The Lost Art of Pickpocketing (2011) | Hacker News Reader

The Lost Art of Pickpocketing (2011)

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57 pointskeiferski43 comments

I remember a pickpocket trying to pick my front pocket on the NYC subway in the late '80s. The subway car was packed since it was after the July 4th fireworks. What amazed me is that he realized were my cash was. Not in my wallet, but in my front left pocket.

I caught the pickpocket and wrapped my fingers over his and looked in his eyes. I didn't say anything since I knew thieves can roam in packs and my parents were not too far away. I was going to warn them (in a different language) when someone else caught the same pickpocket and started yelling at him and he finally left the train.

We were taught to wrap a rubber band around our wallets since it would create friction if someone tried to remove your wallets. Ah, the '80s.

A group of Argentinians in Buenos Aires city run a full web site with videos, images, and tips against subway pickpockets: http://www.peesba.com.ar/

They have even links to some of the pickpockets facebook pages!

Here's an fascinating article from Jan 2013 in The New Yorker about Apollo Robbins, someone for whom Pickpocketing is very much still alive. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/01/07/130107fa_fact_...

There are a number of great vids of him doing his "act" now as well; including this one with the writer of the article you linked to:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoUSO_Mj1TQ

Anyone else kind of creeped out by this? Mourning that people don't cleverly commit a particular (victimful) crime anymore?

What if I wrote an article about the lost art of child molestation, talking about how children are now much better prepared against being lured away by strangers? And then sagely asked if "we should miss" the decline of child predation?

Pickpocketing used to be romanticized, and requires some skill to carry off. That's the difference.

One of the characters in the sci-fi show Crusade was a pickpocket, and her first scene demonstrated her prowess...I'm thinking she was supposed to be mostly likeable.

Pick-pocketing is basically a form of street magic (used for evil) so I think it is understandable that it delights people in a way when they aren't the victim. IIRC one of the characters in the remake of Oceans Eleven was introduced as a pickpocket. In fiction they are like jewelry or art thieves dressed in all black repelling down into a museum.

Now when you're just trying to walk down the street and some kid gets your wallet, it becomes a wee bit harder to appreciate...

Tricking children to

Sex with children was never romanticized? (Sparta, I'm looking in your general direction here.)

Pickpocketing is wrong, but if you can't see the difference with child molestation, then you seriously have no idea about the consequences of the latter.

Another take on Godwin's law.

Is there a name for the one that goes "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Godwin's law approaches 1"?

There is Miller's Paradox:

As a network evolves, the number of Nazi comparisons not forestalled by citation to Godwin's Law converges to zero.

Maybe because when people do a crime now, it is more violent.

São Paulo (where I live) this article also applies... São Paulo is huge, and has some subways, that were in the past filled with pickpockets.

Now we have for example the fact that in the last year alone we had a rise of more than 100% (don't remember the exact number) in violent robberies.

This year alone (and the year is not even over) we had also around 100% increase in robberies that end in death.

I seriously would prefer someone would try to steal stuff from my pocket, instead of pointing high caliber guns at my head (and this part of guns at my head already happened twice to me personally).

Wow. Did you even read the article? The article was a very well written cultural expose on a criminal activity that has a certain pop culture appeal. Did you not see the numerous citations of literature and media that the article featured? I'm questioning your critical thinking abilities if you actually think your comparison between culturally romanticized petty theft and child rape is valid.

"Demonstrate before the palace of the rich; demand work. If denied, demand bread. If denied both, steal the bread."

Seems to apply to the computer security field just as well.

The proper analog is an article on the lost art of lock picking, or how driving a stolen SUV into an ATM should earn less respect than digging a 100 m tunnel into a bank vault.

I don't see an inherent paradox in admiring the execution of an action while simultaneously condemning its objectives or effects. For example, Attila the Hun must have been a great military leader, but that does not mean one should admire the idea of plundering the world.

Sort of amazes me that you can write an entire article about the dying art of pickpocketing and not interview any of the old picks. Would have made the article a lot more interesting than just some quotes from criminologists.

It's the old story: Crime and violence are on a multi-scale decline since the dawn of civilization, but nobody believes it.

Interesting.

Made me go out and find a reference: http://blogs.berkeley.edu/2010/06/16/a-crime-puzzle-violent-...

At the same time, the decline in picketing in particular seems a bit different. It's a much extreme decline in a behavior that's criminal but not necessarily violent.

the decline in picketing

The government doesn't exactly encourage picketing, but I do belive it has traditionally been considered a valid, non-violent form of protest and not a criminal act.

