pose' when someone takes a picture, even if they don't know the someone.
Note; I don't take pictures, but to get upset about it; isn't that a bit over the top? You could kindly ask to refrain but actually spend energy and get upset for something so unimportant.
If you're at a party or event, having people take pictures is often expected (but not always) and so people will not generally have a problem with it. If someone happens to catch you while taking a general street scene or on the beach, its expected you might end up in their photo.
But if someone pulls a camera and specifically aim it at you, on the other hand?
I'd be pissed off too, as it is something that I'd see as extremely rude for someone to specifically target me for pictures without informing me about why they are targeting me specifically. But I've never had it happen, nor have I've been around other people who have had it happen to them, exactly because in the parts of Europe I've spent most of my life, it's pretty much considered totally unacceptable. People who want to take pictures of specific people generally do come up and ask.
Depending on context I might very well confront them about why they were doing it, and might very well be quite angry.
> Note; I don't take pictures, but to get upset about it; isn't that a bit over the top? You could kindly ask to refrain but actually spend energy and get upset for something so unimportant.
It's highly culturally and contextually dependent. If someone starts taking pictures of you specifically in the street somewhere where taking pictures of strangers is considered unusual and rude, there's every reason to wonder why someone is prepared to break strong social norms to single you out and somehow don't want to ask you first.
If you're somewhere where everyone expects to be photographed, on the other hand, and the typical purpose is known, most people will happily accept it, or stay away.
I see what you mean, but still, it wouldn't upset me unless he/she is a stalker and I find him/her taking pics of me on regular basis singling me out. For just a one time snap in the street specially focused at me by a complete stranger I wouldn't even think twice about it. It happened to me in southern/middle america countries as i'm really big and bearded so in the middle of Guatemala city I would attract attention.
But why would you be pissed off exactly? I mean I understand you don't 'like it', but why the strong emotion. EU people are pretty open minded (I'm from the EU) and I am just surprised about the emotion level here. Whether I 'agree' or not; it seems so overkill.
You need to try this stunt in France then because you are totally misguided about "most people." I've had scared reactions from people in front of me just for looking at my own camera's pictures.
The climate in France is that people should not get photographed without their permission. Even further, some claim that taking photos of their house is too much. So the whole atmosphere is a by-default hostility to photographers, which should be extra careful.
You need to try this stunt in France then because you are totally misguided about "most people." I've had scared reactions from people in front of me just for looking at my own camera's pictures.
The climate in France is that people should not get photographed without their permission. Even further, some claim that taking photos of their house is too much. So the whole atmosphere is a by-default hostility to photographers, which should be extra careful.
It would be very easy for any ordinary McDonald's to have rules against filming in their store. Heck, just one incident like this and the manager would instantly ban cameras from ever being in his store again. If word of the stink got above the manager's head, then corporate would ban cameras in every store. I get told no pictures allowed in lots of NYC stores that aren't even in tourist areas and aren't good candidates for money laundering. Can I come to a meeting at your offices and film every single thing I see, including the screens of any workstations I pass by walking to the meeting room?
If you want to launder money, then you need cash transactions. McDonalds was one of the first restaurants to have eftpos transactions at every store (at least in Australia).
I can think of several better ways to launder money than running a McDonalds.
I'd say it's far more likely to be a tighter than usual security restriction due to the (perceived or real) threat from terrorism.
Little background here (I'm French and grew up in Paris):
MacDonald's branding in France are really different in France than it is in the US, especially in Paris. Food is quite tasty, meat is fairly good, and even the colors are different: the flashy red/yellow has been replaced by a classy green/black two years ago.
And this specific MacDonald's is one of the biggest and best located in Paris (Champs Elysées)
Money laundering may have been a plausible explanation for a random US MacDonald's, it's really far fetched for this one.
> (...) the colors are different: the flashy red/yellow has been replaced by a classy green/black two years ago.
I believe it's the same case pretty much in whole Europe. In all countries I've been to for the last two years or so (Poland, Czech Rep., Germany, Netherlands, Switzerland), the McD branding involved dark green background rather than vivid red one.
> Food is quite tasty, meat is fairly good (...)
That's generally correct, too. I have no idea about U.S. but here it seems that most of the shady reputation fast food gets is not because of the quality of ingredients, but the way they are processed to make the meals, i.e. almost exclusively fried with lots of added fat.
Is this the real PG throwing around conspiracy theories? Wow.
I'm French and have been living in Paris my whole life. In France you're not allowed to take pictures or movies of people without their consent. If you try to take pictures of strangers in the subway you will be heckled and possibly assaulted, and the police will do nothing to stop it.
I'm not defending my country here -- I'm a photographer and resent this a lot, this attitude is stupid -- but this is how it is.
> No one at an ordinary McDonald's would even notice such a device.
Every fast food and most retail shops now have "private security" who are untrained/uneducated people standing at the door and watching people come and go. I would bet none of them speaks a word of English so it's unlikely the letter from a doctor in the US meant anything to them. They felt entitled to prevent the taking of pictures in the restaurant and felt they were being played with false official documentation.
(Go try and take pictures at any McDonald's in Paris or any other fast food joint and you'll be met with extreme hostility, and possibly physical aggression).
This privatization of security is a very big problem and a scandal in its own right (the rule of law means the state has a monopoly on legitimate violence) and I try hard to never comply with what those security people tell me, and tell them to call the police if they're unhappy -- the fact is that they have absolutely zero legitimate power but since nobody knows it, they have a lot of semblance of power.
But I would be very very surprised if McDonald's in France (on the Champs Élysées!) had restaurants that were a mafia front. Undocumented labor is a more likely possibility, but again, no restaurant or in fact no retail place in Paris will let you take pictures inside their premises without a very strong confrontation. Go ahead and try.
Does this mean those places also ban people from using smartphones or normal cameras on the premises? There is no indications that Mann was actively taking pictures of strangers. And it would makes sense for a tourist to take pictures of his family at a restaurant. How are tourists normally treated when they try to take pictures of their vacation?
As I said above, you can take pictures of monuments, outdoors, and of people you know, indoors, where it makes sense (a restaurant, people at your table).
But if you try to take pictures of strangers -- anywhere -- you will generate a very aggressive reaction.
These rules are not written down so they're hard for strangers to understand; it's very possible for a tourist to feel photography is totally "free" in France when visiting tourist locations, and then find herself in the middle of a fight because she took her camera out of her bag at the wrong time in the wrong place (never in the subway for example!)
The funny thing with these kinds of "rules" / customs is that you internalize them; I can't even imagine myself taking pictures in the subway...
> The funny thing with these kinds of "rules" / customs is that you internalize them; I can't even imagine myself taking pictures in the subway...
I've lived in several countries, and have inadvertently offended people in all of them. Well-travelled, educated people, who don't realise that some specific cultural norms are just that - cultural.
I'm a US person, and on a recent trip in the US South took photos inside a (public) bathroom on more than one occasion, when I saw something entertaining. Not photos of people, of course, but there were other people in the bathroom on both occasions, and no one seemed shocked or worried.
I'm confused about how this aversion to cameras can possibly hold when nearly everyone is carrying one or more cameras at all times. Does everyone in Europe avoid using their smartphone except in the privacy of their own home? As cameras shrink and are built into pretty much everything, is this culture changing, or are products simply going to be built without cameras for the European market?
When you're using a smartphone, you're usually pointing it towards the ground / 45° angle. You're not in a position to take good photographs of people. So others know you're not taking photos.
I was in France recently (Paris) and I took pictures all over the place with a very visible film camera - including on the train.
Of course I didn't go shooting strangers directly in their face. I think I'd you do that most anywhere people will get upset because what business do you have taking a close-up picture of a stranger without their permission? That's an intrusion just about anywhere.
At least in Paris, I found the city to be crowded with tourist snapping photos of everything. I didn't see anybody giving the slightest care. I had always imagined France to be a photo-friendly place considering the reverence for film and art and being the birthplace of photography. Perhaps I didn't see enough but, at least, it's hard for me to imagine people getting violent over photographs just based on my personal experience. Because with the amount of tourist taking pictures there would be blood running on the streets.
That's an exaggeration. I'm Belgian and recently went to France and took pictures of us enjoying our dishes. I didn't notice the personnel having an issue with that. So it is not a general rule.
But the spirit of bambax' and others' messages is true: in Europe, customer is not king and should behave in a way that pleases the shopkeepers or restaurant owners. This is more true the closer you are to the capital or the city's hot spot.
And more generally, one has to develop a sense of what is right in a particular place, not assuming that the same customs apply as in your home country. Americans don't have a good record at that, I'm afraid. As someone pointed out, you're bound to inadvertently offend people, but rushing into a place with a camera is a good way to start learning from your mistakes.
That being said, the violence displayed by this particular personnel is completely over the top and should not be tolerated, not by customers and not by law.
Depends, as always, on where you go; we avoid Paris like the plague (for assorted reasons, rudeness of owners is one of them), but in villages and small cities (south of france, belgium, netherlands, germany) I feel very much like a king. Especially if you speak the language.
If you actually read the post, you would see that the device would normally purge its buffer after it finished augmenting / vision processing those frames. Only because it was forcefully shut off was the data retained.
You make a convincing case. I didn't realize attitudes toward photography (and security in shops) were so different in France. I've taken quite a lot of pictures there, including inside shops and restaurants IIRC, but somehow I must never have tripped this rule.
How embarrassing to have produced an instance of the indignant and uninformed speculation that I so often groan to find at the top of HN comment threads.
You can take pictures of monuments; you can take "general" pictures in the street; you can take pictures of people sitting at the same table as you in a restaurant.
But if you specifically target a stranger in the street, or take pictures in a shop, etc. then it will cause a stir.
>>You can take pictures of monuments; you can take "general" pictures in the street; you can take pictures of people sitting at the same table as you in a restaurant.
Fun fact of the day: It is in violation of the law to publish a photo of the Eiffel Tower at night without permission, because the visual is under copyright.
A French court ruled in June 1990 that a special lighting display on the tower...was an "original visual creation" protected by copyright. The Court of Cassation, France's judicial court of last resort, upheld the ruling in March 1992. The Société d'exploitation de la tour Eiffel (SETE) now considers any illumination of the tower to be under copyright. As a result, it is no longer legal to publish contemporary photographs of the tower at night without permission in France and some other countries.
Different as compared to what? Google “right to bear camera” and you will find many documented cases of policepersons, people in charge, and passersby harassing photographers, in cases photographers that were not using their equipment. These take place in countries that are otherwise considered civilized, all over the world.
Clearly, he means "different as compared with the United States," where it's legal to photograph anything in a public space. But I get the sense you're itching for a fight about photographers' rights.
Although McDonald's isn't a public space, there would be several rungs in the ladder between "sir, you can't take photos in here" and a physical altercation.
The same exact thing happens in Italy and Spain that I know. I believe the breeding ground is similar.
Also the employee-client relationship is radically different to what people in the US, Canada or UK are used to. Generally people are polite, but in case of any sort of conflict employees are protected and the client is assumed to be wrong and told to fuck off. As opposed to "the client always being right". There must be a middle ground somewhere.
I live in the UK. People in the UK get fired with a pat in the back. People in the continent cost a small fortune to fire unless they're under temp contracts.
> the employee-client relationship is radically different to what people in the US, Canada or UK are used to
The closest to France I've ever come was reading "Sixty Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong: Why We Love France but Not the French" ( http://www.amazon.com/Sixty-Million-Frenchmen-Cant-Wrong/dp/... ) and it made this point: in France, a store is considered an extension of the proprietor's home, and a customers is like a guest who has decided to drop in. He must first find the proprietor and introduce himself, and he must be on his best behavior.
Wacky.
...but it is entirely congruent with the point being made here.
Your post is nonsense. There is no excuse, I repeat, ABSOLUTELY no excuse for ripping up an official document.
And excusing this bevaviour is very suspicious to me. Then, obviously you don't understand mafia as a common term, France is FULL of organized crime. There are attacks with RPGs on money transporters at the Swiss border every week. As you lack this kind of information, maybe this link will help you: http://193.252.228.130/personnes1.asp?T=R&P=1
Btw, those people who don't want to appear on pictures are migrants from northern Africa too, not because they are illegal but because of their superstition. Maybe your post is a bit too political correct because you describe the French as backwards people which they aren't.
As a fellow Frenchman I can confirm everything bambax said!
Maybe one other explanation for this incident is the amount of hidden camera documentaries airing on national TV recently. I can imagine these security agent being briefed to avoid at all costs having another Super Size Me shot at their location.
In France, taking a picture of a stranger can be compared to entering his home, unannounced, and helping yourself with the content of his fridge.
The reaction can be mild "Hey, WTF??" to aggressive (being punched in the face).
In the US, if you go to the police saying "I entered this guy's home and took a Coke from his fridge, and next thing you know he punched me!! For a can of Coke!?! Can you believe that! Please arrest him!" the police will likely tell you "you're lucky you didn't get shot".
