Police using decoy buses to catch attackers targeting Apple and Google shuttles | Hacker News Reader

Police using decoy buses to catch attackers targeting Apple and Google shuttles

theverge.com

46 pointskelukelugames68 comments

Why is the CHP publicizing this? I'd assume they'd want to keep it a secret. Unless it's just security theater.

I may be just a scare tactic to get the person to stop doing it. If the person keeps things random then it's unlikely they'll be able to catch then without a heap of luck. Pellet guns can go quite far and be made pretty silent.

I imagine they’re also worried about escalation. The person who takes potshots with a pellet gun today, might do it with a long rifle tomorrow. They’ve already crossed a lot of moral and legal lines already.

Yup, it's just damn difficult to guard all busses all the time from a determined adversary. Hopefully the person backs down instead of escalating.

Hopefully, and there is no guarantee of further escalation, depending on the pathology/motivations of the shooter. Still, a lot of roads lead to thst escalatiom, especially if there is a thrill-seeking, or power-dominance aspect to the behavior. Humam behavior is notoriously hard to predict, but the biggest risk factors for violent, serial crime is a pattern of escalation.

For example, from the world of sexually motivated crime, the peeping Tom is a concern because they might escalate, but most don’t. Of far greater concern is the peeping Tom thst stsrts to burgle underwear, engages in overt stalking behavior, etc. Once they reach the realm of attempted sexual assault, the risk of further escalation is much greater. By the same token the person who enjoys torturing cats today may become someone who tortures people tomorrow.

I worry a lot about the future patterns of behavior from someone who is comfortable shooting pellets at busses full of people. I would guess the police are too, since they’ve seen where this kind of thing can lead.

Would have to assume this. As someone else said, stuff like this has been going on for a while, it's just a different.

I doubt it will get up to guns -- this is the US, they would've just started there if their intent was to actually hurt someone.

It's probably another person feeling disgruntled, disenfranchised, dispossessed with no real way to retaliate against the faceless corporations and other behemoths so they're acting out against a soft target.

Another poster also pointed out going after Google workers vs the extremely wealthy. I would say that once you start seeing multiple assassinations of CEOs of major companies then it might be time to buy a plane ticket somewhere else.

>The hope, Sanchez says, is that if the decoy buses are also attacked the agency can “[look] at damage on the bus and [look] at what angle the projectile is coming from.”

They're not saying it... but there must be cameras all over this bus to catch the shooter, right? Trying to figure out "the angle of the projectile" is almost nonsensical if they have a decoy bus set up.

It would probably make more sense to fly a drone with FLIR over the area.

I predict that there will be a rising tide of this sort of civil unrest until income inequality reverses direction.

Given that the US Gini index hasn't changed appreciably since the 1990s...why now?

Because now it's those darn nerds making all of the money, and people just can't have that.

No one lives in the national average. Things have gotten meaningfully worse here in the last few years.

Because the rich can only hide behind statistical averages for so long.

If they attack the bus filled with officers, does this also stack on additional charges for assault on the police?

Presumably this very specific protection is paid for indirectly by the taxes Apple and Google pay.

I’m bitter about FAANG’s tax avoidance as much as the next guy, but these people are also under the protection of our laws. No one deserves to be shot at for working with Google; shouted at maybe, but never shot at. As a country we can’t accept that, and in any case, everyone on those busses does pay taxes.

I agree, a crime is crime regardless, but it raises a question nonetheless.

Additionally, if I as an individual were to go to the police claiming something similar I suspect they would tell me to claim on insurance, and to try to make myself less of a target by not advertising my identity. I doubt they'd be running fake cars on my commute to try and catch the perp.

Maybe I'm wrong, but the police seem to be going the extra mile (quite literally) in this case.

I think that's because it's been affecting a fairly large number of people (compared to the number of perpetrators) over a fairly long period of time. I think it's also because it's public enough that the police are worried about the message that would be sent if they didn't seriously try to stop it.

Suppose the shooter was shooting at public buses though. Would you still expect nothing to happen?

The key difference between your car and a bus is that with the bus the safety of thirty people is involved, plus the willingness of many more people to use buses which the city has an interest in. Your car is you and your family's safety which is a fraction of the importance.

911 calls for i.e. kids throwing rocks from overpasses are taken very seriously.

This is probably more about the BB gun(s) than anything else. These aren't deadly weapons, but police are acutely sensitive to any form of gun, deadly or otherwise, and they've got a case here where someone is regularly taking shots at these buses.