Let us join together and mourn the loss of the multi-century tradition of picketing... from the old country.

I think it's because communicating is improving even more drastically than crime is decreasing, so the average person hears even more credible stores of crime and violence than they used to (think of the local evening news).

It may fuel a perception that things are getting worse, when in reality our standards are rising, and the bad things are increasingly coming to our attention.

It's not that we don't believe it, it's that our brains are wired to focus on perceived threats and can't differentiate between hearing about a threat from a friend (with small, local distribution) and hearing about it from the news (with very wide distribution.) So we mentally approach crime news stores that are actually one in a million events (in a large city) like they happened to someone in the 150 or so people we know and communicate with regularly (our "tribe".)

I'm guessing the person who wrote this is upper-middle class and has never known anyone poor enough that the loss of one paycheck would utterly destroy their family's lives.

Should we miss pickpockets. Should we be sad that American children are less likely to go hungry or become homeless when some scumbag takes the rent money out of Mom's pocket. WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU.

They forgot the most obvious reason of all:

Increasing prevalence of tight-fitting clothing for both genders.

Tight fitting clothing is not a new idea. There was a time when both pickpockets and tight clothes were in style.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slim-fit_pants#The_1980s

I see many reaction around the indulgence towards pickpockets you can read in the article.

It reminded me about Vidocq, that at some point in his memories denounce the behavior of high society towards thieves that, he says, could even ask police to get a thief out of prison to let him demonstrate his skills to amuse guests for an evening.

Thieves were glamorized and victims were seen as fools by a great deal of society. Until one of those would be a victim himself.

It's not new, and more visible in cruder societies of the past, and I suspect it finds its roots in the very common, and almost reflex, respect given to ones that can show great dexterity and cleverness. Which is totally lost when brutality is involved, tools of the lesser mind. Well, except for war, where you can find respect even if violence is involved.

Ask some of the gypsy/roma population in Bulgaria - by the time you are done asking them, they might be done with showing their talent.

It just proves that the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles successfully dealt with the Foot and their network of pickpockets.

I recently read a book on capital punishment through the years, and pickpocketing got so bad in the middle ages that it was punished by death. Every week the cart would bring the condemmed pickpockets through the street. The criminals would jeer at the crowd, the crowd would cheer and pick favorites. The soon-to-die would make a big speech before their death, often bawdy and unrepentant. All the while, more pickpockets were working the celebration, making their living.

thread from 2011 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2258922

btw watch Scam City http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scam_City#Season_1_.282012.29 Barcelona episode. the art is not dead.

I got pickpockets in Bryant Park (Manhattan) in the summer of 2010. It was a surreal experience, at least two people involve (one bumped).

I realised what had happened about 15 seconds afterwards, but it was too late. Just crowds.

They did an excellent job!

While I have never been a victim of pickpocketing, I have always been fascinated with the techniques & strategies involved. Attention, or lack thereof, is the key.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LoUSO_Mj1TQ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTa7rC1oUnk

Why pickpocket when you can rob someone over the wire?

Exactly, they've gone electronic.

People carry less cash these days anyway, we're all electronic/plastic.

Except that many of us carry smartphones that are worth more by themselves than the amount of cash we would normally consider carrying and expose you to further online fraud if stolen.

A smartphone isn't worth anything until you sell it.

Pickpocketing is alive and well in the UK/europe where they have entire teams of pickpockets especially around transit and subways.

If you read the article, it establishes that the practice flourishes in Europe still.

Wow, I wrote about this today: http://pydanny.com/travel-tips-for-geeks-preventing-theft.ht...

I remember seeing Harry In Your Pocket when I was 13 and I was mesmerized.

> In a 2001 story, the New York Times reported that there were 23,068 reported pickpocketing incidents in the city in 1990, amounting to nearly $10 million in losses. Five years later, the number of reported incidents had fallen by half, and by the turn of the millennium, there were less than 5,000. Today, the NYPD doesn't even maintain individual numbers on pickpocketing.

NYPD crime statistics become more and more bogus every year. Just Google "NYPD statistics" and read the articles which pop up on the front page. Every mayor and police chief wants to point to statistics showing that crime is falling, and promotions and such are all related to statistics looking good, so naturally enough, the statistics are being fudged all over the place.

There may be more or less pickpockets now than in decades past, but NYPD statistics are nothing to go by.

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