In France the photographer is considered the perpetrator. The police will not help him (and maybe worse if he insists...)
Also, "assault" is very different here than in the US; grabbing someone by the arm or pushing him around isn't considered assault (more like a disagreement).
That said, you can get very far with asking first: many people, if asked, won't mind being photographed (but you have to ask every person, and respect every decision, which would make the whole process pretty complex).
French student in law here. And you're so wrong it's painful to read. Police isn't acting, because damages are small, not a single ITT probably (ITT is the measure of personal damages in french law), little damage to a gadget, and the guy is not French, so the case will probably never go anywhere. That's probably why police didn't react. Not because he was considered the perpetrator... Actually the French law is totally permissive about taking photos. It's the publishing of those who may cause a problem... and even in that, the Cour de Cassation does not enforce it all the time, or with a regular severity. Maybe some persons don't like you taking photos of them. But you should not excuse them saying "it's cultural... we don't like it". No you're wrong, you don't like it, they don't like it, some people don't. Other don't give a fuck. And if you don't like it... it doesn't change a thing. It's totally legal to do it, so reacting like a douchebag is not only stupid but wrong. And actually, as described probably a felony.
And please the ... "Also, "assault" is very different here than in the US; grabbing someone by the arm or pushing him around isn't considered assault (more like a disagreement)." the description of what happened is not just "grabbing someone by the arm". But anyway you're wrong, because even in that situation, grabbing someone by the arm an pushing him around is quite exactly the main case of application of Article 222-13 of the Penal Code, under the condition n°8. And the Criminal Chamber of the Cour de Cass' has said millions of times that an actual physical assault is not needed to qualify assault (which in France is called 'violence volontaires'), but only a psychological one, or something that shocked emotionally someone is enough. So yeah... it's maximum 3 years and 45k€ in fine for each of the 3 perpetrators.
Oh, and by the way... if you think that punching a man in the face just because he entered your home without authorization and took a Coke is enough to justify legitimate defense your totally wrong. And you should go live in Florida with Mr. Zimmerman. No it's not. The legitimate defense of property (because the guy wasn't menacing you physically, just abusing your property require some details like : Asking the guy to drop the can and get the fuck out of your house before attacking him physically. And that the retaliation is proportionate. The punch, if soft, would pass this test. The gun certainly not, not for a Coke. And if you broke is nose and jaw, probably not.
Please everyone, do not take what anyone saying his french as an expert opinion on French society and French law (sadly, this also includes me).
I wasn't talking about the law, but about customs; and the letter of the law doesn't mean much anyways -- what matters is how it's enforced.
But according to the letter of the law you appear to be mistaken: article 222-13 of the Penal Code says the exact opposite of what you make it say.
Article 222-11 says that acts of violence resulting in more than 8 days of "ITT" (incapacité totale de travail) carry a penalty of up to 3 years in jail.
Article 222-13 says that acts of violence resulting in less than 8 days of ITT carry the same penalty if and only if they satisfy one of 18 special cases.
This means that acts of violence that
1/ result in up to 7 days of ITT (total work inability)
In plain English: if two adults fight and the fight doesn't result in one of them being unable to work for more than a week, then no one can be charged with anything.
Yeah, I know you're speaking of customs. But customs never should be used as an excuse for illegal behavior. Its like saying, yeah there was a lot of child abuse in the seventies, but it was the custom back then (I'm not comparing child abuse complacency and over-reaction to photography, I'm making a point about the structure of your argument).
And, plus, your lecture of the French customs is radically different from mine. I do not recognize myself and my compatriots in what your describing. Never saw someone react like your saying of photography. So maybe... you should remember that you're not Levi-Strauss, you just saying what you think about french... It's a commonplace your spreading like "French people are cocky and smell" or "Americans are stupid, you know that they don't believe in evolution". What you're describing is at most a fringe behavior. Neither you nor I are sufficiently aware of the inner complexity of French society (or American, of Papuan) to make so bold judgments. You say it's normal. I say it's not. Who's right ? I'm as French as you are, and no less expert than you (by no less I mean => Not at all). It's you say, I say. No solution for it.
Then you say that it's not about the letter of the law, but how it's enforced. Ahh, then we are coming to a matter that I know a little better than anthropology, see, because I actually had to deal with the police, I've spent time in prison (happily not as an inmate), I've studied law and you know... it's applications. Because, even if a lot of people think we keep our heads in the letter of the law, we actually spend a lot of time trying to understand what's actually the practice of it. And heck, I even had to go report some small felonies that against my very person, and not other people.* And what you're reporting as the "attitude" of the police, is pretty much what almost every layman think of them. Because most of the population despise the police, and think they're useless etc. etc. But you know what, It's not accurate. Yes there is some truth to it. Yes the police won't do all that the law ask them to do. Yes they do a lot of abuses (holy shit, a "PV d'arrestation" is some of the funnier readings you can find around, it's what I read when I need to take a break). And yes, you can come up with a lot of stories of people who had terrible experiences with them (but yeah you know what, no one who had good experiences with the police brags about it), and cases where the police did nothing about a serious case etc. etc. The French police tv series like PJ, Navarro, etc. are full of those. But, well, go to a tribunal, and look at the roll of cases you'll see that the second or third chief of accusation is "violences volontaires ayant entrainé une ITT de moins de 8 jours" (behind small drug related affairs and small theft). But you're right almost half the time it's not because of the 222-13 of the Penal Code. But under Art. R.625-1 of the same Code (section reglémentaire). It's a misdemeanor, fifth class. 3000€ of fine. It's not much... but you should not forget that the 21 special cases described in the 222-13 that transform the misdemeanor in a felony are really broad. And in the situation described, it is almost certain that the Special case n°8 is qualified (if more than one person participated in the assault, but there is a lot of special case so broad as : if the person was drunk or under effect of some drug, if the person acted upon premeditation, because of the race or sexuality, if the victim is an infirm, pregnant, old, under 15 etc). The Public Ministry knows how to make sure you can be arrested under the 222-13.
But, then anyway, even if you fall outside of the the 21 special cases, you can still have a financial penalty.
And by the way, even if ITT has the word Travail in it (work) it has nothing to do with your work capacity (yeah I know, it's an horrible name, legal people are trying to change it to Total Temporary Incapacity)(heck, how would we measure it for babies?). It measures how your day-to-day life was affected. If your d...
> And yes, you can come up with a lot of stories of people who had terrible experiences with them (but yeah you know what, no one who had good experiences with the police brags about it)
That is exactly the reason why I always make a point of "bragging" about having a positive experience with the police. Which has been about 2 or 3 times (fire, mugging, and a local robbery I happened to witness). Glad to have them. Even though afaik they never caught those responsible for the last two, it's how they dealt with the victims that makes it count.
> Can either of you explain why the French police does not get involved?
Steve Mann says it was a factor of luck: "I also contacted the Embassy, Consulate, Police, etc., without much luck".
But IMO it could also be that he didn't have a clue what he was doing. What was he expecting to accomplish with the embassy or the consulate??
You're not going to have much "luck" with an embassy unless you're being arrested or personally held at the police station.
And you're not going to have much "luck" with a consulate unless you need assistance with formal documents regarding international relations such as passports, visas or permits for international trade.
And the police. Correct me if I'm wrong but if I'd be in New York City, say in a posh area near Wall Street, and I get into a scene in a McDonalds where somebody physically assaults me. I go to the NY police and try to explain, either in French or in broken English with a very thick French accent, how much "luck" do you think I would have?
I would go to the police for one thing and one thing only, which is to file a report so I can make an insurance claim. Because that's the only person who speaks your language and gets paid for helping you and has a 24/7 worldwide hotline: your travel insurance agent! Not to mention they have a lot of experience with exactly these kinds of troubles.
Especially if it's about damage to his important medical aid, which surely the same anonymous doctor that wrote the letter that supposedly explains he requires it for medical reasons, told him he might want to consider insuring separately before travelling abroad.
> In France you're not allowed to take pictures or movies of people without their consent.
"Droit à l'image" covers use, duplication and distribution of pictures of people, and only if said people can be identified on the picture. I don't know about any french law that forbids actually taking pictures of people in a public place. In a private area, there's Code Pénal, Art. 226-1, and even then, the law says that unless they explicitly disagree, their consent is assumed. Once the shot is taken, you don't have the right to publish the image without their explicit consent, and if no consent of publication is given, you can publish the image as long as people cannot be identified.
(FWIW one can take and publish pictures of goods to one's heart's content, provided it causes no harm)
> If you try to take pictures of strangers in the subway you will be heckled and possibly assaulted, and the police will do nothing to stop it.
There is no legitimate reason for a nearby police member not to try to stop someone physically assaulting someone else, whatever the reason of the assault may be. Their duty is to at least inquire into the situation.
> There is no legitimate reason for a nearby police member not to try to stop someone physically assaulting someone else
In France the photographer is considered the perpetrator. The police are more likely to help the people being photographed to not be photographed (if necessary, by taking the camera by force), than to protect the photographer. ("More likely" is an overstatement; the most likely behavior is that the police won't do anything either way).
> the most likely behavior is that the police won't do anything either way
Are you serious? So you say that in France, I can just beat up a random guy with a camera and claim that they tried to take a picture of me? And the police will just say "yeah, whatever, carry on. Need a stick?" Not very credible.
Also, if it were done in front of a policeman, he may do something (or not -- if he's in charge of monitoring traffic he won't do anything about an altercation between pedestrians) -- but in most places there isn't any policeman.
If you go to the police after the fact and say that someone hit you in the face because you were taking a picture of them, then I guarantee you will elicit zero sympathy and will be made to wait a looong time before anyone writes down your complaint (which will go nowhere anyhow).
But of course circumstances matter; if you shoot people in the street then even policemen monitoring traffic will intervene; if someone cuts your arm in half because you were carrying a camera then the police will help!!
No he is not. He evidently does not have a clue about how the police and law work here in France.
Actually, the only situation when police really don't do anything, is when you come to them with petty crimes/misdemeanors and are unable of right away identify, or provide something to easily identify the offender. I've rarely seen the police not acting when evidences of identity are provided. Like in this case. If they didn't react... it's probably because the victim wasn't European... so taking on this case would be complicated and probably end in nothing. Because most often, when the victims are strangers the case tend to end in the trash after a while. And policemen don't like the idea of doing work for nothing. But they should do it. And act more often than not.
Note : Actually the Police may be doing something, but he OP don't know it. Because what's true about French policemen, is that they're horrible at communicating.
That sounds more like what I'm used to seeing. I guess the parent was being a little hyperbolic, or simply hastily generalizing what may be true for professional photographers (i.e. conspicuously pointing large gear in the face of people without asking for their permission). Even so, you'll find millions of your typical subway candid shots taken in Paris on the internet. I don't suppose all of these shots resulted in the photographer being assaulted in front of a consenting crowd.
The camera was not taking pictures because they were not stored.
Its is not the police's job to judge if anybody acted in self-defense or not, the job of the police is to show up(!) and restore order. Judges do the rest. Also in France.
>They felt entitled to prevent the taking of pictures in the restaurant and felt they were being played with false official documentation.
I naturally assumed that if Mann was going to offer the documentation to defend his wearing of the special glasses, to someone in France, then he would have been prepared with a notarized official French translation (heck, he's from Canada...).
If he seriously tried to give English-only documentation -- and that was really his plan to convince people in France that his glasses were legit -- that seriously changes my opinion of the events.
He should not have needed papers at all to convince people of anything. Wearing this kind of glasses, or bearing a photo camera, in public places, like restaurants is totally legal.
And actually, official translation are horribly expensive.
But as far as the translation goes, you can get forms for the country you're going to. That's how it was for Turkey, anyway. I don't know about France.
The form is multi-lingual (English/French/Turkish, in my case). The doctor fills in the forms and as long as he pays attention to the proper medical Latin words (and stamps it!) it should be fine. At least for border officials.
Still, from the lack of details in the blog post--he only refers to it as "a letter from my doctor"--whereas he painstakingly mentions every irrelevant detail in the story, I'm guessing that letter wasn't very complete, official, or even partially translated.
And while you are right that he shouldn't have needed it, trying to calm down an angry and aggressive French person by showing them a letter written in English is not very likely to improve the situation, and is indeed likely to get torn up in the process.
Which may not be right, but it's also not very smart.
You cannot do money laundering in a McDonald because you need to buy everything from McDonald. It is too easy to easy to control for the authorities. In France, money laundering is normally performed in small pizza restaurants or way easier, moved across the border to be handled in casino-like shops in Germany where it is easy to open such bet/play shops.
For the why this reaction, I have no ideas, plain stupidity is often the good answer.
I believe it was at this McDonald's that I was deliberately short-changed without a recepit. This is a big tourist point where daily sales must easily reach five thousand. These guys are probably trying to cover a simple operation to rip people off.
