This is worse than the original problem. When did we become so comfortable with the government mandating presentation of papers and tracking of private transactions?
Effective, privacy-preserving law enforcement is difficult.
That doesn’t mean we should cut corners through ever-increasing state oversight targeted at the latest symptoms of criminality.
The choice isn’t between laws like this and having your catalytic converter stolen. The choice is between law enforcement actually doing their job, or invasive and ineffectual laws like this.
The justice department, in the very article we’re discussing, investigated and took down this ring without California’s new “KYC” regulations.
>> The choice is between law enforcement actually doing their job, or invasive and ineffectual laws like this.
I'm on guard for overreah all the time, but I'm OK with showing ID to buy alcohol, drive a car, fly on a plane, sell items that should rarely be done in bulk outside of rare conditions, like a bunch of catalytic converters.
So now, the government keeps track of what and how much booze I buy. Ugh.
This is beyond stupid, as people stopped thinking I might be under 21 back when the buffalo roamed.
Locally, a large (100+) chain (Plaid Pantry) of convenience stores also is scanning licenses. Saw somebody with an Olde English 40 and a passport.
It's not the law in Oregon (or Washington) but the article says it is in Tennessee. Also says you can ask them to type in the digits of your birthdate.
The few other states I could easily find online that had a similar law typically require that retailers either don’t store the data or that they delete it within X days.
I took a flight today. I had to show my ID once at the start of the security line where they did NOT check my boarding pass.
Then at the gate they only wanted to see my boarding pass and not my ID.
So basically nobody actually cares about ID when flying. It would have been trivial to buy the ticket in a false name or "borrow" someone else's name without asking.
To be clear, this failing is all on the gate procedure. If security wanted to check boarding pass or if they have to hooked up on the computer there, a simple bypass would be to buy a cheap ticket in your real name and the ticket you intend to fly in some other name.
To get through TSA as a member of the general public, you have to have a ticket (or a non-traveler gate pass) in your real name (matching your ID, soon to be real ID requirement) for a flight leaving in the next N hours. International flights check your passport at the boarding gate. For domestic, sure, you could swap to another boarding pass purchased under a different name, but what's the threat model there? You've already been screened.
you should probably re-evaluate your ideas about personal ID with regards to travel if you're interested in over-reach. These laws are routinely used as an anti-immigration method by ICE and equivalents, and there is very little proof that they do much to make the world any safer.
Have you ever run a business? You have to track a lot already. For the IRS, for your business license, for auditing, for compliance depending on what goods and services you sell. You know like firearms, tobacco, alcohol, pharmaceuticals are big ones, but also animals, chemicals, certain kinds of technology. If you require a federal permit, if you sell goods across state, international, if you ship things. Like, I feel like this cat came out of the bag before the 18th century, based on my understanding of the regulation of businesses in the United States.
Like... meth exists.
After Timothy McVeigh blew up a building with a truck full of agricultural supplies.
The decrease in domestic terrorism is due to societal changes and better old-fashioned policing of home-grown extremist groups. We didn’t somehow make it impossible (or even difficult) to improvise large explosives.
The actual bomb planning for the Oklahoma City bombing was less than a year and involved two people. So, seems like the bar was raised quite a bit.
I mean sure, you could also ask how laws against shoplifting fail to stop bank robberies, and it would be just as coherent.
In Britain, criminals were stealing the thick, copper cables used for power and signaling of the railway. They wrapped a chain around cables near a road crossing, attached it to a truck, and dragged a significant length of cable away, to sell as scrap.
That naturally means the railway can't be used for many hours, occasionally over a day, and costs a tremendous about to repair. (It is one of the most safety-critical large systems around.) There's huge disruption, as 600 people per train every 20 minutes simply don't fit on any other means of transport.
Compared to catalytic converters, the disruption to society is far greater, the replacement cost much higher, and the scrap value relatively lower.