There was a dumb kid my age at a high-school party who thought he'd... I don't know what he thought.

But he shot a BB gun and it hit a girl in her eye, destroying the function in that organ and lodging itself in her brain, forcing her to have to relearn how to read and speak and other functions people take for granted.

I say this because even a BB gun can hurt someone in ways that are unanticipated.

Just like supporting an economic regime that hurts people in unanticipated ways. Better to be kind and generous to everyone so we can all flourish.

Why do Google employees deserve to be shouted at?

https://www.fastcompany.com/3051574/has-the-tech-industry-ma...

Just Google it.

I hoped that my wording wasn’t a ringing endorsement of shouting at Googlers. I was saying that protests are fine, shootings are not.

Oh, I hadn't read anywhere that Google has changed its tax strategy to increase its effective rate beyond the 2.4% they've paid in recent years. But maybe so.

The Google employees being shot at almost certainly pay way more than that in income taxes.

2.4%? Their earnings reports say ~16%: https://abc.xyz/investor/pdf/2017Q3_alphabet_earnings_releas...

Still lower than you'd expect given that the corporate tax rate was 35%, but way different from 2.4%.

Sorry, I was looking at older data. Or maybe that's a 16% rate on 0.5% of their actual profits....

https://www.theguardian.com/business/ireland-business-blog-w...

https://www.zerohedge.com/article/how-googles-refusal-pay-us...

Municipalities don't levy corporate income taxes. Services like police would be funded through property taxes on the companies' campuses.

Actually, in California, property taxes make up only 14% of the average municipality's revenue, and 22% of the average county's revenue.[1]

But yes, I'll concede that Google probably does pay a share of the taxes required to pay for these services, though I doubt it is a share proportionate to its actual profits generated in the Bay area, since their tax accounting tricks are so sophisticated.

[1] For the ugly details: http://www.ca-ilg.org/sites/main/files/file-attachments/basi...

In the document you linked, city revenues are based on property tax, sales tax, utility charges, fees, and fines. None of those things are meant to be proportional to profit. 9% does come from state and federal grants; Google-the-corporate-entity is maybe not contributing its fair share towards those, but its employees certainly are, and then some (the progressiveness of the progressive income tax curve is not cost-of-living adjusted).

In case anyone is interested, Google's latest (2017 Q4) earnings press release is here: https://abc.xyz/investor/pdf/20171231_alphabet_10K.pdf

They quote, "Effective tax rate 138%".

So, if I understand you correctly, the cost of apprehending criminals should be borne by those who would benefit most from their capture (i.e. the victims)?

Does this mean that victims of stalking or criminal threats should pay extra for the extra police activity required to protect them? Should neighborhoods with higher crime rates pay a hefty tax hike to cover costs? We want to be fair, right?

That is not what I am suggesting at all.

My point is that google appear to be getting better-than-average protection (a whole fake bus to catch a BB-gun vandal), yet paying less-than-average (taxes) toward it, and are hardly a vulnerable member of society, where that might make sense.

So then, the suggested policy is to not offer novel solutions to catching criminals if the victim is a large corporation, unless they pay for it out of pocket?

My suggested policy would be to point out the exceptional service they receive from the state, and encourage them to pay for it fairly, rather than being dicks with their various legal-but-morally-questionable tax strategies.

Eg they could log sales in the country they were actually made, and pay taxes on them there - rather than paying "royalties" to a shell company in the British Virgin Islands or some other notorious tax avoidance hub.

If America doesn't get a handle on wealth disparity we're going to see a lot more of this, and certainly worse.

You can say that attacking the buses the wrong thing to do, but the moral high ground isn't going to stop it from happening.

How did Google employees making $250k/yr become the symbol of unfair distribution of wealth? Why not shoot at some CEO who makes $100m/yr? The Google employees on those buses are much closer in income to the typical protester than they are to the CEO.

For that reason, I say this is just senseless violence that has nothing to do with wealth inequality.

Because there's a concerted effort happening to point the blame at those who aren't the source of the problem.

PMC's sometimes get killed when they are protecting someone/something they are paid to protect/enable…

Employees of organizations like these could be considered PMC's in the eyes for someone who has out out for their employer…

“PMC” is what? Google didn’t help. Thx.

Private Military Contractors

Because there are lots more of those making $200k+ and they are competing for housing in more similar areas than poor people. The 100M CEO likely lives in a area that has been gentrified a very long time ago. Not saying it's justified or good. In fact I'm a pro gentrification [edit: typo was @verification"] market urbanist. Just trying to make sense of it as well.