If I recall correctly (murky here, I didn't really care and may be mixing this with another memory or a different location) the cashier even nonchalantly covered the front-facing display with his hand (this actually took a very unusual gesture), so I couldn't see what the entered amount was. I paid in cash, the sum was tiny, and I didn't really care. It's McDonald's.
> No one at an ordinary McDonald's would even notice such a device. Ergo this was not an ordinary McDonald's, but one with security people looking for cameras.
Not the case. McDonald's employees in Prague, CZ got pretty pissed at me for taking picture, and were quite rude about it. I think it's McDonald's corporate policy to not allow pictures, at least in EMEA. Lots of stores in high-traffic areas have private security. I think this incident was probably caused by power-crazed security implementing McDonald's policy in an inappropriate way.
Franchise restaurants are terrible avenues for money laundering because of all the internal controls put in place by the parent company. Cash registers are linked directly back to central servers under control of the parent company, so that the franchisee does not gain an opportunity to skim on the revenue share that is passed back up.
The same tight controls put in place by the parent org to assure they receive their full revenue share, and so that they can monitor store sales, inventory demand, and all the other good things that come with instant centralized sales info etc. etc. also prevent money laundering as a side effect.
Further, both McDonalds stores on the Champs-Elysees are corporate owned and operated. McDonalds in France has a high rate of corporate store ownership and operation compared to other countries (20% in France compared to 15% globally) because of a previous bad experience with the national franchisee (it was fought out in a court battle[1]) and that store being a marquee store for the brand in Europe.
My only theory as to why this happen is that the staff were confronted with a situation that they were not accustomed to dealing with and that caused them to react poorly. McDonalds is a highly controversial company and because of their profile they are constantly being targeted by individuals, groups and the media (see 'supersize me', 'fast food nation', 'mclibel' etc.). The security at this store may have mistaken this visitor, who had a camera attached to his glasses which could be considered 'hidden', with somebody who was looking to expose the restaurant in some way.
when I was at a McDonald's in Madrid Spain, it was the only place that a person at the front told me to put my camera away and delete the pictures that I had on my camera. I proceeded to walk out of the building. The man inside followed me for a few steps before letting me go.
"Possibly because it was a mafia front. If you wanted to launder money, a fast food restaurant in a popular location"
There are many easier ways to launder money then to do it while operating a McDonalds (which has pretty high vetting for franchises. It's not trivial to be awarded a McDonalds franchise and certainly not in a top location). And most importantly if you are doing something illegal the last thing you want to do is to draw attention to yourself. Not to mention the fact that even if they were laundering money they wouldn't exactly have much to hide from pictures from a random guy with a weird head device.
>No one at an ordinary McDonald's would even notice such a device. Ergo this was not an ordinary McDonald's, but one with security people looking for cameras. Why would a McDonald's have security people looking for cameras? Possibly because it was a mafia front. If you wanted to launder money, a fast food restaurant in a popular location would be a good place to do it.
Wait, what? An international fast food franchise as a mafia front? And for laundering money? So that the mafia also has to check in with the multinational's franchise title owners?
And all that in Paris?
How about some stupid security guy noticed the device and thought (correctly) that it contained some covert camera, and that the guy that has it is possible trouble (journalist investigating the place, a pervert, etc)?
The premise that "no one at an ordinary McDonald's would even notice such a device" is also deeply flawed, what with the paranoia about a) terrorism and b) pedophile photographers these days.
They don't even have to "look for cameras" actively, all it takes is some customer to point it to them "hey, there's a guy with some strange device over there, something fishy is going on".
Was reading wikipedia and found this article, which reminded me of this post.
The transfers were small, equivalent to about 12,000 to 24,000 Philippine pesos (500 to 1,000 US$), and would be handed over each night at a Wendy's or a karaoke bar.
Upsetting but I don't think there's much that can be done about it. The local police or gendarmes are unlikely to have the time to pursue it and I doubt any witnesses will come forward (from the staff at least). Just a case of three "beuf" (as the French would say) taking a dislike to a geek. Sadly, there's a sub-section of young(ish) male French society that is extremely macho and very closed minded when it comes to people not fitting the mould. They're the same jerks that will harass a girl if she's wearing a short skirt (because obviously that means "she's up for it!")
> The computerized eyeglass processes imagery using Augmediated Reality, in order to help the wearer see better, and when the computer is damaged, e.g. by falling and hitting the ground (or by a physical assault), buffered pictures for processing remain in its memory, and are not overwritten with new ones by the then non-functioning computer vision system.
The computer broke and accidentally took these handy photos of his perpetrators? Yeah I don't believe that for a second.
I'm betting that it was always recording video and in order to release these images publicly or in a courtroom, he needs a story about how it "malfunctioned" when he was roughed up.
Side tangent, that's exactly what's creepy about this glass technology. There's no physical indication that a picture/video is being recorded, like someone reaching into their bag, pulling out a camera, and pressing a button. Will someone be recording me as I'm talking to them? I'll never know.
It is plausible that the software stores recent imagery in a circular buffer for processing purposes and that the assault caused the software to crash, leaving the data in the buffer. Besides, Steve's work is university funded research so it wouldn't be hard to have the code analyzed if it came to that.
Regardless, your paranoia about such devices filming you unawares is misplaced. There are many off-the-shelf recording devices that are far less conspicuous; you have probably already been photographed hundreds of times by such devices. At least with these head mounted devices you have a definite visual cue that a camera is pointed at you.
A reasonable practice is to assume you're being filmed when not in a place or around people you trust.
I believe in the future it would be legal to film everywhere 24x365, and it also will be legal to shoot the bad guys (with weapons, not video) if they did some bad thing AND you film it.
And then everybody will behave, because if they don't they might get shot. Sort of a high-tech wild west.
(and you don't have to be a hard ball, just trigger the wearable fire response system).
>and it also will be legal to shoot the bad guys (with weapons, not video) if they did some bad thing AND you film it.
You can already do this in nearly any jurisdiction in the US as long as you're justified in using deadly force. It might make it easier to prove you were justified, but it wouldn't be anything new.
If the suggestion is that you'd need video to prove you were justified, that's a huge can of worms. You'd effectively be forcing people to choose between filming 24x7 and dealing with the potential privacy and self-incrimination issues there or being stripped of their right to self-defense.
There is a difference between filming in public and private spaces.
In most common-law jurisdictions filming in public is completely legal, even filming an event put on by a private entity (ie a sports game - there is no property in a spectacle). Note also the proliferation of CCTV in public spaces in many countries.
On private property you have the right to set rules and effectively dictate who is welcome and who is trespassing. Hence you can't take a video camera into a theatre etc.
There is a grey area when your public filming infringes on the reasonable expectation of privacy of another person. I doubt anyone here would take too kindly to a stranger following them 24/7 with a video camera.
A few people have voiced concern that this is a made up story. I have to admit that I belong to that bunch.
I would imagine that if a store had a concern that this was an ... odd individual, carrying a video recording device, recording customers, employees and the store itself, I would send out security to escort the person out. But I would do so with a great trepidation, because of lawsuits.
There MUST be something missing in this story. It would take great recklessness and lack of ethics to completely fabricate the story, but it is possible.
More likely is that there were some leading events that we have not been told about.
The biggest red flag for me is how he is suddenly assaulted without any warning or prior dialogue taking place. That doesn't mean that any assault was justified, but it means we are not being told something.
You should delete that right away. What good do you think is going to come of putting his home address, phone number, and wife's name (!?!?!) on the internet?
Oh you bunch of drama lama's - I deleted it though I'll repeat his email address:
CEO's email address jim.skinner@us.mcd.com
But seriously his home address along with the other mcdonals executives are a 5 year olds googling efforts away. I reveled nothing new that was not liberly plastered all over the internet.
Maybe if they handled complaints better then people would not have to write to them directly and or sue them directly, food for thought.
Nor any harm, given nobody else had then it's relevance was tangable. Just appears people by default assume others are crazed nutters, but in my country we have not assasinated any of our Prime ministers and dont carry guns so the cultural aspect of such information is embrassed in the spirit it is bestowed - in good faith.
While this incident is terrible, there's one thing Dr. Mann doesn't make entirely clear in the article.
The contact information for McDonald's France is quite easily found at http://www.mcdonalds.fr/contacts. It's not an e-mail address, but rather a phone number, but the way the article is written it's not at all clear if he's tried to contact them by their publicly available phone number?
He says that he tried to call, and his statement looks clear to me:
> I also tried calling the main number, at mcdonands.com: 1-800-244-6227, but got a voice recording that was totally unintelligible (very loud and distorted), and it appears this number does not work.
I tried the number just now, and in fact, it is exactly as he describes: you get a loud distorted unintelligible message for a 3-4 seconds and then it hangs up.
As Dr. Mann is likely calling from Canada, as I also am, it occurred to me that this particular 800 number might not work from Canada. Some USA-based 800 numbers work, and some don't -- it depends on the calling area that the 800-number subscriber wants to pay for.
Listening to the message a second time, I think that I can make out words about the "calling area", which would indicate why it's not working.
Except that number is for the US McDonalds. The French numbers would be +33 1 30 48 65 28 or +33 1 30 48 60 00 as stated on the contact page.
"I don't have the resources to take on a branch of a large multi-national corporation operating in a distant country" - doesn't really cut it when the contact page and number can be found on the Internet in 2 seconds of searching.
Surely the only take-away from this is that McDonald's is a terrible place. Didn't we all know that already?
It's still helpful to try and do as much damage as possible with this story (ideally getting some money or at least an apology for the victim), but make no mistake that the company structure will make this vanish into the æther in no time.
I have had hundreds of meals at McDonalds and never witnessed anything like this. The staff have been pleasant and helpful, the environment clean, and the food as advertised. "Terrible," seems ridiculously hyperbolic to me.
Regardless of whether MacDonald's is the salvation of the human race or the reincarnation of Nazi-ism... I think it's pretty obvious that this wasn't some plot from corporate to beat up guys weiring eyeglasses that are medically integrated with their body.
It's the unordered work of some violent thugs, though their motive remains to be seen (or even if they're actual employees or something else).
A number of companies seem to have policies against in-store photography. Supermarkets don't want their competitors getting accurate data about their pricing. Usually, it's the ones that offer loyalty cards so they can track their customers more effectively.
I have no idea how a branch of McDonald's in the centre of a major tourist city expects to be able to keep any secrets but it may simply be a company wide policy. Someone should update them on just how small, cheap and effective actual spy cameras are these days. Not to mention phones.
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[ 0.28 ms ] story [ 333 ms ] threadI wouldn't expect a lot of help. Imagine if a random Albanian had a similar problem with NYC McDonalds employees and called the NYPD. The police don't support the assault, but they're not going to leap to attention over it.
They are polite, friendly, and genuinely wish the incident didn't happen. Once they ascertain nobody is really injured, etc. there is not a whole lot they can do.
Also, he has photographic evidence of his documentation being destroyed.
Usually they will try very hard to NOT take your report (bad statistics).
Anyway, there has been a trend recently with regular HN'er saying that people should stop using HN as a way to get justice. "HN is not your mommy".
I strongly believe that this is exactly the time that HN should step up, upvote this story, and ensure to it that a guy who creates the technology he wears see's some kind of justice.
Most importantly, I definitely wasn't decrying all instances of people bringing a situation that has gone some flavor of shitty to the attention of HN. In fact, it's in no small part the fact that the HN community is so willing to help one another out that keeps me here — particularly among the alumni, but I think their conduct just sets the example for the rest of us.
That said, I've started to feel a few times lately like that willingness to be helpful is being taken advantage of — or at least people are trying to do so. The "I didn't win the contest! Waaaah!" was just the most egregious example I'd seen in some time, and I felt the need to call it out. Given that it was the highest rated comment I've ever posted on HN, I'm clearly not alone in that.
This situation isn't remotely the same. This is a clear-cut case of ignorant idiocy escalating into physical assault, and the louder and more forcefully the fact that that kind of thing is fucking wrong gets shoved in McD's face, the better.
I also wasn't looking to single you out.. I know it was a high voting comment since it was at the top of the thread, so clearly did resemble a large portion of the HN's sentiments...
But, all the same, I just want to make the point, HN-community should try and step up in this situation, right?..
For the comment (below) asking for the link to the article I was referring to when I said "HN is not your Mommy"... http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4220156
These firms are pretty approachable - don't go the local small-fry ambulance chaser, they won't know what to do.
From the sound of your story, it sounds like those three were probably not actually affiliated McDonalds. Were you confident that even Potential Witness 1 was a true employee? Sounds like a scam and heist, but very strange since multiple people involved were wearing (seemingly) legitimate McDonalds clothing. Although, I would note that they were not wearing the uniform that the cashiers were wearing, which may give more weight to the conjecture that they were just lurking in plain site waiting to mug or rip someone off.
I hope you find these guys and they get whats coming to them.
I'm sorry he was harassed, but this story really smells of one of the oldest ways to gain media attention on the internet:
Step 1: Get screwed by a big company (this is the easy part) Step 2: Write a blog article documenting how you got screwed Step 3: Submit story to slashdot, digg, reddit, etc.