About 10 years ago, a law was introduced forbidding scrap metal dealers from paying cash, and requiring them to check ID. That led to a 30% drop in theft.
Is that a reasonable law?
My ass it did. I've worked in the metal recycling industry.
Getting payment in some form other than cash doesn't deter people who were already willing to commit a crime. They have a buddy scrap it and the buddy takes a cut for taking on the risk.
Yards don't want the .gov snooping around because that never leads to anything good. At the very best it's a delay and distraction. So if you come in with something the .gov is going hard on this month (cats, railway cable, whatever) they will tell you to fuck off to some other yard. And when it's a PITA to fence shit shit doesn't get stolen. That's where you're getting your 30% reduction, not the law. The government is just such a PITA to deal with that scrap yards would rather leave money on the table than have to deal with officer Donut coming by every now and then to check their books.
I think you might have a point that this law may have also deterred 30% of legitimate copper scrap transactions, if basically it made scrap dealers decide not to bother with copper at all…
The police can — clearly, as per this article — do their job without yet another intrusive privacy overreach being put permanently on the books.
I'm a big proponent making police do actual police work to catch offenders.
In fact, police use of geo-fencing warrants, genealogical database mining, IMSI catchers and other invasions of privacy are all huge overreaches that should be slapped down hard.
That said, what reasonable mechanism do you suggest for police to use in identifying and deterring the catalytic converter (CC) theft market? Having "legitimate" businesses report on their interactions with CCs seems minimally invasive, as compared with other extremely invasive practices already being used by law "enforcement".
Given that (IIUC) most stolen CCs are broken down for the expensive metals they contain, rather than being sold in a black aftermarket, it's unlikely that police can just find a stolen CC and look at its serial number to determine whether or not it's been stolen.
Are you arguing that we should ignore the issue of stolen CCs because any action is worse, or do you have a reasonable suggestion as to how to address this issue? That's not a jab at you. You seem to have strong feelings about this (I don't), so I'd like to understand what potential alternatives might exist to the new law. If you'd expand on that, I'd be most appreciative!
While I don't disagree with the idea that police should do, you know, actual police work, rather than trample on the privacy of the population (e.g., all these calls for encryption back doors as well as the stuff I mention above), it's not clear to me what the issue might be here.
I see that the “[feeling of] safety above all” contingent is quite voracious about defending this latest government intrusion, so I’ll stop giving them comments to downvote.
It can be as simple as this:
1. Joe brings in a cat
2. Store takes the cat, but writes down Joes important information (DL #, name, address, etc)
3. If Joe brings a new cat in within some reasonable time period factoring in possibly fixing a used car or something he's reported to the authorities for suspicion of theft.
Exceptions to (3) can be made to people who can present the valid credentials of an auto repair shop and are operating as agents of that shop. Then the shop can be placed in the record book and tracked with different standards.
With this in place you will only be able to fence X number of cats easily where X is the number of shops within some reasonable distance. You could even make this national if you really wanted to prevent transportation over a border.
Sure, you could argue this won't fix anything because shops that are dirty will remain dirty. This is simply solved by having an already existing traffic enforcement body once a year check books. If your books are out of order your business is closed and an investigation is done to see if you're acting as a fence. Same as pawn shops.
There is absolutely no "intrusion" to speak of here. You are in possession of a highly valuable, commonly stolen item. KYC by a company should be a minimum standard. Do you think that requiring a car title and asking for registration, etc when you sell a car to a lot is also an intrusion? I'm afraid to ask you if you even know what fencing actually is. No one is saying you can't cut your own cat off and sell it privately. The goal is to eliminate the easiest possible routes for fencing and make it not only difficult but also expensive criminally to continue.
The U.S. has always been like this, especially since taking down the mob in the 70's and the War On Drugs in the 80's. Out of all the laws, most people aren't going to be hemmed up with catalytic converter KYC compared to things such as the War On Drugs and the watering down of the 4th amendment.