>pro verification market urbanist

Um, if you wouldn’t mind...

Sorry, I should look more at what I'm writing when "typing" on a phone. That was supposed to be "gentrification".

> Why not shoot at some CEO who makes $100m/yr?

The CEO making 100 million a year has no-shit legit bodyguards that shoot back.

Most CEOs earn less than the average dentist. When you refer to "some CEO who makes 100m/year", that phrase describes a minuscule fraction of CEOs - it's less than a dozen people, none of whom you're likely to have met, heard of, or shared freeway space with.

For instance, the 2012 Forbes list of highest-paid executives found only ONE CEO earning over 100m - his name was John H Hammergren.

The average CEO in the US makes 164k, which is almost identical to the salary for "Senior Software Engineer" at Google. Including options and benefits, a (senior) Google engineer is almost certainly earning much MORE than most CEOs.

Sources:

Source: https://www.forbes.com/lists/2012/12/ceo-compensation-12_lan...

https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Google-Senior-Software-Engi...

https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Chief_Executive_Off...

Mark Blyth[1] has a simple warning: "It is a no win scenario until basically until elites figure out that at the end of the day, as I like to say to my American hedge fund friends, the Hamptons is not a defensible position. The Hamptons is a very rich area on Long Island that lies on low lying beaches. Very hard to defend a low lying beach. Eventually people are going to come for you."[2]

I encourage everybody interested in trying to prevent that outcome to listen to this[3] talk where Blyth summarizes the root cause and suggests a few reasonable steps towards a solution.

[1] prof. of political economy at Brown

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGvZil0qWPg

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsqGITb0W4A

What i don't understand is why the mega rich don't realise that wealth inequality is hurting their quality of life too. Having a safer world benefits everyone.

They literally don't live in the same reality the rest of us live in.

In the above talk[3], Blyth mentions how someone geolocated every mentioned location in the infamous Podesta emails released by WikiLeaks. The most frequent location mentioned across all the emails? "Martha" ['s vineyards]. The 2nd was "Hampton", followed by SF and NY. Everything[4] else was two standard deviations lower.

[4] I might be forgetting another city

I've spent time in both Marthas Vineyard and New York and can say that everyone in NYC would definitely benefit from having a more equitable society with less poverty.

Seriously. Find any CEO who makes 100m, and ask them when was the last time they had an actual in-person interaction with someone who made minimum wage or less.

Because, if it gets really bad.

They buy: security guards, self shooting drones and self shooting guns.

The type of guns and drones that shoot themselves?

That's my idea of a living hell. Who would want to deal with the thoughts around all that potential violence and aggression. This is exactly what I mean. We all have 2 things that are most valuable. Time and our health. Having all that security apparatus is not good for your mental health.

The Silicon Valley elite are pretty well known (and often derided) for their support of redistributive liberal politics. It's not the "mega rich" that voted in the opposite direction.

I get his point. But in his rhetoric is he literally referring to the tactical situation of the Hamptons or not defensible as in economically?

I haven't read the link but I think perhaps he's using one as a metaphor for the other?

Tactical. It's obviously a metaphor for civil unrest in general, but he is serious about the danger of living in e.g. the Hamptons while pretending unrest isn't actually a problem. At some point people will come for your head.

In another recent interview[5], Blyth discusses this topic in more detail, including "plan B" for the super-rich that have realized the tactical disadvantages of the Hamptons: escape to a secure bunker in New Zealand[6]

[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5iia9kdsuM

[6] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/30/doomsday-prep-...

>…escape to a secure bunker in New Zealand[6]

Let us fast-forward to a future, where drones armed with munitions like the BLU-116 that patrol the skys/seas, can be rooted based on information/tools available to the public…

History repeats itself. I mean, how many times does this have to happen? And in the end, the "elite rich" get their heads chopped off. Because when it comes down to it, it's a numbers game.

Russia, France, Spain, etc. etc.

People shooting at vehicles is not new. While in most cases they target what appear to be random vehicles, and in this case it's been determined the targets are tech bosses, I'm not sure we can be certain this is not a mental disorder manifesting itself as "fighting the man" in the form of various tech staffers who while symbolic, are not what most people would imagine as wealthy.

I had wondered when people would feel upset enough against the megacorps to attack them, but I didn't think it would happen in the near future

Bear in mind, this is merely an escalation (mind you, a violent one), of something that's already been going on since 2013. People have been staging protests in front of these buses for a while now.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_bus_protests

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