Keep in mind people, before you start blowing up about this "injustice" that we're only hearing one side of the story. And frankly, I'm of the opinion that cases of assault are better handled by police and courtrooms than blogs and internet mobs.
Also, the fact that the retribution Steve Mann is demanding, is that McDonald's repairs the glasses that Steve Mann invented is, well, a fantasy to say the least.
> "I tried on many occasions to contact McDonald's but have not received any response."
> "I also contacted the Embassy, Consulate, Police, etc., without much luck."
IMO going to the court of public opinion is acceptable when nobody who should be dealing with the issue is actually doing so.
This is practically why we have modern media, blogosphere or otherwise.
http://www.contact-the-ceo.com/mcdonalds.html
Which highlights how he can be contacted though has no email address, but that is: jim.skinner@us.mcd.com
He's not asking for that though. What he basically wants is a public apology and for McDonald's to FIX his glasses. This is laughable.
Notice how all aspects of this story point to how awesome his glasses are: "they help with a medical condition", "having them fixed is more important than money", "they saved photos of a crime, even after they were broken"...
He says:
I'm not seeking to be awarded money. I just want my Glass fixed, and it would also be nice if McDonald's would see fit to support vision research.
Which means in any sane interpretation to be that he wants McDonalds to pay for whatever it costs to repair or replace his property, but he is not seeking punitive damages for the assault, he just wants his glasses fixed. And he thinks it would be nice if McDonalds made a gesture of donating something to vision research, to show they are actually sorry.
For the record, I totally love his research. When Google Glass debuted I said aloud "Wow! It's Steve Mann's EyeTap!".
He said he already tried getting law enforcement involved.
Maybe he plans to use lawyers as a last ditch effort, if his internet plea doesn't work? I would think it's a bit extreme to involve them first before trying to just settle things with McDonalds directly.
> have the company pay for any damages to my property.
You wrote:
> I agree
You also wrote:
> he basically wants [...] McDonald's to FIX his glasses. This is laughable.
You have contradicted yourself, unless you can explain how "paying for damages" to the glasses does not entail "fixing the glasses".
1) pay for damages: provide monetary compensation for materials, labor, etc to have the experimental device replaced or restored to working order
2) fix his glasses: McDonalds takes the glasses, performs all operations in house at a corporate location, and return the device in working order.
The rest of me rejects the pedant, saying the effects of both are the same, therefore they are effectively the same statement, which I am pretty sure is reasonable and the intended meaning of those "discrepancies". :)
The infamous hot coffee MacDonalds case involved a woman who had first asked MacDonalds (or that franchise, not sure) to pay her medical bills (around 20 grand iirc for extensive second and third degree burns) and they refused. It was only after that when she sued, got a list of other complaints about the temperature and won a large judgement (reduced on appeal).
A few years back he had airport security physically pull out wires out of him.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/14/technology/circuits/14MANN...
(apparently "a few years back" is 10 years ago. Yikes.)
Edit: a link to an old (1997) article about his glasses:
http://www.wearcam.org/ieeecomputer/r2025.htm
Until someone can provide a good reason why this would be chronically implanted into him, I think this all smells like hype to me.
And why no pictures of the guy trying to grab his goggles off his face? Surely there would be a snapshot somewhere of that?
I think because of the "polar bear in a blizzard" problem: you don't actually see anything informative.
"And here, ladies and gentleman, is a blurry hand covering up most of the camera's view! I promise it's someone trying to rip my glasses off!"
http://it.slashdot.org/story/02/03/14/2051228/airport-securi...
From reading the New York Times article, it doesn't sound like Mann had any "implants" "forcibly removed". It sounds like they tore electrodes off his body. In other words, they pulled tape off his skin, and it caused bleeding. Unpleasant, sure, but it's not like they strapped him down and used a drill to extract chips from his brain. More like they pulled off a Band-Aid too fast.
The reason that he ended up in a wheelchair was that since he no longer had his cyborg navigation gear, he supposedly got confused while walking around the airport and hit his head on a pile of fire extinguishers. I don't even know where to start with that one.
And another comment, which may explain the doctor's note:
Years and years ago, when the earth was new, I was an undergrad at MIT and then-Media-Lab-graduate-student Mann spoke in a class I was taking. At the time, I believe he was trying to recruit people to do heavy-duty graphics work (i.e. when he moves his head side to side, his camera is taking discrete pictures of a room/building/whatever at different angles. He was working on algorithms to put them all together and make them coherent). Anyhow, the point is, I distinctly remember him saying that he got nauseous when he removed his visor. The reason was very simple. He spent all of his waking life (outside of the shower) in a 2D world. His body was so used to it, that living in 3D took some serious getting used to, and he would feel sick. My guess is that this is what happened. Ever feel like your eyes need some adjusting after staring at a 2D object (such as a movie theatre screen) for hours at a time? Now image doing that 24/7 for years and trying to re-adjust to the real world.
There was an experiment[1] that had participants wear vision-inverting glasses for a while. Eventually they started seeing everything right-side up through the glasses. In fact, their vision was upside down after they removed the glasses!! Although they re-adjusted after a little while, it'd certainly explain Mann's temporary disorientation and the subsequent need for a doctor's note.
Also, it'd be weird to conduct such experiments on yourself and not expect weird stuff like this to happen to you from time to time, especially when visiting foreign countries.
[1] George M. Stratton. Some preliminary experiments on vision. Psychological Review, 1896.
>As to the relation of the visual field to the observer, the feeling that the field was upside down remained in general throughout the experiment.
>On removing the glasses on the third day, there was no peculiar experience. Normal vision was restored instantaneously and without any disturbance in the natural appearance or position of objects.
"Determined to find results, Stratton wore the telescoping glasses for eight days straight. By day four, his vision was upright (not inverted). However on day five, images appeared upright until he concentrated on them; then they became inverted again. By having to concentrate on his vision to turn it upside down again, especially when he knew images were hitting his retinas in the opposite orientation as normal, Stratton deduced his brain had reprocessed his vision and adapted to the changes in vision."
So perceptual adaptation is real, it just takes like a week to really kick in. For someone who had been wearing these glasses for years, I'm sure the effects would be much more intense.
EDIT: The paper that the follow up results were in might actually be "Stratton, G. (1897). Upright vision and the retinal image. Psychological Review, 4, 182-187"
I admit I'm not used to citing academic papers, I heard about this experiment back in high school anth/soc/psych so I just did my best to find a semi-credible reference.
I don't get the point you are attempting to make. Are you doubting that he has in fact done this to himself?
Not necessarily as huge a coincidence as you seem to think. If Steve Mann has a medical condition that is not easily rectified by existing technology, and assuming Steve Mann is reasonably intelligent, then it's no stretch of imagination that he might be compelled to do research on something that personally impacts him. Since he's a professor at the University of Toronto, I don't find it hard to believe that he is reasonably intelligent, and so this is not necessarily so hard to believe.
But on a second reading, it doesn't seem like he even necessarily has a medical condition. He refers to a doctor's letter which is for explanatory purpose. Since this device is apparently permanently attached to the skull, no doubt a doctor was involved at some point. In other words, Dr. Mann has done research into augmented vision, created a device, and had the device installed onto himself. While potentially risky, we all know people do far crazier things.
Which isn't to say that this isn't a media attention grab, but it's not as farfetched as you make out.
Documenting a medical condition which could be addressed by the use of the device is a very separate issue for medical and legal purposes.
As for the demand for money to pay for the cost of replacement, it is hardly a fantasy given that this is probably their liability and they clearly can afford it.
McD worker: "sorry sir you can't take pictures or video of our staff"
person with recording device: "I'm not taking any pictures this is a medical device"
worker: "it looks rather like a Google glass recording device; you were recording the servers at the counter just now weren't you, I'm afraid you'll have to leave"
person: "no I won't I'm not recording anything these are just my glasses, see I have a doctor's note" [passes note carefully made to look fake but actually having real content]
worker: "sorry, please leave" [attempts to remove what he believes to be Google glass device as the person moves towards him aggressively]
It probably didn't go down like that but why is it such a stretch to believe it did?
Oh, and not to mention they tore his paperwork up.
It's a bare website (not a blog post) with nothing but a story and some contact information. If you know of a way to make this not "smell of one of the oldest ways..." do let us know.
Obviously we need to keep that in mind, but you're talking about the difference between one man's photographically documented account of an event and a theoretical response form a multi-national fast food chain's Public Relations team.
He is coming to the internet because he can't get his case handled in the way he wants to.
Obviously they aren't qualified to fix his glasses and that was a cheeky way of saying he wants them to pay for it.
All in all, he is a respectable human, who has compelling evidence of assault, who has not gotten the justice he thinks he deserves. Would you like him to give up?
I agree this story smells in a dozen different ways. Rather than the mafia I'm wondering if Steve Mann is perhaps seeking to establish some documentation in order to assert IP rights against a very wealthy company which has made very public announcements about glasses that augment your vision and take pictures of what you see.
For that reason I think we'll see more on this story.
This is the most ridiculous thing I've seen on this page yet.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Mann
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Aeyeta...
I don't know about you but that movie has played out so many times as to be cliche. Generally the professor's college is the one doing the suing as they get assignment rights to research but that doesn't seem to be the case here.
I'll be the first to admit I'm awfully cynical about patents these days, and I sure as hell know that if some patent litigator saw Mann's patent he would ask Dr. Mann if he was being compensated by Google. If not that same litigator would probably have a moment of giddyness as he offers to get him that compensation. Could be a big payday, and money is a powerful motivator.
I'll take it all back if Mann says that Google has already licensed the patent. Otherwise my bet is on the legal sharks.
I think the argument was that he hardly needs an altercation at a McDonalds in 2012 to establish documentation. He's been doing the wearable computing stuff for decades, publicly.
Here's some background reading: http://www.theverge.com/2012/6/26/2986317/google-project-gla...
So while "anybody who has anything to do with wearable computing" knows about Dr. Mann's work, apparently those same people at Google seemed to have missed that connection when the started filing patents about wearable displays.
So, I agree with you. Everybody working with wearable computing should know about Dr. Mann's work. And anyone putting out a 'revolutionary product' which looks strikingly similar to the Eyetap product would, acknowledge that debt and perhaps show how they learned from what had gone before.
So if you're right, then I'm right too.
[1] http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sec...
[2] http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sec...
Also, why would he, if he's after some sort of reasonably amicable settlement?
I don't know, maybe because not everyone like a mob with pitchforks?
Perhaps because it is Europe?
I recall reading news articles a few months ago about a case in Europe where a man robbed a bank, and the police had surveillance photos of his face and wanted them shown on the news on TV, and the TV station blurred the photos because their interpretation of privacy laws was that since the suspect was merely accused, not convicted, it would violate his privacy to show his face.
In Europe it is illegal to publish photos of someone without their consent unless that someone is a public figure.
This is also why he might have gotten a rather negative reaction...
> go to McDonald's
I think that the one in Beijing was different, too, but I didn't get to go into that one.
In parallel write/email to the newspapers etc.
Also talk to your embassy who can advise how to proceed in other ways.
You have a vision problem and need a visual aid to combat that disability. McDonalds not only commited assualt but also did it systematicaly and premeditated way indicating they are not a suitable sponsor for the para-Olympics.
If they won't deal with this issue responsibly, then sod em and shame them as publicly and in as many ways as possible; you have done nothing wrong, nothing and they are all to blame so shame them.
Also few links on FB and twitter with liberal abuse of #mcdonalds #imlovinit #mcd and the like will soon garner this issue the attention it needs and deserves.
You could see a lawyer, but it's hard to find one who can deal with this. I'd go the press/PR route (then a good lawyer will come to you) as your doing but with a few nationals who will happily run this story. Now is a good time given there large marketing event called the Olympics, leverage this time and educate McDonalds.
Last time I went to McDonalds security told me the toilets were for customers only too which I pointed out that in a civilised World we wash our hands before we handle our food and I had no desire to take my food into the toilet or leave it unattended as I had no confidence on the security being able to saftly protect my food/possesions. He appologised and I left to eat elsewere.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/may/21/paralympic-games...
And what might that percentage be? Seeing a number of moochers feigning disability for unearned dole outs, is surely the most common disgust of our times.
And if one is disabled, they should not expect to be given free handouts from money forced out at gunpoint. They need care and consideration and all volunteer help they can get.
Its time to realize that Government should be the institution for one thing and one only. Protection of individual freedom. And nothing else.
If you really think that is true then you possibly need to get out a lot more, we got this whole banking crisis, massive depression and unemployment, corrupt politicians, ecological collapse, huge civil unrest across previously stable democracies and loads of wars and all sorts of crazy shit going down.
On second thoughts, scratch that, could you please stay indoors. It is probably for the best.
