The Green Palmed Thief
So another laptop stolen. Response to suggestion that library install security cameras is the following:
More seriously, the library has a few flaws. First, there are two separate entrances. While this is convenient, it's a security hassle. For example, at night when they actually do check IDs, the second entrance has to be closed. This leads to point number 2. No way to actually check who goes in and who goes out without shutting one of the entrances.
At the UCLA law library, there is only one entrance, and that entrace is guarded by a rent-a-cop (a CSO actually, and over here I don't know what they are called but they have those beige rent-a-cop uniforms). If you are not affiliated with the law school then you have to sign in, even as an undergrad. You have to tell the librarian why you're there. As an undergrad, just telling them that it's legal research was enough to let me in even if the library was packed. But generally, they gave studying preference to law students like there's no tomorrow. Anywho, the list of non-law students being finite and collected, it shouldn't be too hard to figure out why this would discourage thefts.
Unfortunately I don't see how this can be implemented here given the current configuration of the library. Other suggestions?
We have also had a few suggestions for us to install security cameras. We will be exploring this option but there are both financial and privacy concerns with the use of security cameras in a library environment.Privacy concerns? What privacy concerns? If a liquor store selling doritos doesn't seem to have privacy concerns I'm more than certain neither will a law library. Financial? That I understand. But I think it's not something that DE can't solve in a heartbeat. The Donor X security cameras. Hey if we can have lecture hall named after Brobeck, why not?
More seriously, the library has a few flaws. First, there are two separate entrances. While this is convenient, it's a security hassle. For example, at night when they actually do check IDs, the second entrance has to be closed. This leads to point number 2. No way to actually check who goes in and who goes out without shutting one of the entrances.
At the UCLA law library, there is only one entrance, and that entrace is guarded by a rent-a-cop (a CSO actually, and over here I don't know what they are called but they have those beige rent-a-cop uniforms). If you are not affiliated with the law school then you have to sign in, even as an undergrad. You have to tell the librarian why you're there. As an undergrad, just telling them that it's legal research was enough to let me in even if the library was packed. But generally, they gave studying preference to law students like there's no tomorrow. Anywho, the list of non-law students being finite and collected, it shouldn't be too hard to figure out why this would discourage thefts.
Unfortunately I don't see how this can be implemented here given the current configuration of the library. Other suggestions?
Labels: Law School, Technology Rants
posted by Armen Adzhemyan at 1:18 PM
26 Comments:
Boalt needs to be more proactive about evicting the wandering loonies. Not every theft is caused by the whirling dervishes that are the street population of Berkeley (See Old Klepto theft of umbrella), but I bet enough of them are that we should shut our doors to them.
If they want to sit inside some place to stay warm and dry, then they should go fucking sit at the Goldman school of public policy, or in the peace and conflicts study building.
The Boalt library should be as restrictive as the law allows in keeping non-Boalt faculty, student, and staff out of the library. That would drastically deter thieves. I like Armen's suggestion. Let other UCB people in as well as others who are doing research that the government may require a public institution like UCB to open its doors, but make them justify their purpose at the door. Otherwise, you're out! Make them sign their names in clear, legible print and list their phone numbers and email addresses. Make them even leave an identification with the checker. Other institutions do that all the time.
You hear that, library staff? You should borrow some of the Boalt registrar's badass vibe and apply it to the nasties that steal Boalt student property. It's about time that the library adopt registrar-like badassness to protect student interests.
What makes people so sure that it isn't Boalt students stealing each other's stuff? I'd hate to think that, but it is definitely possible.
Do you think any Boalties are clever enough to move stolen property? But yes it is a possibility and security cameras with a decent facebook would solve that problem in a heartbeat. Although I dread to see what lies behind all those beautiful bears.
Requiring non-Boalt students to leave photo IDs with the community service officer or the ID checker would be a great idea. But would that violate the constitutional rights of "wandering loonies" without drivers licenses to sleep in public places?
The privacy concern is different when someone is watching what books you read than when someone is watching what snack food you pick out. Personally, I'm okay with the cameras. There is a difference though. I'm surprised none of our resident anti-governement conspiracy theorists haven't already started yelling at you.
This is a terrible situation. I know some people have stopped studying in the library because of thefts on campus and on the streets. It's not right for the tuition-paying students to be driven out of their own library!
1) Putting aside the certain level of screening from the admissions process and the fact that our intuitions tell us that our fellow community members are not laptop thieves, it's unlikely Boalt students are stealing from their own library - the cost of getting caught is just too high. It's probably an organized group - it would be interesting to find out from the police the profile of those groups or individuals who are caught and what is known about how they operate.
2) How about a sting operation? Someone pretends to go to sleep with a laptop nearby while others watch and then photograph/apprehend the thief. With attention to safety of course! If it is a group, perhaps word would get back that Boalt isn't easy pickings. At the very least, perhaps a rumor should be circulated to this effect so that it gets back to the thieves that we are on the watch!
