[humanistbot]

> They should also consider targeting and auditing shops that buy used car parts. Making it extremely difficult to fence these things will be practical and useful because they aren't sold and reused as is

California just passed a law to this end, which is pretty straightforward and effectively turns the grey market into a black market. A black market will still exist, but it will be a lot harder for legitimate junkyards, auto repair shops, and recycling facilities to look the other way.

It basically mandates KYC (Know Your Customer) procedures for companies that buy or sell catalytic converters, and it makes buying or selling a catalytic converter without documentation that it was obtained legally a crime. It won't completely eliminate the problem, and it'll be harder unless Arizona, Nevada, and Mexico also take similar steps. But it should also enable more targeting and auditing. One part of this case was filed in California, so I bet they had some kind of sting operation that was made a lot easier when they can lean on a low-level junkyard dealer to testify against the people higher up in the black market.

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-09-25/newsom-s...

[catiopatio]

> It basically mandates KYC (Know Your Customer) procedures for companies that buy or sell catalytic converters, and it makes buying or selling a catalytic converter without documentation that it was obtained legally a crime.

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.

[skeeter2020]

Ever been to a pawn shop? Everything in a legit operation runs through this process.

>> 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.

[WalterBright]

In Washington State, there's a new law where I not only have to show ID to buy booze, I have to have my ID scanned.

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.

[jdeibele]

https://keyw.com/fred-meyer-oregon-is-scanning-your-drivers-... That's an article from September talking about how Kroger (Fred Meyer, QFC) stores in Oreogn are scanning drivers licenses for alcohol purchases and asks if Washington is next.

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.

[mbg721]

I asked a checkout worker about this once (in Ohio), and they claimed they were made to do it so that the state could pressure people with expired drivers' licenses to renew them. (This was right about when they were ending COVID-related extensions on the expiration dates.) I don't agree with using liquor age laws for that either, but I think if the state wanted invasive personal data, they'd just ask Kroger for it.

[vinay427]

Is this a law that mandates scanning of IDs for authenticity purposes or storing that data?

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.

[csomar]

The shop might store the data or misuse it. This is already a solved problem. A privately signed identity that can be verified without transferring any of the data using a device the government provides.

But I already said government too much. This is all non-senses. Transactions should not be monitored.

[re]

It's not state law, whoever told you that is misinformed. It's just the policy of the store you go to (presumably QFC/Fred Meyer).

[heleninboodler]

I assume this hasn't taken effect yet? I bought booze today in WA without showing ID.

[WalterBright]

They always make me give them ID to scan.

[csomar]

Pretty soon all transactions will involve KYC, not just monetary ones.

[Fatnino]

Regarding ID for flying...

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.

[varenc]

They scan your ID and look up your flight in databases based on your name. It’s been happening for a few years now: https://thepointsguy.com/news/tsa-new-technology/

[adamj9431]

This new procedure and equipment is partially rolled out at TSA checkpoints across the US, has been for a couple of years now. The agent's computer shows the flight information. No reason to have an extra step to scan a boarding pass since the computer pulls it all up anyways.

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.

[Fatnino]

Now you aren't being tracked.

Say you've done a crime that will be discovered in a few days. You buy a ticket to Detroit and next week the fbi will be wasting its time looking for you in Michigan and trying to convince Canada to search for you in Ontario.

In reality you hopped on a flight to El Paso under a fake name and you are deep into Mexico by now.

[varenc]

Wouldn’t it be pretty obvious you never actually boarded your flight to Detroit? They scan your ticket when you board.

Though totally agree you could fly on a different flight under a fake name assuming that the airlines don’t sync up their records with the IDs the TSA scans at the checkpoints.

I suspect there’s other less visible signals that would make this harder. For example your flight under a fake name might be flagged for being an unknown name/person. Also if you’re on the run it’s hard to buy a flight under a fake name anonymously without a paper trail back to yourself.

[serf]

>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.

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.

[alar44]

Anyone who thinks countries and states don't have the right to control their borders has lost touch with reality.

[danielheath]

Sure they do, but in an ostensibly-free state is "you must unlock your devices and give immigration full access to the data within" really a reasonable position? If you wanted to bring sketchy data into the country, surely it'd be easier to do it via a VPN, right?

[rosywoozlechan]

> When did we become so comfortable with the government mandating presentation of papers and tracking of private transactions?

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.

[catiopatio]

It’s gotten considerably worse over the past 20 years; we’re asked to present ID and tracked in government databases when purchasing allergy medicine.

[tptacek]

That's because the allergy medicine might as well just be methamphetamine. That's really more or less what it is, modulo a reduction step. Nobody cares about your allergies, and if you go to buy Sudafed, they're just going to sell it to you. The only thing that will trip you up is if you go from store to store collecting lots of it.