But lets see what we got on your list: - whole banking crisis, last I checked my savings bank account was secure. And although my livelihood may be intricately connected to Big Banks, I don't think all the banks in the world are going bust. Nor is the age old concepts of banking. A lot of things which is complex and serious here, but definitely nothing here which disgusts me
- massive depression and unemployment, This is an era of massive changes, but there will always be human activity. No matter what cooked up and muddled GDP numbers say. Again no disgust.
- corrupt politicians, the moochers are a result of their policies, and they enable the corrupt politicians. So this is along the same lines as the disgusting stench of moochers.
- ecological collapse, huge civil unrest across previously stable democracies and, loads of wars and, all sorts of crazy shit going down more serious issues, and a lot of call for action. But disgust? Whom are we kidding.
Looks like you have a problem reading the import of the message. Maybe you sympathize with the blood sucking moochers, or maybe you are one of them. Whatever it is, the only thing more disgusting than the dole out leechers are people who knowingly give them unearned, undeserved virtual credibility.
Personally I would pay everyone dole, unless they really don't want it. Call it a national dividend and make it a function of GDP per person. No chance then of a benefit trap, and an incentive to work on things that benefit the wealth of all.
Also, on paper, as far as I can tell, it would cost roughly the same as the current system anyway, seeing as, at least in the UK, the bureaucracy of organising the benefits system costs multiple times the amount actually paid out in benefits.
Plus, the UK benefits system actually underpays, on average, when you sum the figures of accidental underpayments vs accidental overpayments and outright fraud, so there are actually more people not receiving benefits they are legally entitled to than there are people involved in illegally obtaining them.
Now cheer up and learn to mooch a little. You are obviously working far too hard, on stuff you don't enjoy that is making you angry as hell, and in this day and age, you don't really need to. Sorry for suggesting you should stay indoors, go live on a beach and make kites for a summer while drunk or something like that instead. You owe it to yourself.
no, by moochers I mean people who live off unearned income. In this context, from forced government dole outs.
> the bureaucracy of organising the benefits system costs multiple times the amount actually paid out in benefits.
you got any citations for this?
> so there are actually more people not receiving benefits they are legally entitled to
the whole of your argument and point of view, is based on legally instituted perverse "benefits". We have instituted morally corrupt systems of welfare and people nowadays take it as a matter of fact.
> Now cheer up and learn to mooch a little
Thanks, but no thanks. You obviously feel a lot better if you spread your moral corruption to every one else. I work for my own bread.
Ironicly I know of three people who attended a ATOS medical. One had cancer (turned out to be terminal), one had MS and the other had phsical injury including 2 fingers missing. They were all deemed fit for work apart from the one who could clearly not hold a long-bow due to the missing fingers, least thats the funny take on it. Do wonder if the French are still pissed that we let so called pesants goto war with longbow's and is the origins of the two finger jesture in the UK as a sign to the French we can still use the long bow. Those captured by the French would have there bow fingers cut off and thus a display of those two fingers was born as a in your face gesture towards the French.
Back onto the offtopic subject you may be intersted to look up how many of those deemed fit for work have died shortly after there income was cut off. If it was in any other country it would be called genocide etc.
This brings us nicely back on-topic in saying that descrimination of disabled people in any shape or form is more of a issue than race descrimination thesedays. If people are asked about Hitler and World War II and gas chambers then they go on about the victimised Jewish people and how bad it was for them (and it was a bad thing). Nobody mentions how disabled people were also given the same treatment. Church's, many still accepted forms of estabilshments have and some still do descriminate against disabeled people. Even hospitals. This I have witnessed many times personaly and it is utterly disgusting. There is one small plus side though. That is you can more easily identify genuine people from those who operate such double-standards and in that can avoid them.
ATOS is mearly a knife edge away from being audited at a level that will embarass and shame them. McDonalds are no better but sadly don't cash in on Goverment contracts so in that are sadly immune to alot of bad PR, historicaly they have done some major crimes.
My speculation on this: A lot of people in security have such boring jobs that even if they don't feel intimidated by photographers, they relish a chance to play big, get a buzz out of the day, and look like they're "doing their job."
Now do this for everyone you ever meet, all day every day, in a strange country, and you see that although violence is rare you've increased the number of opportunities for violence to happen.
The way the employees behaved is consistent with this explanation.
Edit: I should have said no more than that the excessive reaction of the security people suggests there may be something dubious happening at this McDonald's that they don't want filmed. But there are other less dramatic things they might be doing besides money laundering: using undocumented labor, for example.
I seriously cannot tell, and you didn't wink at the end?
Since McDonald's are easily franchise-able, I suppose they could legitimately be used as a Mafia Front... But really, Poe's Law? wink ;)
On one hand, I can't think of many above-board reasons that a restaurant employee would tackle you for having a tiny camera, or rip up medical documentation. On the other hand, the jump straight to a mafia seems a leap too far. Yet if we are going to speculate, I don't see a criminal explanation as significantly more plausible than others.
To demonstrate one of my own: Perhaps they'd recently had a bad rating/inspection from the French/Parisian health department (replace with proper name), and were really worried about some undercover story by local news stations. A bit extreme to use physical intimidation, but perhaps the manager is on the verge of losing the place?
On top of that, "concern about the health department" has a much higher prior probability than "mafia collusion with major fast food chain".
Granted, not usually by someone with the camera literally attached to his head.
I'm not even sure what you mean by "random" in this case; we're talking about one event. I didn't say anything about the distribution of violent assholes in McDonalds or France in general. It certainly wasn't "random" when the first violent guy brings over other employees who happened to also be violent. I don't know about France, but in the US, there are strict laws on what a commercial establishment can do to get someone off the premises. Now, mafia-run operations aside, most places would just ask you to leave and threaten to call the cops if you remain.
And of the other two, Perp-1 seemed to have been the manager, while Perp-2 was a customer (judging by the shades in his hair, and the "meal" in front of him).
I'm guessing the customer felt paranoid from the camera and complained to the manager.
What about French laws related to health (are they like NYC and trying to enforce health policy through food ingredient restrictions?) Could that be something they would not want getting out by accident?
What about French labor or immigration law? Could there be some violation that they didn't want documentary evidence of?
McDonald's as a corporation protects the intellectual property of their operations with great effort (but usually in the court of law--as when a manager might try to start their own burger place using the official playbook). Not sure what competitive advantage he could get from a few minutes in the store, though.
But all of these really hinge on the employees thinking that the wearer a) wasn't a government official or inspector (confrontation would just bring more heat and/or b) that the wearer was of lower or weaker status. Mall cop enforcing a poorly understood "no pictures of the mall" policy over-zealously seems like the most likely case--maybe rooted in anti-terrorism paranoia.
(Or else maybe the guy made the mistake of ordering a Royale with Cheese and these employees were not Tarantino fans...)
...
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2012/07/the-un...
Bars are traditionally popular for money laundering because everyone pays in cash, liquor has absolutely insane mark-up, and it's really easy to pour it down the drain. I imagine a fastfood restaurant would not work as well, but who knows.
Or sell it on the black market.
Laundering money through a fast food restaurant with a supply chain outside your control is a terrible idea. Franchises are required to purchase food centrally.
Q How much cash are you banking this week?
A 1,000,000 EUR
Q So you have sold 500,000 Big Macs.
A Yes
Q Can I see your invoices for 500,000 buns please?
The profit margin is not high enough for it to be worth ordering extra stock and throwing it out. The business would effectively be paying about 70% tax. That's not digestable, even to launder cash.
More plausible reasons: Running a McDonalds franchise and significantly and systematically under-reporting revenue using unauthorised suppliers. But to involve low-level staff would seem unlikely.
This isn't exactly covert surveillance. Some bored member of staff just didn't like the look of this American weirdo with a video camera for an eye, a piece of paper that he waves around and an attitude that he is entitled to buffer everything he sees anywhere in the world and then publicly blame an entire multinational for a minor, local incident. (Not my perception, but I think it likely that it was theirs.)
but yeah, i don't think this is the best explanation. But now i can't stop picturing Ronald macdonald sitting at some backroom like vitor corleone.
You wouldn't have to throw it out. Sell it on to other businesses.
There are stories of people in the drug trade in Mexico having rooms in their houses full of cash that they cannot otherwise dispose of.
Usually for businesses you use nail salons, tanning, etc which have high labor and service components to price, vs. materials.
Dr. Steve Mann, PhD (MIT '97), PEng (Ontario), 330 Dundas Street West Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5T 1G5.
I'm almost serious, because I was in this exact McDonald's in 1998 (I'm not making this up) and was verbally abused for asking for more than the provided two packets of ketchup.
In their defense, it was Bastille Day and more than a little bit crazy in there.
Definitely agree that something is shady though. Not sure what, but this reminds me of a recent article on 'The Big Mac' index, which is used as an alternative measure of inflation. Perhaps McDonald's is under orders by the French government to prevent people from taking photos of their menus (and consequently their burger prices) to hide serious inflation problems. ;)
On a side note, if you are going to be in Paris on vacation, the food capital of the world, why the hell are you eating at McD's?
Kids.
[1] http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2012/01/24/145698222/why-mc...
In order to launder money you need to pretend you have more customers than you do have. A good way for the police/tax man to catch you is to record your business to prove that you don't have that many customers.
They got a bit of unwanted attention a few years after I moved away when a junkie died in the single-occupancy bathroom and nobody noticed for three days.
edit: found it - http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2000-12-19/news/0012190192_...
And none of the above are that hard to believe. Drug deals especially happen all over the place and all the time.
A cynic might think they were trying to harvest accesses from internal to Google IP addresses so that as of today they could show 'knowable infringement' aka treble damages.
[1] http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sec...
[edit] The current pace of litigation seems to be leading towards some form of Kessler Syndrome - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kessler_syndrome - but made of patents instead of orbital debris, that will finally result in all courtrooms in the world discussing nothing but technical IP cases.
I've been following his work for some years (decades) now, and while he is an "interesting" person, he has made many leaps in both design and tech involved, as well as testing.
All I know is we have three things:
1) A patent for the 'eyetrap' issued in 2003 with another 8 years or so to run.
2) A huge company with > $100B in the bank who has made a big publicity play betting on their technology that, on the surface clearly infringes.
3) No statements either from either party that a license is in place. In fact the Google Glass page should say "this device is covered by patents ..." but it doesn't.
If in fact no license exists, I see a table in the square with between 100M$ and a 1B$ sitting on it with nobody watching. I would not be surprised in the least that someone decided to try and take it off the table.
Time will tell.
Google doesn't have > $100B in the bank (citation: http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bs?s=goog+Balance+Sheet). You are probably thinking of Apple.
I continue to believe that Google is perceived to be a 'high value' target by offensive litigators.
It is possible I'm not cynical enough, but if I were trying to gain sympathy for my cyborg-prosthetic plight, the more I could relate it to things people are already comfortable with, the better.
I think the simplest answer is the most likely: That franchise has bumped prices up above what McD's corp allows for and/or has figured out a way to game the computers so they are underreporting their revenue and thus are paying much less in franchise fees than they should be. Given its prime tourism spot, people don't complain, but if pictures got back to corporate, there would be problems.
First the original article was deep-linked into the eyetap.org site. Which is to say it didn't appear as a link on the front page, in fact I didn't find any inlinks to it until this story broke and those are from blogs etc. And it was posted by an account created to post that one link on HN (not like Dr. Mann or someone who regularly participates here stumbled across it and tried to link it.)
Now if Dr. Mann had a running blog about life as a cyborg or his thoughts on wearable computing, and this just happened to come up in that blog as "Oh the saddest thing happened ..." then it might feel more natural. It has since been converted to a one-entry wordpress blog.
As I've said elsewhere, we'll see what the next steps are. Eyetap has certainly gotten a lot of publicity out of the deal so I expect the press will follow up on any fallout here as well.
These guys even look like private security contractors, and their actions are more easily explained by the mindset endemic in that field than by criminal conspiracy.
I worked for Steve Mann about 15 years ago. Calling him the father of wearable computing is an understatement -- he was the father before it was even possible to create, and yet managed to make it happen essentially on his own a decade or more before it should have existed -- the JFK Apollo of wearables out of his own pocket.
However, he is probably not the least suspicious person when dealing with stupid rule following automatons -- a true hacker in that way. If anyone could make slightly scared and overly paranoid security guys worried, it is probably Steve. Super friendly if you engage with him, but not going to err on the side of social graces over pushing tech forward.
I am pretty sure this was an honest ignorant understanding by some worried people and sort of emphasized out of proportion -- I remember a similar incident at Boston Airport.
Dr Mann also says P1 "angrily grabbed my eyeglass, and tried to pull it off my head", which is also not consistent with an honest mistake.
