They’ll even tell post signs letting the public know they’re using bait cars in the area…how does that not scare off thieves?
Sure they are: he intends for them to take the package so he can record them. He’s designed the package to look like something it is not, to decieve people into thinking they are stealing legitimate merchandise. He knows, or should reasonably know, that someone may open that in their car or in their home. If it is taken into a home, how is that not infiltrating the home?
in·fil·trate
- enter or gain access to (an organization, place, etc.) surreptitiously and gradually, especially in order to acquire secret information.
I think the keywords here are entered and gain access. It’s quite clear that Rober hasn’t entered the abode so we can rule that out. Has he gained access? Well, no. He still can’t enter.
I agree with that, in fact it’s almost exactly what I was about to type. However, the next question I have is how he can post them online. Thieves or not, they still have an expectation of privacy in their house. I was wondering if maybe he convinces them to sign a release in exchange for him not turning everything over to the police. However, upon rewatching the video, the faces are blurred. In fact, hiding their identity may be what keeps him out of legal trouble.
Maybe the people stealing the cars didn’t drive past that sign or maybe they did and just assumed it was either a bluff or worked on the assumption that their chances of stealing a bait car was slim to none.
Leaving out intent for just a second. If you steal my phone off my desk and I remotely turn on the GPS and camera to find it, have I infiltrated your house? What if everything is the same but this time instead leaving my phone on my desk by accident, I leave it there on purpose because I want someone to steal it?
Also, regarding the definition, I’m not sure it applies. Mark didn’t enter or gain access to anyone’s house any more than the bank gained access to your house when you walked off with one of their pens in your pocket.
I know intent is a big part of the law, but I’m just not seeing how it applies here. At least not when talking about the camera (the glitter maybe). I can’t find a big difference between someone stealing a package off my porch that I didn’t want stolen and someone stealing a package off my porch that I did want stolen. It would be like car thieves complaining that their privacy was invaded by the cameras in a bait car they stole.
Meanwhile, in Fort Worth they’re bagging about a dozen a month:
I was watching one earlier and a couple of faces were NOT blurred…but most are.
The bit about tracking the package (Rober wants to recover them, obviously) made me think of this recent story:
A little information can be a dangerous thing.
So you think a physical presence is necessary for a place to be infiltrated? Seriously?
Aren’t you using a computer right now? Have you never heard of a microphone bug? Seen a drone with a camera?
A place can certainly be infiltrated without a particular person ever being physically present.
Leaving out the intent renders these a whole different set of questions, obviously, and I don’t see how it is productive in this conversation to discuss them.
The video from the AIrBnB owner opening the package belies your assertion. Mr. Rober did not have prior permission to film that and gained access to the house by sending a fraudulent package designed to decieve people so they would accept it as a valid delivery.
That package then filmed video & recorded audio and broadcast it to a remote viewer. How can you possibly make the argument that Mr. Rober did not gain access to the inside of the house thru fraud and deception?
If he’s involving interstate commerce by actually shipping the thing across state lines, I’d think he may have a few other problems as well.
I have noticed he has blurred the faces of some of the thieves and left others’ intact for no discernable reason. I find that curious.
You were asking a legal question.
Someone who hacks my computer, even to turn on my camera and get a peek, hasn’t infiltrated my home. Someone who places a bug in my groceries and listens into my conversations hasn’t infiltrated my home. But you could certainly argue that someone operating a drone that enters my property has infiltrated my home.
I certainly was not; I am not a lawyer and was using the word as a word. I’ve no knowledge of an actual crime called “infiltration”, but I am aware that gaining access to a place thru fraudulent means can be a crime.
Can you show me this legal definition of “infiltrate” that would not include what we’re talking about?
That’s how hypotheticals (can) work. I changed one part of the situation in order to see how big of a difference it makes in the end result. What I was attempting to do is remove intent from the equation to see what else changes.
I thought it might be productive to the conversation by seeing how much of this hinges on Mark’s intent vs the thief stealing a camera and bringing it into their house.
And that brings up another point. What if, instead of an Apple box, the box clearly stated what it did? That is, what if it said “If this box is moved, it’s location will be tracked by GPS, it will begin recording audio and video and all data will be sent to the owner (and/or local PD) in real time. If it’s opened, it will spray glitter into the immediate area, sound a loud horn and emit a noxious odor”. Or something like that.
If all that was written on the box would that change anything?
Because, and I think other people are thinking this as well, I’m not considering a camera beaming data back to me to be the same as gaining access. I could be wrong though, but since you’re not using any type of legal definition, I’m not really sure what the right answer is.
Also, based on the definition you provided, even if physical access isn’t required, you’d still have to show that Mark did this in order to acquire secret information. While we’re at it, said access wasn’t gained ‘gradually’ nor was it done "surreptitiously ". Keep in mind you were one of the people suggesting the noise and glitter and smell might cause a car accident. I don’t think a device can be both so loud, smelly and distracting as to cause a car accident AND simultaneously be secretive in order to avoid notice.
This doesn’t seem like a fair argument. You’re the one that brought up the the word “infiltrate”, you provided a definition a few posts later, but when challenged on it you asked for a cite. It’s your claim, you should be providing the cite.
It’s fine if you want to provide a dictionary definition and your own interpretation of it, but you’re shooting down other people’s interpretations as well, seemingly on the assumption that yours is the correct one.
I guess I don’t see how the “infiltrate” issue is productive to the conversation since, as you stated, there’s no crime called infiltration. If there’s no crime called infiltration, it really doesn’t matter if it happened, regardless of the definition.
The real question is, did mark commit a crime and what was it? You’ve admitted it wasn’t infiltration, so what might it be.