[autoexec]

> Nobody cares about your allergies, and if you go to buy Sudafed, they're just going to sell it to you. The only thing that will trip you up is if you go from store to store collecting lots of it.

That's not true. First they don't just sell it to you, they take your ID, record your information, send that to the state, and then sell it you. Going to one store after another after another collecting lots of pills isn't the only thing that will trip people up either. I've had times when I was told I couldn't purchase allergy medication because I'd purchased some already. I had recently, for the family, but I was traveling and didn't have the medication with me.

I wasn't going around to a bunch of stores buying mass quantities of allergy medications, I'd made a purchase once and several days/weeks after tried to make a second purchase. I can't imagine I'm the only person alive who has failed to bring a medication with them while traveling, or suddenly had need for it when they didn't have some immediately on their person, or made a purchase and soon after lost it, only to discover that a pointless restriction brought about by a failed war on drugs prevented a simple purchase fully intended for treatment of a medical condition.

Maybe a more sane threshold for treating people like criminals would help the situation, but honestly the entire program seems like a waste of time of money at this point.

[tptacek]

How much Sudafed did you buy?! The daily purchase limits are pretty high. Did you max out your monthly limit in your hometown before traveling?

Really, if we're this wound up about the situation, the answer is simple: just make Sudafed require a prescription, like a zillion other medications. The problem with Sudafed is extremely straightforward: it is a very trivial chemical reaction away from being methamphetamine.

[WalterBright]

And yet this has had no effect on the meth epidemic.

[tptacek]

We also have an out-of-control opiate problem, but you can't buy codeine over the counter in the US.

[rosywoozlechan]

Yes, if you mean pseudoephedrine, that's to stop the production of meth.

[colechristensen]

Just as a note, this didn't work at all. They came up with a better chemistry and now there's more meth than there was before. Breaking Bad dramatized this aspect of it (though their chemistry wasn't correct on purpose).

[pksebben]

... which is totally in keeping with the war on drugs' track record. Efficacy was never quite their strong suit.

[x86_64Ubuntu]

Mexican superlabs put an end to the shake-and-bake method of making meth. And the biggest problem with shake-and-bake meth was the externalities of people making it at home, including bottles that would burst with caustic chemicals, and properties being condemned from the phosphorous in leaching into the walls.

[rosywoozlechan]

fentanyl I think is what's replaced meth at this point.

[catiopatio]

> that's to stop the production of meth.

It didn’t.

Meanwhile, the overwhelming majority of people buying allergy medicine have the sniffles, not a meth lab.

There’s always a “safety” justification for further privacy intrusions by the police.

If they can’t do their job without intrusive, non-targeted government monitoring of the general public, the police need to get better at their jobs.

[scarface74]

How is that working out?

[Scoundreller]

I thought it was to prevent competing with the cartels?

[ikiris]

Do you understand why, or just want to yell at strawmen?

Like... meth exists.

[XorNot]

To be fair, criminalizing meth (and pretty much all recreational drugs) has always been trying to solve the wrong problem.

[hack_edu]

> When did we become so comfortable with the government mandating presentation of papers and tracking of private transactions?

After Timothy McVeigh blew up a building with a truck full of agricultural supplies.

[catiopatio]

How well did that prevent 9/11?

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.

[mattzito]

Well, those folks had to spend a few years planning, take flying lessons, dry run everything a few times, and then pull off the most complicated and coordinated terrorist attack in US history.

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.

[beenBoutIT]

You're giving the 9/11 terrorists far too much credit. They were supported/financed by the Saudis[0] and America dropping the ball was the only reason they succeeded.

It's not so much a big victory for the terrorists as a big black eye for America and our intelligence agencies.

One of the 9/11 pilots was reported to Federal agencies multiple times[1] and the hijacking still took place.

[0]https://theintercept.com/2021/09/11/september-11-saudi-arabi...

[1]https://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=91659&page=1

[Teever]

Do you think that the bar was raised a bit or that the 9/11 terrorists set their sights a little higher?

[olliej]

How well did laws to stop isolated crazy people killing lots of people stop … um … a group of countries investing large amounts of money and years of time into planning and training for the largest single attack on a civilian target in history?

I mean sure, you could also ask how laws against shoplifting fail to stop bank robberies, and it would be just as coherent.

[drewmol]

largest single attack on a civilian target in history?

Japan would like to have a word with you.

[whoooooo123]

Perhaps "largest single attack on a civilian target by a non-state actor" would be more accurate.

[zeven7]

It prevented 7/15 pretty damn well

[khazhoux]

7/15: Never Remember

[tadfisher]

Survivorship bias. You don't know how many plots were prevented by making it difficult to obtain explosive precursors.