McDonalds should apologize, but I don't think it was a conspiracy.
http://tech.mit.edu/V127/N40/simpson.html
I don't understand the benefit to ever being anything but polite to suthority, even while resisting (legally or beyond legally, depending on how important the issue is to you). I "opt out" of rapescans all the time, and am polite, and the whole interaction goes fairly well. (I think it is security theater, but invasive pat downs aren't always inappropriate; just when there is not enough benefit. I'd draw that line as search incident to arrest based on RS and PC developed normally -- just being a passenger on a flight doesn't make you all that much more likely to be a terrorist). Protest in court, in congress, on the Internet, and during the incident, but don't be threatening or rude.
Since you say she's a friend of yours and might know more details, I'm curious what you think she did wrong.
Osama achieved million times more than what he would have dreamed of.
I highly doubt it is a front for a shady business. It would be like claiming the Apple store next to Central Park, New York City, is a front...
It is also next to a number of the finest luxury retailers in the world...
I can only speak for Paris and Tokyo, and the very upper class may not eat there, but nobody else has a problem with it. It's not just American tourists keeping them in business.
I agree. Rich folks don't go to McDonalds too often. However in Europe the brand is perceived a bit differently
The mafia idea seems quite far fetched, if only because you'd think McDonald's would do a fair bit of work to ensure none of their franchisees are using their brand as a front for organized crime.
I don't remember exactly what the instructions said employees were supposed to do. I believe it was asking people to leave and refer them to McDonalds corporate PR for requests to take pictures. It definitely didn't say assault them.
Clearly these guys were acting way outside of what McDonalds intended for them to do, but I think McDonalds' silly 'no cameras' policy might have incited them.
Never been to France. Been to several McDonald's with security guards. I'm pretty sure they had CCTV. Not a front for money laundering - it was that kind of a neighborhood. Eastern Market has gentrified a bit since then ...
Anyway. A no-camera policy could be put in place to deter snoops. Guys working for the other team (Burger King). Maybe they had a bad experience with guys taking pictures of other patrons.
Ah - you're just trolling, aren't you?
But setting up a venture capital fund in Silicon Valley, given today's ridiculous valuations, seems like an excellent way to launder money.
+ It isn't even necessary to assume that the language barrier or anti-Americanism had anything to do with it. I mean, even in the deep South, a good old boy might try to rip a prosthesis off a black guy's head just because he doesn't like "weird Treky shit."
I'm French, of no extraction. Please stop. French of Moroccan extraction are French.
Regarding the riots, that's also not relevant to the discussion but because you ask, those riots where the results of 40 years of bad policies, social rejection and latent racism.
HN is no place for a racist dick. Kindly fuck off.
[edited to add - I expect downvotes or even a ban for my language. I will find a way of coping with my grief, so don't worry about it]
I would like you to understand that when in doubt and facing two choices one should always prefer what favours human beings over any sort of ideology or other minor consideration; no matter the price (I mean it this way).
But I find your way of reversing things funny and will dismiss you as being a troll and wish you good luck on your road. It's certainly a difficult one.
Sorry, I know this is off-topic, but I've never really understood the "only uneducated people use swearwords" argument.
Strict logic aside, though, I've anecdotally observed that folks who swear publicly among people they don't know tend to swear easily and often, and given the inherent flexibility of most swear words, I think it's fair to say increased usage usually takes a toll on eloquence and creativity in diction. The relationship isn't necessary, but it's intuitive and observably common.
Amongst the people I know who swear with reasonable frequency, I don't see any correlation with lack of eloquence. Indeed, I can think without trying very hard think of published authors, professional screenwriters and famous Shakespearean actors who would fit into the "uses profanity reasonably casually" description.
But eloquence isn't binary; it lives on a gradient. Where there's a common, monosyllabic, four-letter word, it could be displacing another with a fair likelihood of being more interesting.
In fact, I'd argue your Shakespearean actors are far more likely to be making a compromise than an ineloquent person who'd otherwise drop the modifier or use a simplistic alternative.
So they're not rendered ineloquent as people, of course; but less eloquent than they'd be without that crutch.
I'll go even further and state that people like you are responsible for the situation. I live abroad and can tell you that latent racism kills all the respect I could otherwise have for Thai people. I'm not silly so I'll move back to France in the coming months (as a direct result of the above). Unfortunately for them, French of foreign extraction don't have the opportunity I have. I'd forgive them if they burnt the bulk of Paris: they are human beings and are being bullied by a society as a whole.
[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_citizenship#Birth_in_Fra...
according to the wikipedia (which, of course, is not always correct) that is not an or but an and (at least, until the age of majority.) Even assuming that the wikipedia is correct in this case, there is a big difference between automatically gaining citizenship on your 18th birthday, and having a 'path to citizenship' and I have no idea where France is on that continuum.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_citizenship#Through_birt...
But, you can ask for the French nationality before, as early as the age of 13, if you lived there the 5 preceding years. The difference is the automaticity, at 18 it's automatic, before that it's on request.
And under 18, everyone has more or less the same rights, not withstanding the nationality.
My reading of the French law makes it look like it would solve this "problem" as the kid isn't french, so you can deport the kid and their parents. Out of curiosity, am I reading that right? that if two undocumented immigrants have a kid and the authorities deport the newborn and the parents and manage keep them out of the country until the kid is 18, the kid is not french at all, even though she was born on french soil?
So it's quite bastard... problematic.
Your reading is quite unfortunately not totally correct. A child born or not in France is in theory undeportable, even if their parents are from Mars or undocumented (which seems to be the same to some people...). Actually, under 18 it's impossible to be undocumented... because there is no document to authorize a child to live in France, they all have naturally this right. No visa, nothing.
EXCEPT (there always a fucking horrible exception), if you came into France without requesting a Visa (that is not needed... but you must request it... go figure...) and entered France coming from another state of the European Union (thanks EU for your horrible immigration law). Then the kid can be sent back to the EU country he came from... which is free to deport the kid if the law of this country allow it. (Well except if he came into France without parents... then he is not deportable again).
But then the worse is to come. If the parents are undocumenteds... well, their kid is not deportable... but they are. It's been a long time France dealt with the "anchor babies"... and in the most hypocrite way. So the parents have a choice : Go with their children, or abandon their children... I kid you not. And I let you imagine what most of parents end up deciding... And no, the answer is not what most fox news talk show hosts would think, since they think that these parents only have those children to have documents. It's sad... but we have problems with the far right since much longer than you... the damage they've done to our law is staggering.
So the final answer is yes. A kid of undocumenteds born in France, can be deported (""""at his parents choice""""), and then he will not be able to respect the 5 years requirements, and not be French at all.
I hope the actual administration is going to change something about that... but well.. I know the won't.
(Of course, the next guy down says I'm wrong about the French citizenship rules, which I may be, of course.)
Also, since they are not "allowed" to disavow their Moroccan nationality, virtually all Moroccans remain Moroccan, even in later generations.
Identity in social science is a complex matter and trying to attack it with "most" is at best inaccurate. Please read the article on identity negotiation which will shed light to the picture.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_negotiation
PS: I'm not RTFM-ing you, it's just a topic that I'm not qualified to address myself, even though I know it's complex.
Europe. It's a melting pot, always has been. There are lots of flexible definitions of nationality.
> their outlook on these matters is striking and confused
Specifically are you referring to the outlook of politicians, the media, or some other entity? I know you started with 'the British' but surely you're not making sweeping generalisations about the 60 million people who live in the UK. That would be a wee bit racist don't you think?
Maybe the term 'French-Moroccan' has bad cultural connotations in France that you're trying to get rid of by burying the term, but the term itself, or the facts surrounding it are not inherently bad. If someone is "Chinese-American" or "Japanese-Canadian" or "Mexican-American", the term doesn't make them any less American/Canadian.
I only bring up the riots with respect to where I got the information that Paris has a large French-Moroccan population.By the tuscanian's perspective, there are no Americans, only "American of Irish extraction" and so on, while over here we all consider ourselves Uruguayans.
Something you don't understand is that those terms ("Chinese-American") are an US cultural thing.
Many of my fellow countrymen (I'm from Uruguay) are extremely shocked when they go to the U.S. ... we've learned about at most 3 races, and you people have 16 !!! One of my teachers likes an anecdote where, when filling a form at San Diego University, he had to ask the clerk what "race" he was - the clerk decided he was "Hispanic", and then there was a sub-category "White Hispanic" or "Black Hispanic". However, he's descendant from Spaniards and probably the exact same racial composition as racists from California that despise "hispanics" (there was a genocide here in Uruguay and we don't have native blood, we're all descendants of spaniards, italians and other european countries, plus some descendants of slaves).
Which? We have several, none of which is called "San Diego University."
I didn't realize that changing it to San Diego University would change its meaning, sorry (and I didn't realize you had more than one either).
I don't know which form he filled, but I found plenty on Google:
http://www.sandiego.edu/facts/quick/current/ethnicity.php
http://www.sandiego.edu/facts/cds/2011/cdsb.php
etcetera, etcetera.
That is a gross mis-characterization of the American attitude on immigration. Americans don't want to "shut down" immigration. We Americans take pride in our diversity of heritage and our openess to those who want to come to our country and be an American. Our objection is to people who come here illegaly. We object to those who come here and thumb their nose at the law, draw benefits from our government (and therefore depriving legal citizens of those benefits) and overwhelm our system.
I've experienced aggressive behaviour from a lot of white Australians. Should I make a judgement of the entire population based on those anecdotal experiences?
Aggression is everywhere, it has very little to do with your cultural heritage unless you're a bloody Spartan.
If you want don't want to be quiet about your racial prejudices, go find a forum for it. There should be plenty of mindless goons out there willing to discuss it with you. Try the youtube comments section.
The fact that you acknowledge that there exists a culture whose adherents are more prone to be adversarial means you accept OP's point.
This story is strange precisely because it is not a scenario where an explanation springs to mind. People are known to be petty and cruel to the point of assault, but people who are employees of a company like McDonald's in a city like Paris are not.
Notice that the employee is covering her face. She yelled at me after I took the pic - "you can't take pictures here!". Why was she upset? Well in my case the girl covering her face in the pic was very pretty, I took it that she might be a fashion model or aspiring actress. When I ordered her co-worker was very pretty as well and was wearing what was obviously a wig.
Just a hunch, but the Paris McDonalds might offer their employees protection against cameras from tourists to protect the identity of their employees.
Edit: also found this article, this case does not seem to correlate with my hunch - motivated by menus / prices: http://www.pixiq.com/article/woman-claims-she-was-assaulted-...
Also, in theory, if you shoot with a tripod, you would need to obtain permission from a ministry somewhere, but in practice, you will seldom get bothered by the police.
In any event, photographing people in public places in France will get you more dirty looks than they would in London or NYC, for example --even if most times you will not get any reaction.
Look up Droit d'image, as it concerns France.
http://photothisandthat.co.uk/2012/02/15/the-french-privacy-...
Oh yes you will. They will shout at you and some may try to take your camera.
Note; I don't take pictures, but to get upset about it; isn't that a bit over the top? You could kindly ask to refrain but actually spend energy and get upset for something so unimportant.
But if someone pulls a camera and specifically aim it at you, on the other hand?
I'd be pissed off too, as it is something that I'd see as extremely rude for someone to specifically target me for pictures without informing me about why they are targeting me specifically. But I've never had it happen, nor have I've been around other people who have had it happen to them, exactly because in the parts of Europe I've spent most of my life, it's pretty much considered totally unacceptable. People who want to take pictures of specific people generally do come up and ask.
Depending on context I might very well confront them about why they were doing it, and might very well be quite angry.
> Note; I don't take pictures, but to get upset about it; isn't that a bit over the top? You could kindly ask to refrain but actually spend energy and get upset for something so unimportant.
It's highly culturally and contextually dependent. If someone starts taking pictures of you specifically in the street somewhere where taking pictures of strangers is considered unusual and rude, there's every reason to wonder why someone is prepared to break strong social norms to single you out and somehow don't want to ask you first.
If you're somewhere where everyone expects to be photographed, on the other hand, and the typical purpose is known, most people will happily accept it, or stay away.
But why would you be pissed off exactly? I mean I understand you don't 'like it', but why the strong emotion. EU people are pretty open minded (I'm from the EU) and I am just surprised about the emotion level here. Whether I 'agree' or not; it seems so overkill.
The climate in France is that people should not get photographed without their permission. Even further, some claim that taking photos of their house is too much. So the whole atmosphere is a by-default hostility to photographers, which should be extra careful.
The climate in France is that people should not get photographed without their permission. Even further, some claim that taking photos of their house is too much. So the whole atmosphere is a by-default hostility to photographers, which should be extra careful.
I can think of several better ways to launder money than running a McDonalds.
I'd say it's far more likely to be a tighter than usual security restriction due to the (perceived or real) threat from terrorism.
MacDonald's branding in France are really different in France than it is in the US, especially in Paris. Food is quite tasty, meat is fairly good, and even the colors are different: the flashy red/yellow has been replaced by a classy green/black two years ago.
And this specific MacDonald's is one of the biggest and best located in Paris (Champs Elysées)
Money laundering may have been a plausible explanation for a random US MacDonald's, it's really far fetched for this one.