The closest think I can come up with is bugging or maybe something in the wiretapping territory.
Maybe it’s intended to scare off thieves – from stealing cars in general, not only from stealing the bait car. Presumably it’s hard to tell the bait car from a non-bait car, so any car in the general area might be a bait car; therefore stealing cars is more risky than it would be otherwise.
They would have most certainly violated my legitimate expectations of privacy within my home.
I think that’s more to the point than the precise definition of “infiltrate”.
Maybe it’s a common knowledge but there are a lot of TV channels, programs etc. There was a series called “Bait Car.”
In this crime reality series, teams of undercover officers drive the bait car to areas with high rates of auto theft, where they park it and leave it unattended with the engine running. The idea is that would-be car thieves will hop in and drive away. Unbeknownst to the criminals, a hidden camera and a radio tracker have been placed on the dashboard, and a police force is watching their every move. The thief is then tracked down and arrested.[2]
In at least some of the episodes they had the car rigged so they could remotely lock the thief in the car, cut the engine, and so on. I remember one episode where the thief didn’t completely close the driver’s door—apparently he realized what might happen if he did that.
My hunch is that they think they’ll never get caught, that they can outdrive the police, that they’ll be long gone before it’s even reported, or things along those lines. I would have guessed that some would be druggies looking for a quick buck to feed their habit, but a lot of the thieves were fairly ordinary looking people.
If he removed the camouflage it’s just a device that will act as expected, like a Jack-in-the-box. What reasonable argument could people make that they didn’t think it would do what it did in that case? If the intent to decieve is removed then obviously that changes the situation.
I will tell you in advance, before we spend any more time on them, that I will agree with you that every markedly different scenario you propose is indeed different from the events we are talking about.
[quote=“Joey_P, post:91, topic:956190, full:true”]
Because, and I think other people are thinking this as well, I’m not considering a camera beaming data back to me to be the same as gaining access. I could be wrong though, but since you’re not using any type of legal definition, I’m not really sure what the right answer is.
[quote]
Do computer hackers gain access to your data? Are they physically present? The phone scammers who gain control people’s computers: are they gaining access to information they otherwise would not have?
I just don’t see how you can say that having active real-time audio and video from an otherwise secure location isn’t “gaining access”.
No, that’s where “reasonably foresee” can come into things. I would find the argument that multiple active recording/transmisison devices were used but no one thought they would see or hear anything to be highly dubious. The whole purpose of the device is so he can see things and hear things and have a recording of them.
So the explosion is how he gained access? No; that's ridiculous. The deception is what gained access, just like if someone lied to a security officer to get access to a computer terminal.Yes, and the definition I quoted was obviously NOT from a legal dictionary. I’m under no obligation to defend things I didn’t write.
There’s no crime called “collusion” either, should we just give Trump et. al. a pass?
No, I didn’t “admit” that. FFS.
That’s certainly the case. They might even by lying about there being a bait car.
Which reminds me of a story. A friend of a friend, who I had met a few times, pulled off an insurance scam in the late-80s. He claimed that his five year old BMW was stolen plus it had a bunch of valuable computer equipment in the trunk (it didn’t). He left the car in Compton, parked on the street, with the door unlocked and the keys in the ignition. He drove by several days later and no one touched the thing which served his racist, thieving ass right.
Then he went and got it and took it up to the canyons and pushed it over a cliff. At some point someone noticed it and the cops got it and took it to impound and called him. It had rolled straight down and wasn’t at all damaged! He was alone with it in the impound lot for long enough for him to do a lot of vandalism type damage to it so that he could convince the insurance company make it a complete write off.
And just now, I saw on Facebook that my granddaughter’s NIB toddler couch was stolen from their porch. Oh how I wish it had been a glitter bomb.
This discussion also reminds me of the school laptop camera scandal from a few months ago. A school district in Philadelphia issued laptop computers to students, with pre-loaded software. This included the ability to remotely turn on the webcam, supposedly intended to locate “lost” or stolen laptops.
Would that have been illegal, or an invasion of privacy, or “infiltration” or whatever you call it?
Wait, it got worse. It seems the IT admins were turning on the camera to spy on actual students, and had captured thousands of images of students (or was it just one or just a few students?) in their bedrooms. Scandal ensued. Everybody here remember this story?
“a few months ago”?
Let’s go to the quarry and throw stuff down there!
Tempus fugit!
I’m sure I remember reading about this, or something similar, rather recently. Was there another similar case?
What do you mean “no”, it was part of the definition YOU provided.
My argument is that he never gained access. The “explosion”, which wasn’t an explosion, as I stated, was my rebuttable against the “surreptitiously” part of the definition that YOU provided.
If you’re not willing to defend your own cite, then why cite it? I’m sure I can find a cite that states the covid vaccine is for injecting microchips into your body, but I can’t defend that and therefore wouldn’t cite it. Most people use citations as a way to back up their argument. If someone refuses to defend their cite, why should others take it seriously. That seems somewhat close to the ‘it’s on the internet so it has to be true’ argument.
You previously asked others to cite the legal definition of infiltrate. What does collusion, as a crime, have to do with it? Collusion, however, does have a legal definition. It’s easily located on findlaw and cornell’s legal site.
FFS yourself. Let’s recap…
First, multiple posts where you accuse Mark of infiltrating people’s houses.
Followed by a post where you stated there’s no crime called infiltration.
How can you claim that you know of no law called infiltration but deny admitting he’s guilty of a crime called infiltration?
The article you posted is from 2011 and providing new information about a scandal from 2008.
(PS @Snowboarder_Bo, I’m doing all this in good fun. I don’t want you to feel like I’m trying to be a jerk or trolling you or anything like that. Just a spirited debate).