3) Are there fewer laptops stolen in campus libraries such as Main where you must show a card to go to the stacks? What about libraries like Education where you don't have to? This would give some evidence as to how helpful requiring library card and/or ID would be, unless Boalt is specifically targeted for some reason related to location/gov docs/number of students with laptops.
4) Financial reasons are not a good excuse for inaction. Will a student whose laptop (aka the documents of their life and #1 study tool) was stolen under their nose in their school's library be generously donating to the school?
5) In the meantime, isn't there some laptop registration offered by the campus police? Has anyone tried out any of the on-the-spot anti-theft software that - for example - makes noise when someone moves the laptop?
8:42 PM - Absolutely brilliant post! I particularly like the idea in #2. Students should do sting operations to catch thieves. Or, if we're too chicken or too busy or whatever to do that, at least we should spread the rumor that we're doing so. The trick, though, is spreading the rumor in the thieving community. Not simple. Maybe the library can post signs in the reading rooms, just as some department and clothing stores do, saying "Laptop thieves - Security personnel dressed in plain clothes are monitoring your moves and ready to catch you in the act of theft." It's worth a try.
I liked your other points as well.
2 proposals. . .
1) I think we should dress a police officer in a gigantic laptop costume. The laptop will be so large it will be irresistable to laptop thieves, but once they get it home, oops its a cop.
This has the benefit of acting like a roach motel they take the bait back to the nest, and we kill the laptop thief queen. Yea.
2) I think that we can purchase a giant laptop and place it somewhere conspicuously. Then we can coat it in some type of sticky resin. Despite the obvious sticky resis, the sirens call of a giant laptop will lure thieves too closely, and then oops they are stuck.
I'm not ridiculing previous postors, but the mental image of the above two plots is just too funny not to share in my humble opinion.
Bonus points for referencing both the Iliad AND the Odyssey.
Here's another idea. After a laptop is stolen, gather all the students into Booth and have a professor say this:
"Thanks Dean Edley. I have a message for one person in this audience -- I'm sorry the rest of you have to sit through this. As you know, my computer was stolen from the library. The thief apparently wanted to betray everybody's trust, and was after the exam.
The thief was smart not to plug the computer into the campus network, but the thief was not smart enough to do three things: he was not smart enough to immediately remove Windows. I installed the same version of Windows on another computer -- within fifteen minutes the people in Redmond Washington were very interested to know why it was that the same version of Windows was being signalled to them from two different computers.
The thief also did not inactivate either the wireless card or the transponder that's in that computer. Within about an hour, there was a signal from various places on campus that's allowed us to track exactly where that computer went every time that it was turned on.
I'm not particularly concerned about the computer. But the thief, who thought he was only stealing an exam, is presently -- we think -- is probably still in possession of three kinds of data, any one of which can send this man, this young boy, actually, to federal prison. Not a good place for a young boy to be.
You are in possession of data from a hundred million dollar trial, sponsored by the NIH, for which I'm a consultant. This involves some of the largest companies on the planet, the NIH investigates these things through the FBI, they have been notified about this problem.
You are in possession of trade secrets from a Fortune 1000 biotech company, the largest one in the country, which I consult for. The Federal Trade Communication is very interested in this. Federal Marshals are the people who handle that.
You are in possession of proprietary data from a pre-public company planning an IPO. The Securities and Exchange Commission is very interested in this and I don't even know what branch of law enforcement they use.
Your academic career is about to come to an end. You are facing very serious charges, with a probability of very serious time. At this point, there's very little that anybody can do for you. One thing that you can do for yourself is to somehow prove that the integrity of the data which you possess has not been corrupted or copied.
Ironically, I am the only person on the planet that can come to your aid, because I am the only person that can tell whether the data that was on that computer are still on that computer. You will have to find a way of hoping that if you've copied anything that you can prove you only have one copy of whatever was made.
I am tied up all this afternoon; I am out of town all of next week. You have until 11:55 to return the computer, and whatever copies you've made, to my office, because I'm the only hope you've got of staying out of deeper trouble than you or any student I've ever known has ever been in.
I apologise to the rest of you for having to bring up this distasteful matter, but I will point out that we have a partial image of this person, we have two eyewitnesses, with the transponder data we're going to get this person."
Then ask all the students to stand up and you will have visual evidence of who the thief is.
Ummm....I like the giant Trojan Laptop idea better. In fact, that idea is so hilarious that it makes having a theft problem almost worth it. (But I convey my deepest apologies to any victims of this crime wave. If my laptop was stolen, I'd be lost. I'd be like Kareem with no goggles.)