I believe it's the same case pretty much in whole Europe. In all countries I've been to for the last two years or so (Poland, Czech Rep., Germany, Netherlands, Switzerland), the McD branding involved dark green background rather than vivid red one.
> Food is quite tasty, meat is fairly good (...)
That's generally correct, too. I have no idea about U.S. but here it seems that most of the shady reputation fast food gets is not because of the quality of ingredients, but the way they are processed to make the meals, i.e. almost exclusively fried with lots of added fat.
I'm French and have been living in Paris my whole life. In France you're not allowed to take pictures or movies of people without their consent. If you try to take pictures of strangers in the subway you will be heckled and possibly assaulted, and the police will do nothing to stop it.
I'm not defending my country here -- I'm a photographer and resent this a lot, this attitude is stupid -- but this is how it is.
> No one at an ordinary McDonald's would even notice such a device.
Every fast food and most retail shops now have "private security" who are untrained/uneducated people standing at the door and watching people come and go. I would bet none of them speaks a word of English so it's unlikely the letter from a doctor in the US meant anything to them. They felt entitled to prevent the taking of pictures in the restaurant and felt they were being played with false official documentation.
(Go try and take pictures at any McDonald's in Paris or any other fast food joint and you'll be met with extreme hostility, and possibly physical aggression).
This privatization of security is a very big problem and a scandal in its own right (the rule of law means the state has a monopoly on legitimate violence) and I try hard to never comply with what those security people tell me, and tell them to call the police if they're unhappy -- the fact is that they have absolutely zero legitimate power but since nobody knows it, they have a lot of semblance of power.
But I would be very very surprised if McDonald's in France (on the Champs Élysées!) had restaurants that were a mafia front. Undocumented labor is a more likely possibility, but again, no restaurant or in fact no retail place in Paris will let you take pictures inside their premises without a very strong confrontation. Go ahead and try.
But if you try to take pictures of strangers -- anywhere -- you will generate a very aggressive reaction.
These rules are not written down so they're hard for strangers to understand; it's very possible for a tourist to feel photography is totally "free" in France when visiting tourist locations, and then find herself in the middle of a fight because she took her camera out of her bag at the wrong time in the wrong place (never in the subway for example!)
The funny thing with these kinds of "rules" / customs is that you internalize them; I can't even imagine myself taking pictures in the subway...
> The funny thing with these kinds of "rules" / customs is that you internalize them; I can't even imagine myself taking pictures in the subway...
I've lived in several countries, and have inadvertently offended people in all of them. Well-travelled, educated people, who don't realise that some specific cultural norms are just that - cultural.
I suppose a UK/US person would never consider it apporpriate to take photos in a bathroom for example.
I'm confused about how this aversion to cameras can possibly hold when nearly everyone is carrying one or more cameras at all times. Does everyone in Europe avoid using their smartphone except in the privacy of their own home? As cameras shrink and are built into pretty much everything, is this culture changing, or are products simply going to be built without cameras for the European market?
Exactly, "not of people (in the bathroom)". Would you take photos of people in a bathroom. If you're male, would you take photos of men at the urinal?
Does everyone in Europe avoid using their smartphone except in the privacy of their own home?
No of course not.
I am male, and no, that would seem weird to me. On the other hand, I wouldn't feel that I could legitimately assault someone who was.
No of course [people don't avoid using smartphones in public]
You say "of course", but I can't figure out how universal cameras are consistent with a culture that fears cameras in public.
If a dozen people on a subway car are using smartphones (and therefore could be taking video or photos right now), how do others react?
Does the answer change when a dozen people are wearing Google Glass?
Also, why do people seem dismissive of questions like these? :)
Tell that to all the kids on Facebook ;-)
Of course I didn't go shooting strangers directly in their face. I think I'd you do that most anywhere people will get upset because what business do you have taking a close-up picture of a stranger without their permission? That's an intrusion just about anywhere.
At least in Paris, I found the city to be crowded with tourist snapping photos of everything. I didn't see anybody giving the slightest care. I had always imagined France to be a photo-friendly place considering the reverence for film and art and being the birthplace of photography. Perhaps I didn't see enough but, at least, it's hard for me to imagine people getting violent over photographs just based on my personal experience. Because with the amount of tourist taking pictures there would be blood running on the streets.
But the spirit of bambax' and others' messages is true: in Europe, customer is not king and should behave in a way that pleases the shopkeepers or restaurant owners. This is more true the closer you are to the capital or the city's hot spot.
And more generally, one has to develop a sense of what is right in a particular place, not assuming that the same customs apply as in your home country. Americans don't have a good record at that, I'm afraid. As someone pointed out, you're bound to inadvertently offend people, but rushing into a place with a camera is a good way to start learning from your mistakes.
That being said, the violence displayed by this particular personnel is completely over the top and should not be tolerated, not by customers and not by law.
Except for all the photos in the blog post.
Its possible because they're there. Anything beyond that is arguing against the reality of the photos on the web page.
How embarrassing to have produced an instance of the indignant and uninformed speculation that I so often groan to find at the top of HN comment threads.
http://ep.yimg.com/ca/I/paulgraham_2208_5897
You can take pictures of monuments; you can take "general" pictures in the street; you can take pictures of people sitting at the same table as you in a restaurant.
But if you specifically target a stranger in the street, or take pictures in a shop, etc. then it will cause a stir.
Actually, some architects and building owners forbid photography, for intellectual property reasons. Freedom of panorama (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_panorama) can be complicated.
A French court ruled in June 1990 that a special lighting display on the tower...was an "original visual creation" protected by copyright. The Court of Cassation, France's judicial court of last resort, upheld the ruling in March 1992. The Société d'exploitation de la tour Eiffel (SETE) now considers any illumination of the tower to be under copyright. As a result, it is no longer legal to publish contemporary photographs of the tower at night without permission in France and some other countries.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eiffel_Tower#Image_copyright_cl...
Different as compared to what? Google “right to bear camera” and you will find many documented cases of policepersons, people in charge, and passersby harassing photographers, in cases photographers that were not using their equipment. These take place in countries that are otherwise considered civilized, all over the world.
Do you mean “different” as in “elsewhere, terrorism would have been invoked at some point”? http://photographernotaterrorist.org/
Although McDonald's isn't a public space, there would be several rungs in the ladder between "sir, you can't take photos in here" and a physical altercation.
Despite this being the law, it can still get you in trouble with the police (in the US).
Also the employee-client relationship is radically different to what people in the US, Canada or UK are used to. Generally people are polite, but in case of any sort of conflict employees are protected and the client is assumed to be wrong and told to fuck off. As opposed to "the client always being right". There must be a middle ground somewhere.
I prefer it here, by the way. I think the UK system is rather balanced.
The closest to France I've ever come was reading "Sixty Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong: Why We Love France but Not the French" ( http://www.amazon.com/Sixty-Million-Frenchmen-Cant-Wrong/dp/... ) and it made this point: in France, a store is considered an extension of the proprietor's home, and a customers is like a guest who has decided to drop in. He must first find the proprietor and introduce himself, and he must be on his best behavior.
Wacky.
...but it is entirely congruent with the point being made here.
Maybe one other explanation for this incident is the amount of hidden camera documentaries airing on national TV recently. I can imagine these security agent being briefed to avoid at all costs having another Super Size Me shot at their location.
The reaction can be mild "Hey, WTF??" to aggressive (being punched in the face).
In the US, if you go to the police saying "I entered this guy's home and took a Coke from his fridge, and next thing you know he punched me!! For a can of Coke!?! Can you believe that! Please arrest him!" the police will likely tell you "you're lucky you didn't get shot".
In France the photographer is considered the perpetrator. The police will not help him (and maybe worse if he insists...)
Also, "assault" is very different here than in the US; grabbing someone by the arm or pushing him around isn't considered assault (more like a disagreement).
That said, you can get very far with asking first: many people, if asked, won't mind being photographed (but you have to ask every person, and respect every decision, which would make the whole process pretty complex).
And please the ... "Also, "assault" is very different here than in the US; grabbing someone by the arm or pushing him around isn't considered assault (more like a disagreement)." the description of what happened is not just "grabbing someone by the arm". But anyway you're wrong, because even in that situation, grabbing someone by the arm an pushing him around is quite exactly the main case of application of Article 222-13 of the Penal Code, under the condition n°8. And the Criminal Chamber of the Cour de Cass' has said millions of times that an actual physical assault is not needed to qualify assault (which in France is called 'violence volontaires'), but only a psychological one, or something that shocked emotionally someone is enough. So yeah... it's maximum 3 years and 45k€ in fine for each of the 3 perpetrators.
Oh, and by the way... if you think that punching a man in the face just because he entered your home without authorization and took a Coke is enough to justify legitimate defense your totally wrong. And you should go live in Florida with Mr. Zimmerman. No it's not. The legitimate defense of property (because the guy wasn't menacing you physically, just abusing your property require some details like : Asking the guy to drop the can and get the fuck out of your house before attacking him physically. And that the retaliation is proportionate. The punch, if soft, would pass this test. The gun certainly not, not for a Coke. And if you broke is nose and jaw, probably not.
Please everyone, do not take what anyone saying his french as an expert opinion on French society and French law (sadly, this also includes me).
But according to the letter of the law you appear to be mistaken: article 222-13 of the Penal Code says the exact opposite of what you make it say.
Article 222-11 says that acts of violence resulting in more than 8 days of "ITT" (incapacité totale de travail) carry a penalty of up to 3 years in jail.
Article 222-13 says that acts of violence resulting in less than 8 days of ITT carry the same penalty if and only if they satisfy one of 18 special cases.
This means that acts of violence that
1/ result in up to 7 days of ITT (total work inability)
2/ do not satisfy any of the 18 special cases
don't carry any penalty AT ALL.
http://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichCodeArticle.do?idArticle...
In plain English: if two adults fight and the fight doesn't result in one of them being unable to work for more than a week, then no one can be charged with anything.
And, plus, your lecture of the French customs is radically different from mine. I do not recognize myself and my compatriots in what your describing. Never saw someone react like your saying of photography. So maybe... you should remember that you're not Levi-Strauss, you just saying what you think about french... It's a commonplace your spreading like "French people are cocky and smell" or "Americans are stupid, you know that they don't believe in evolution". What you're describing is at most a fringe behavior. Neither you nor I are sufficiently aware of the inner complexity of French society (or American, of Papuan) to make so bold judgments. You say it's normal. I say it's not. Who's right ? I'm as French as you are, and no less expert than you (by no less I mean => Not at all). It's you say, I say. No solution for it.
Then you say that it's not about the letter of the law, but how it's enforced. Ahh, then we are coming to a matter that I know a little better than anthropology, see, because I actually had to deal with the police, I've spent time in prison (happily not as an inmate), I've studied law and you know... it's applications. Because, even if a lot of people think we keep our heads in the letter of the law, we actually spend a lot of time trying to understand what's actually the practice of it. And heck, I even had to go report some small felonies that against my very person, and not other people.* And what you're reporting as the "attitude" of the police, is pretty much what almost every layman think of them. Because most of the population despise the police, and think they're useless etc. etc. But you know what, It's not accurate. Yes there is some truth to it. Yes the police won't do all that the law ask them to do. Yes they do a lot of abuses (holy shit, a "PV d'arrestation" is some of the funnier readings you can find around, it's what I read when I need to take a break). And yes, you can come up with a lot of stories of people who had terrible experiences with them (but yeah you know what, no one who had good experiences with the police brags about it), and cases where the police did nothing about a serious case etc. etc. The French police tv series like PJ, Navarro, etc. are full of those. But, well, go to a tribunal, and look at the roll of cases you'll see that the second or third chief of accusation is "violences volontaires ayant entrainé une ITT de moins de 8 jours" (behind small drug related affairs and small theft). But you're right almost half the time it's not because of the 222-13 of the Penal Code. But under Art. R.625-1 of the same Code (section reglémentaire). It's a misdemeanor, fifth class. 3000€ of fine. It's not much... but you should not forget that the 21 special cases described in the 222-13 that transform the misdemeanor in a felony are really broad. And in the situation described, it is almost certain that the Special case n°8 is qualified (if more than one person participated in the assault, but there is a lot of special case so broad as : if the person was drunk or under effect of some drug, if the person acted upon premeditation, because of the race or sexuality, if the victim is an infirm, pregnant, old, under 15 etc). The Public Ministry knows how to make sure you can be arrested under the 222-13.
But, then anyway, even if you fall outside of the the 21 special cases, you can still have a financial penalty. And by the way, even if ITT has the word Travail in it (work) it has nothing to do with your work capacity (yeah I know, it's an horrible name, legal people are trying to change it to Total Temporary Incapacity)(heck, how would we measure it for babies?). It measures how your day-to-day life was affected. If your d...
That is exactly the reason why I always make a point of "bragging" about having a positive experience with the police. Which has been about 2 or 3 times (fire, mugging, and a local robbery I happened to witness). Glad to have them. Even though afaik they never caught those responsible for the last two, it's how they dealt with the victims that makes it count.
