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Comment by Logans_Run | Hacker News Reader

From TFA

Mayor Adams was asked during the press conference if AirTags work with Android (they don't).

"Why would anyone have one [an Android phone]?" Mayor Adams responded.

Oh and given that this in New York we're talking about here, the vigilante mob are gonna go wild for this, especially after Citizen worked out so well ....

But by last month, Frame was enthusiastically backing the idea of manhunts, according to screenshots of internal company communications seen by NBC News and first reported by Motherboard [1]

[1] "Inside Citizen: The public safety app pushing surveillance boundaries" https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/citizen-public-safety...

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> Why would anyone have one [an Android phone]?" Mayor Adams responded

This is a New Yorker’s response to a stupid question.

AirTags have a recognised brand. Messaging “buy AirTags” comes through cleanly in a way an inclusive statement would not. Given nobody is burning city funds for this, it’s literally a PSA, a reporter asking the mayor technical questions the answer to which they know is fine to be answered dismissively.

NYC is burning tons of city funds on police to solve ever fewer cases.

How is that relevant?

Did you miss the part where the city is giving away 500 air tags? It's right at the start of the article. You did read the article, didn't you?

> Did you miss the part where the city is giving away 500 air tags?

That’s a publicity stunt, not a crime-fighting measure. I do not count five hundred AirTags as “burning city funds.”

On apple's website, that's about $25 per an airtag and unless they got a deal, this is $12,500 in funds or free assets from Apple to do promotion. Skating close to corruption.

The cost to the city & its residents of dealing with a single car theft can easily be four-to-five figures.

You call it corruption. Is it, or is it just a good ROI?

I think it'll depend on whether this does anything, or whether NYPD will tell you to go pound sand when you report your car's location to them with an AirTag.

Time will tell.

> The cost to the city & its residents of dealing with a single car theft can easily be four-to-five figures.

That's ridiculous. At that rate it would be better to just buy the owner a new car.

But seriously, there should be mechanisms to report your license plate or VIN as stolen and have traffic cameras automatically deploy spike strips when that license plate is detected. It would be far cheaper and not that different from reporting your credit card as stolen.

> That's ridiculous.

No, it's just how the world works.

The unfortunate thing about property crime is that frequently, $50 worth of gain often results in $500-$5,000 worth of damages and costs. Just ask anyone who's had a catalytic converter stolen, or their copper ripped out.

> But seriously, there should be mechanisms to report your license plate as stolen and have traffic cameras automatically deploy spike strips when that license plate is detected.... It would be far cheaper...

Designing and deploying an automatic system for 'Automatically deploying spike strips', (besides being a bad idea) in a city like NYC will be an eight-figure sort of project. That will assure that in the best-case scenario, a car theft will run four-figures worth of damages. In the worst case, it will do nothing, because the car's been abandoned, or is being taken apart in a Jersey chop-shop by the time you report it stolen.

> Just ask anyone who's had a catalytic converter stolen

The difference is when someone's catalytic converter is stolen, we don't spend $5000 of taxpayer money on it. More often than not, we spend $0 of taxpayer money, and the angry owner spends $5000.

I read the parent comment as meaning we're spending 4-5 figures of taxpayer money every time a car is stolen, in which case I'd rather we just buy 2-3 more cars with that money and distribute them for free to people who had stolen cars.

> we don't spend $5000 of taxpayer money on it.

If the police spends any time documenting it, looking for it, or catching and prosecuting the guy who did it, it can run up to that. Even if they do the bare minimum, it'll definitely run a lot more than $50...

> I read the parent comment as meaning we're spending 4-5 figures of taxpayer money every time a car is stolen, in which case I'd rather we just buy 2-3 more cars with that money and distribute them for free to people who had stolen cars.

Do you want to pay hundreds of dollars in personal loss, or tens of dollars in taxes that fund measures and mechanisms to prevent or mitigate that loss? It all comes out of your pocket at the end of the day. Whether it comes out of your taxes, or your insurance premiums, or from your pocketbook, you'll still be paying.

I know that all costs being equal, I'd rather live in a world with fewer car, or cat, or copper thefts, or any other negative-sum activity than one with more of them. There's no magic bullet for this, though, which is why each mitigation should be considered on its own costs and merits.

> Even if they do the bare minimum, it'll definitely run a lot more than $50...

The bare minimum is taking a report and checking a file, and that'll take about five minutes. How are you calculating "a lot more than $50"?

And why did you pick $50 anyway? Is that a comparison to how much the criminal makes? If the profit is a small fraction of the damage they do, it makes lots of sense for the police to spend more than the profit.

> Do you want to pay hundreds of dollars in personal loss, or tens of dollars in taxes that fund measures and mechanisms to prevent or mitigate that loss? It all comes out of your pocket at the end of the day.

I disagree. It doesn't take 5 figures to mitigate that loss in a society that has technology. If it does it's a misuse of funds and I'd rather move to another city, state, country than pay 5 figures to mitigate that loss. If they can mitigate the loss in 3 figures, than absolutely yes that's better than paying 4 figures for a new car, and I'd stay and happy contribute toward the 3 figures.

https://www.choicehacking.com/2022/01/04/what-is-the-cobra-e...

>More often than not, we spend $0 of taxpayer money, and the angry owner spends $5000.

No, the angry owner makes an insurance claim, and then car insurance rates go up for everyone who lives a mile away from the angry owner(s) who got their catalytic converter(s) stolen

For the cost of the city, if they stopped going after car theft it would simply become more prevalent. We don't need to decriminalize and make safe cities for car thieves.

Regarding your second point, many modern cars have kill switches the police can access. This might be a better solution if these can't easily bypass them. That said, I don't personally want a car with a kill switch.

I don't advocate for decriminalizing it at all. But it shouldn't take 5 figures to catch a car thief with some minimal technology.

It the very least it should be a fundamental axiom of a society that {catching a thief of an item, fixing an item} should cost less than or equal to replacing the item, and I believe that to be largely true if technology is maximally utilized.

I don't think that's a reasonable Axiom because thieves rarely steal a single item over a lifetime. There's also the deterrent effect which is very important. If you didn't catch at least some car thieves, you couldn't have a society with cars.

> it'll depend on whether this does anything, or whether NYPD will tell you to go pound sand when you report your car's location to them with an AirTag

Which is affected by the mayor, a former cop, name dropping AirTags in relation to car thefts in the press.

By the standards of either the NYC budget, or Apple's finances, $12,500 is a rounding error.

They can send all their rounding errors to me then, I'll happily take them.

Okay. Note that half of them will be negative. Have fun.

I always mess up some mundane detail...

The city didnt even buy them. A non profit did.

>The Association for a Better New York (ABNY), a nonprofit founded by New York real estate developer Lewis Rudin in the 1970s and responsible for the "I <3 NY campaign," paid for the 500 AirTags.

It's a legitimate question. Why is the mayor of NYC shilling a product? NYC is one of the worlds largest city governments so It's not out of the realm of possibility that this is a native ad for I-Phones.

Eric Adams is an ass.

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