Note, 12:31pm basically copied the insane rant that Cal Professor Jasper Rine had when his laptop was stolen last year.
http://calstuff.blogspot.com/2005/04/laptop-theft-results-in-webcast-of.html
Check out the linked video, it's pretty funny.
here at michigan, we don't let anyone into the law library (at night at least when they bother to have someone there) who isn't a law student, faculty member, or undergrad with a research pass, or member of a state bar with id... they have it staffed especially during non-business hours, and there's only one entrance. the reading room is just filled with people all the time, so everyone assumes everyone else's stuff is being watched by someone. i don't think there has been a laptop theft over here for a while... someone thought theirs was stolen from the computer lab, but someone just turned it into security. limiting access is a good idea, because after all you are paying tuition that undergrads/community members aren't...
Nice point from Liz from Michigan! Michigan is a public school, like Boalt, but is far more privatized. That's (hopefully) where Boalt is headed. I like Liz's "we're paying all this tuition, we deserve a secure library" attitude. That's the kind of attitude Boalt students have and ought to have toward the school, now that tuition is comparable to private or semi-private schools.
While I agree with most of the previous comments, the library is limited by the fact that they are a public repository for federal documents and must grant access to the public.
So is the Michigan library. And Michigan is a public school too.
So is the library of any private school that has government documents. Yes, every library that has governmetn documents must allow the public in, but the key is, _under_limited_circumstances_ as_defined_by_the_university.
So don't go around saying that Boalt has even more obligations to let the public in than any of the other libraries discussed.
Boalt, as a previous poster has mentioned, should go as far as the law permits in terms of prohibiting non-Boalt personnel from accessing the library at all hours. Or at least getting non-Boalt folks to sign-in, leave an identification at the door, etc.
The above poster said exactly what I wanted to say, just better.
Check out this opinion piece in the Daily Planet on a parallel situation of neglect with BART station bike theft:
http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/article.cfm?issue=03-14-06&storyID=23644
with regard to the michigan comment, I thought Boalt's library was off-limits to non grad-students after 5pm on weekdays and all day on weekends. They have an id checker on duty whose job it is to check ids right?
I was there on Sunday right after it happened I think, because I saw the CSO talking to a concerned student outside of the library. I can't remember if there was an id checker, but I know the "restricted hours" sign was up.
I would like to interject a dose of reality:
No new protocol or action by the school will ever make the library safe enough for students to leave their laptops laying around.
I transferred from a small private law school with a single library entrance, a law school ID card entrance requirement and a full-time human monitor. Guess what? Laptops were routinely stolen there as well.
I would simply urge all Boalties to NEVER leave their laptops unattended - not for a second. Guard that fucker with your life and you will not be a victim.
This is a situation where self-help is the only meaningful action that can be taken. It would be foolish to rely on the administration for that.
Lastly, while I feel nothing but sorrow for those who have been victimized, I would love to know what actions they did or did not do that resulted in the theft (bathroom breaks? sleeping? etc.)
Yeah, yeah, theft will always happen. Of course, students need to be more vigilant. But that doesn't mean Boalt shouldn't try to reduce the theft from 10 computers stolen a year to 1 computer stolen a year by taking some simple measures that the school you transferred from took.
Just because absolute theft prevention isn't possible even at a level of 100% library security, it doesn't follow that Boalt shouldn't begin moving from a library security level of, say, 17%, where it probably is now, to an 80% security level, which is still below what many of us would like it to be.
I think that next to the Id Checker we should have a giant pool filled with sharks with laser beams attached to their heads.
It is a well known fact that laptop thieves are terrified of concentrated light, and of water (Not of sharks).
I think the laptop thieves should be subject to the OC assassin games. Show them an orange colored water gun and they'll run their asses in the opposite direction, I'll say. Hmph.
At Princeton's main library, we needed to go through a bag check whenever we left the library. All laptop computers were registered and the name on the registration had to match your gov or student ID when you left. It was a real pain to show the ID/registration sticker whenever I left late at night, but it was totally worth it. I never heard of a computer getting stolen while I was there.
How about making it like UWash's law library? In order to get into the reading room law students must swipe their student id's to get in - only Boalt-affiliated people should be allowed in there - period. Granted, that would keep the volumes in there off-limits to the public, but the only people who read those books are crazy anyway (and I'm pretty sure I saw a drug deal go down in there one day too - what are the chances that two shady looking characters would look behind the exact same book within 10 minutes of each other? Just not sure why the hell they would use the library for this sort of transaction).
BTW, the two laptops stolen this semester were both stolen on Sunday, during "restricted" hours. 1/2 the time there is no one sitting at the id-checker desk and I have never gotten so much as a second glance from the security guard when I walk out of the library, my laptop in hand, to visit the snack machine or restroom.
And while I'm at it: you people who talk on your cell phones in the libary's study areas - YOU SUCK!!
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