Steve Mann says it was a factor of luck: "I also contacted the Embassy, Consulate, Police, etc., without much luck".
But IMO it could also be that he didn't have a clue what he was doing. What was he expecting to accomplish with the embassy or the consulate??
You're not going to have much "luck" with an embassy unless you're being arrested or personally held at the police station.
And you're not going to have much "luck" with a consulate unless you need assistance with formal documents regarding international relations such as passports, visas or permits for international trade.
And the police. Correct me if I'm wrong but if I'd be in New York City, say in a posh area near Wall Street, and I get into a scene in a McDonalds where somebody physically assaults me. I go to the NY police and try to explain, either in French or in broken English with a very thick French accent, how much "luck" do you think I would have?
I would go to the police for one thing and one thing only, which is to file a report so I can make an insurance claim. Because that's the only person who speaks your language and gets paid for helping you and has a 24/7 worldwide hotline: your travel insurance agent! Not to mention they have a lot of experience with exactly these kinds of troubles.
Especially if it's about damage to his important medical aid, which surely the same anonymous doctor that wrote the letter that supposedly explains he requires it for medical reasons, told him he might want to consider insuring separately before travelling abroad.
"Droit à l'image" covers use, duplication and distribution of pictures of people, and only if said people can be identified on the picture. I don't know about any french law that forbids actually taking pictures of people in a public place. In a private area, there's Code Pénal, Art. 226-1, and even then, the law says that unless they explicitly disagree, their consent is assumed. Once the shot is taken, you don't have the right to publish the image without their explicit consent, and if no consent of publication is given, you can publish the image as long as people cannot be identified.
(FWIW one can take and publish pictures of goods to one's heart's content, provided it causes no harm)
> If you try to take pictures of strangers in the subway you will be heckled and possibly assaulted, and the police will do nothing to stop it.
There is no legitimate reason for a nearby police member not to try to stop someone physically assaulting someone else, whatever the reason of the assault may be. Their duty is to at least inquire into the situation.
In France the photographer is considered the perpetrator. The police are more likely to help the people being photographed to not be photographed (if necessary, by taking the camera by force), than to protect the photographer. ("More likely" is an overstatement; the most likely behavior is that the police won't do anything either way).
Are you serious? So you say that in France, I can just beat up a random guy with a camera and claim that they tried to take a picture of me? And the police will just say "yeah, whatever, carry on. Need a stick?" Not very credible.
Also, if it were done in front of a policeman, he may do something (or not -- if he's in charge of monitoring traffic he won't do anything about an altercation between pedestrians) -- but in most places there isn't any policeman.
If you go to the police after the fact and say that someone hit you in the face because you were taking a picture of them, then I guarantee you will elicit zero sympathy and will be made to wait a looong time before anyone writes down your complaint (which will go nowhere anyhow).
But of course circumstances matter; if you shoot people in the street then even policemen monitoring traffic will intervene; if someone cuts your arm in half because you were carrying a camera then the police will help!!
Actually, the only situation when police really don't do anything, is when you come to them with petty crimes/misdemeanors and are unable of right away identify, or provide something to easily identify the offender. I've rarely seen the police not acting when evidences of identity are provided. Like in this case. If they didn't react... it's probably because the victim wasn't European... so taking on this case would be complicated and probably end in nothing. Because most often, when the victims are strangers the case tend to end in the trash after a while. And policemen don't like the idea of doing work for nothing. But they should do it. And act more often than not.
Note : Actually the Police may be doing something, but he OP don't know it. Because what's true about French policemen, is that they're horrible at communicating.
Its is not the police's job to judge if anybody acted in self-defense or not, the job of the police is to show up(!) and restore order. Judges do the rest. Also in France.
I naturally assumed that if Mann was going to offer the documentation to defend his wearing of the special glasses, to someone in France, then he would have been prepared with a notarized official French translation (heck, he's from Canada...).
If he seriously tried to give English-only documentation -- and that was really his plan to convince people in France that his glasses were legit -- that seriously changes my opinion of the events.
And actually, official translation are horribly expensive.
But as far as the translation goes, you can get forms for the country you're going to. That's how it was for Turkey, anyway. I don't know about France.
The form is multi-lingual (English/French/Turkish, in my case). The doctor fills in the forms and as long as he pays attention to the proper medical Latin words (and stamps it!) it should be fine. At least for border officials.
Still, from the lack of details in the blog post--he only refers to it as "a letter from my doctor"--whereas he painstakingly mentions every irrelevant detail in the story, I'm guessing that letter wasn't very complete, official, or even partially translated.
And while you are right that he shouldn't have needed it, trying to calm down an angry and aggressive French person by showing them a letter written in English is not very likely to improve the situation, and is indeed likely to get torn up in the process.
Which may not be right, but it's also not very smart.
For the why this reaction, I have no ideas, plain stupidity is often the good answer.
If I recall correctly (murky here, I didn't really care and may be mixing this with another memory or a different location) the cashier even nonchalantly covered the front-facing display with his hand (this actually took a very unusual gesture), so I couldn't see what the entered amount was. I paid in cash, the sum was tiny, and I didn't really care. It's McDonald's.
Not the case. McDonald's employees in Prague, CZ got pretty pissed at me for taking picture, and were quite rude about it. I think it's McDonald's corporate policy to not allow pictures, at least in EMEA. Lots of stores in high-traffic areas have private security. I think this incident was probably caused by power-crazed security implementing McDonald's policy in an inappropriate way.
The same tight controls put in place by the parent org to assure they receive their full revenue share, and so that they can monitor store sales, inventory demand, and all the other good things that come with instant centralized sales info etc. etc. also prevent money laundering as a side effect.
Further, both McDonalds stores on the Champs-Elysees are corporate owned and operated. McDonalds in France has a high rate of corporate store ownership and operation compared to other countries (20% in France compared to 15% globally) because of a previous bad experience with the national franchisee (it was fought out in a court battle[1]) and that store being a marquee store for the brand in Europe.
My only theory as to why this happen is that the staff were confronted with a situation that they were not accustomed to dealing with and that caused them to react poorly. McDonalds is a highly controversial company and because of their profile they are constantly being targeted by individuals, groups and the media (see 'supersize me', 'fast food nation', 'mclibel' etc.). The security at this store may have mistaken this visitor, who had a camera attached to his glasses which could be considered 'hidden', with somebody who was looking to expose the restaurant in some way.
[1] http://www.nytimes.com/1988/06/12/business/mcdonald-s-tries-...
There are many easier ways to launder money then to do it while operating a McDonalds (which has pretty high vetting for franchises. It's not trivial to be awarded a McDonalds franchise and certainly not in a top location). And most importantly if you are doing something illegal the last thing you want to do is to draw attention to yourself. Not to mention the fact that even if they were laundering money they wouldn't exactly have much to hide from pictures from a random guy with a weird head device.
Wait, what? An international fast food franchise as a mafia front? And for laundering money? So that the mafia also has to check in with the multinational's franchise title owners?
And all that in Paris?
How about some stupid security guy noticed the device and thought (correctly) that it contained some covert camera, and that the guy that has it is possible trouble (journalist investigating the place, a pervert, etc)?
The premise that "no one at an ordinary McDonald's would even notice such a device" is also deeply flawed, what with the paranoia about a) terrorism and b) pedophile photographers these days.
They don't even have to "look for cameras" actively, all it takes is some customer to point it to them "hey, there's a guy with some strange device over there, something fishy is going on".
The transfers were small, equivalent to about 12,000 to 24,000 Philippine pesos (500 to 1,000 US$), and would be handed over each night at a Wendy's or a karaoke bar.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Bojinka#Financing
Not directly related to one of two USA main parties.
As a side benefit, we might learn what kind of turd they're feeding to people.
The computer broke and accidentally took these handy photos of his perpetrators? Yeah I don't believe that for a second. I'm betting that it was always recording video and in order to release these images publicly or in a courtroom, he needs a story about how it "malfunctioned" when he was roughed up.
Side tangent, that's exactly what's creepy about this glass technology. There's no physical indication that a picture/video is being recorded, like someone reaching into their bag, pulling out a camera, and pressing a button. Will someone be recording me as I'm talking to them? I'll never know.
Regardless, your paranoia about such devices filming you unawares is misplaced. There are many off-the-shelf recording devices that are far less conspicuous; you have probably already been photographed hundreds of times by such devices. At least with these head mounted devices you have a definite visual cue that a camera is pointed at you.
A reasonable practice is to assume you're being filmed when not in a place or around people you trust.
And then everybody will behave, because if they don't they might get shot. Sort of a high-tech wild west.
(and you don't have to be a hard ball, just trigger the wearable fire response system).
You can already do this in nearly any jurisdiction in the US as long as you're justified in using deadly force. It might make it easier to prove you were justified, but it wouldn't be anything new.
If the suggestion is that you'd need video to prove you were justified, that's a huge can of worms. You'd effectively be forcing people to choose between filming 24x7 and dealing with the potential privacy and self-incrimination issues there or being stripped of their right to self-defense.
In most common-law jurisdictions filming in public is completely legal, even filming an event put on by a private entity (ie a sports game - there is no property in a spectacle). Note also the proliferation of CCTV in public spaces in many countries.
On private property you have the right to set rules and effectively dictate who is welcome and who is trespassing. Hence you can't take a video camera into a theatre etc.
There is a grey area when your public filming infringes on the reasonable expectation of privacy of another person. I doubt anyone here would take too kindly to a stranger following them 24/7 with a video camera.
But now you would be able to film that fact and then sue him for annoying behavior.
I would imagine that if a store had a concern that this was an ... odd individual, carrying a video recording device, recording customers, employees and the store itself, I would send out security to escort the person out. But I would do so with a great trepidation, because of lawsuits.
There MUST be something missing in this story. It would take great recklessness and lack of ethics to completely fabricate the story, but it is possible.
More likely is that there were some leading events that we have not been told about.
This is what they did, but he did not want to go out because of the letter from his doctor(as his doctor's letter is something in France).
So they waited until they could suddenly remove the device from him, they not realizing it was permanent connected to the skull.
He wants it his way or his way.
EDIT ADD It is also on facebook, and so many other places. Googling his for i email address is a hard one to find but pulls up that address alot.
So write him a letter saying that attacking a disabled person infront of his family is just not acceptable.
CEO's email address jim.skinner@us.mcd.com
But seriously his home address along with the other mcdonals executives are a 5 year olds googling efforts away. I reveled nothing new that was not liberly plastered all over the internet.
Maybe if they handled complaints better then people would not have to write to them directly and or sue them directly, food for thought.
The contact information for McDonald's France is quite easily found at http://www.mcdonalds.fr/contacts. It's not an e-mail address, but rather a phone number, but the way the article is written it's not at all clear if he's tried to contact them by their publicly available phone number?
> I also tried calling the main number, at mcdonands.com: 1-800-244-6227, but got a voice recording that was totally unintelligible (very loud and distorted), and it appears this number does not work.
I tried the number just now, and in fact, it is exactly as he describes: you get a loud distorted unintelligible message for a 3-4 seconds and then it hangs up.
As Dr. Mann is likely calling from Canada, as I also am, it occurred to me that this particular 800 number might not work from Canada. Some USA-based 800 numbers work, and some don't -- it depends on the calling area that the 800-number subscriber wants to pay for.
Listening to the message a second time, I think that I can make out words about the "calling area", which would indicate why it's not working.
"I don't have the resources to take on a branch of a large multi-national corporation operating in a distant country" - doesn't really cut it when the contact page and number can be found on the Internet in 2 seconds of searching.
It's still helpful to try and do as much damage as possible with this story (ideally getting some money or at least an apology for the victim), but make no mistake that the company structure will make this vanish into the æther in no time.
The long-term solution: just don't go there.
I have had hundreds of meals at McDonalds and never witnessed anything like this. The staff have been pleasant and helpful, the environment clean, and the food as advertised. "Terrible," seems ridiculously hyperbolic to me.
It's the unordered work of some violent thugs, though their motive remains to be seen (or even if they're actual employees or something else).
I have no idea how a branch of McDonald's in the centre of a major tourist city expects to be able to keep any secrets but it may simply be a company wide policy. Someone should update them on just how small, cheap and effective actual spy cameras are these days. Not to mention phones.
This past few years several documentaries showed how bad hygien can be in some french restaurant (fast-food or not) wich in the worst case led to the death of customers. http://www.leparisien.fr/faits-divers/quick-d-avignon-benjam...
One of this documentary was involving macdonald but was only broadcast on the internet once it was leaked cause the channel didn't want to lose one of the biggest advertiser. http://www.slate.fr/story/19421/mcdo-kfc-le-reportage-censur...
So i would bet they were afraid of bad publicity ... Oh the sweet taste of irony
If you were assaulted, file a police report. If your private property was damaged, hire a lawyer or file a small claims lawsuit.