I haven't had my coffee yet and missed the perverse-incentive / fraud aspect... thanks for pointing that out.
It's definitely a problem. Imagine you hire a plumber to snake your drains and he places a bag of weed behind the pipes, snaps a picture, and reports you to the police for possession. He gets paid for the plumbing job, paid for the reporting of a crime, and keeps his weed.
Much easier with digital imagery. Just create a "new folder" in someone's "My Documents", plant some illicit imagery, and boom-- easy pay-day.
The plumber wouldn't get to keep the weed. The police would take that as evidence. This is why the reward would need to be higher than the price of the weed.
I think they are making an equivalence to digital files. With digital files, you can copy it over and keep the original. In his example, essentially the plumber only took a picture of the weed, handed the cops the picture, and took the weed home with him. At least that's how I interpreted it.
Yea, I get the analogy they were making, I just was pointing out that it's not totally correct. The police are not going to give you an award if you show a picture of weed in the house. They would need to see the weed in the house and collect it as evidence. If anything, showing a picture of weed in the house and then having the police find no weed there may give them probable cause to search the plumber for the weed...
Same with digital files, if the same Geek Squad member keeps "finding" evidence they plant on peoples computers, the Geek Squad person is opening themselves up to a ton of risk. In order to plant the digital files you are by definition in possession of the banned files and are breaking the law. Any good law enforcement agent would realize that the same person is unlikely to find illicit files and that it is more likely that they are planting evidence.
The point is that there is not an easy payday. To get paid you must break the law by possessing the files. Plus, just copying the files to the persons computer would leave an obvious trace considering they know when the Geek Squad was there and know when the files were copied.
Even if the fraud if being committed poorly, it will drag the accused through the mud before the truth comes out.
Even though the doctor in the article was not convicted (and I guess we'll never know the whole truth of the matter) you can bet his colleagues and friends aren't looking at him quite the same way.
Close, but no dice. 100 EUR worth of weed (street value) is only worth 100 EUR if the person wants to keep it (ie. is a regular smoker) or wants to sell it (ie. is an aspirant dealer). Assuming an employee of Geek Squad is either is a rough stretch. For people who are neither (such as myself), weed can be worth 0 EUR (to me, weed is completely worthless as I don't want to put effort into selling it, and don't want to smoke it). An irregular smoker wouldn't smoke enough to finish 100 EUR of weed. They might rather prefer say 90 EUR cash instead. And even a regular smoker could possibly be able to know cheaper sources than street value.
If a plumber wanted to plant weed in your house (to get a reward like that proposed above), they would need to acquire the weed. It only makes sense to acquire the weed if the price to acquire is less than the reward. It doesn't matter whether the plumber smokes or not.
Good point, but Cableshaft had the right idea of it. I mean, at no point in the plumber scenario does the plumber have to actually part ways with his weed: "Sorry officers, I guess the guy must have moved his stash after he realized I must have seen it!" He didn't take custody of the drugs he's reporting, he just took a picture / called it in.
In the dry-cleaner scenario they obviously wouldn't have a great excuse for missing dime bags since they'd have custody of it.
REGARDLESS, I think the point isn't about "setting the right price" or comparing scenarios in which planting evidence is easier / harder, it's that ANY price is going to enable perverse-incentives for bad actors in at least some situations.
Comments
I haven't had my coffee yet and missed the perverse-incentive / fraud aspect... thanks for pointing that out.
It's definitely a problem. Imagine you hire a plumber to snake your drains and he places a bag of weed behind the pipes, snaps a picture, and reports you to the police for possession. He gets paid for the plumbing job, paid for the reporting of a crime, and keeps his weed.
Much easier with digital imagery. Just create a "new folder" in someone's "My Documents", plant some illicit imagery, and boom-- easy pay-day.
The plumber wouldn't get to keep the weed. The police would take that as evidence. This is why the reward would need to be higher than the price of the weed.
I think they are making an equivalence to digital files. With digital files, you can copy it over and keep the original. In his example, essentially the plumber only took a picture of the weed, handed the cops the picture, and took the weed home with him. At least that's how I interpreted it.
Yea, I get the analogy they were making, I just was pointing out that it's not totally correct. The police are not going to give you an award if you show a picture of weed in the house. They would need to see the weed in the house and collect it as evidence. If anything, showing a picture of weed in the house and then having the police find no weed there may give them probable cause to search the plumber for the weed...
Same with digital files, if the same Geek Squad member keeps "finding" evidence they plant on peoples computers, the Geek Squad person is opening themselves up to a ton of risk. In order to plant the digital files you are by definition in possession of the banned files and are breaking the law. Any good law enforcement agent would realize that the same person is unlikely to find illicit files and that it is more likely that they are planting evidence.
The point is that there is not an easy payday. To get paid you must break the law by possessing the files. Plus, just copying the files to the persons computer would leave an obvious trace considering they know when the Geek Squad was there and know when the files were copied.
Even if the fraud if being committed poorly, it will drag the accused through the mud before the truth comes out.
Even though the doctor in the article was not convicted (and I guess we'll never know the whole truth of the matter) you can bet his colleagues and friends aren't looking at him quite the same way.
Close, but no dice. 100 EUR worth of weed (street value) is only worth 100 EUR if the person wants to keep it (ie. is a regular smoker) or wants to sell it (ie. is an aspirant dealer). Assuming an employee of Geek Squad is either is a rough stretch. For people who are neither (such as myself), weed can be worth 0 EUR (to me, weed is completely worthless as I don't want to put effort into selling it, and don't want to smoke it). An irregular smoker wouldn't smoke enough to finish 100 EUR of weed. They might rather prefer say 90 EUR cash instead. And even a regular smoker could possibly be able to know cheaper sources than street value.
If a plumber wanted to plant weed in your house (to get a reward like that proposed above), they would need to acquire the weed. It only makes sense to acquire the weed if the price to acquire is less than the reward. It doesn't matter whether the plumber smokes or not.
Good point, but Cableshaft had the right idea of it. I mean, at no point in the plumber scenario does the plumber have to actually part ways with his weed: "Sorry officers, I guess the guy must have moved his stash after he realized I must have seen it!" He didn't take custody of the drugs he's reporting, he just took a picture / called it in.
In the dry-cleaner scenario they obviously wouldn't have a great excuse for missing dime bags since they'd have custody of it.
REGARDLESS, I think the point isn't about "setting the right price" or comparing scenarios in which planting evidence is easier / harder, it's that ANY price is going to enable perverse-incentives for bad actors in at least some situations.