[Symbiote]

Let's up the ante and see where you stand.

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?

[dsfyu404ed]

>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.

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.

[jameshart]

I’m not sure I understand why you think this reduction can’t be attributed to the law?

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…

[bluGill]

They deal with copper, just not copper that obviously is rail. Bring in some old plumbing parts no problem. The only people scrapping railroad parts are being paid by the railroad.

[WalterBright]

Hmm. I wonder if steel cables would work well enough?

[bluGill]

If you make them a lot bigger, copper is an excellent conductor. Silver is better yet, but not by enough to be worth the cost (contrary to popular belief, gold isn't very good, though it is better than iron) aluminum is often used as it is cheaper by enough, but it turns out of have weird properties and so extra care is needed to use it.

[socialismisok]

Yeah, it's WAY worse to have to check the provenance of an article for sale than to have your catalytic converter stolen.

[catiopatio]

Yes, it is.

The police can — clearly, as per this article — do their job without yet another intrusive privacy overreach being put permanently on the books.

[nobody9999]

>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.

[socialismisok]

Don't ever buy art, I guess.

[giantg2]

Haven't there been major scandals in the appraisal and verification, as well as art still being stolen and successfully sold in black markets?

I'm hoping a law helps, but I won't hold my breath.

[bluGill]

What helps with art is people with art want to show it off. Steal some art and you risk showing it off to someone who knows who it belongs to.

[kybernetyk]

It's funny how you have to argue on HACKER news against government overreach and you get downvoted. It's actually not funny. It's sad. I remember a time the hacker community was very weary of the government. Today they seem to defend it no matter what.

[socialismisok]

Hackers in the sense that HN uses the term have never been a monoculture. "Government" isn't a monolithic concept either. Some is good but some is not.

Plenty of hackers, for instance, supported the creation of the EPA. I know plenty of permaculture hackers and mycologist hackers who very much want the government regulating pollutants and safety.

[kybernetyk]

Heh, I guess when you abuse a term all the time it eventually becomes meaningless.

[krapht]

Just wait until you hear about the history of anti-fencing laws dating back to the 1600s. You're missing out on centuries of outage.

[catiopatio]

Ridiculously targeted laws like this are quite a new invention.

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.

[Test0129]

I don't think a law like that is really a problem. There are already laws on the books similar to it (pawn shop laws and such) where KYC is a big thing to prevent the fencing of stolen goods.

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.

[heleninboodler]

> There is absolutely no "intrusion" to speak of here.

Well, there is, actually. I think it's a bit histrionic to worry about it, but we definitely have intruded on Joe's freedom to buy and sell cats. Maybe he's into cat arbitrage. Maybe he makes them himself. Maybe he's got a lot of cars he doesn't need to drive and is strapped for cash. The point of the sticklers for freedom here is that regular citizens shouldn't need an explanation for why they're buying or selling a particular thing to another private party, and therefore tracking the fact that they did is an intrusion.

It's not technically wrong. It's an intrusion. It just happens to be an intrusion I think is reasonable.

[tpxl]

> but we definitely have intruded on Joe's freedom to buy and sell cats

No we haven't. Joe is free to resell converters, provided he proves he obtained them legally, which is trivial _if_ you obtained them legally.

[skeeter2020]

Maybe it's how you frame anyone who wants actionable solutions as screaming "WON'T SOMEONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN?"... Applying very narrow information collection requirements on a rare act that is prone to illegal activity is exactly the type of "government intrusion" we should welcome. If you want a hill to die on, pick something more meaningful.

[tqi]

Something tells me you're the kind of person who considers both people who prioritize safety more than you and less than you idiots...

[x86_64Ubuntu]

>...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?

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.

[dsfyu404ed]

This is a dumb law. It treats the symptom not the problem. There is an existing market for getting around KYC requirements. Just search "buying cats" on FB or CL and you will find plenty of them. These people buy cats from the thieves who are too known to the local yards to deal directly with them and pocket a fraction of the profit. You can keep adding laws but the material here is so valuable that the market can support a lot more middle men if that's what it takes to give everyone plausible deniability.

The fundamental problem here is that pretty much every car has a fairly unsecured cat underneath it and that law enforcement DGAF. The problem will persist until you fix one of those two.

[nine_k]

Does not a law like this allow to actually GAF and start acting on leads towards resellers at FB, etc? Without resale being criminalized, what grounds would police have to even look at the middlemen?

[georgeplusplus]

Between the surge of violent crime, defunding police budgets, and firing of city police forces due to vaccine status, inflation causing massive poverty. Do you think police departments have the resources to tackle these massive amount of larceny cases?

I'd like to be respectable with regards to opposing views about this but wtf did people think would happen following these things?

[chrisweekly]

Mexico -> New Mexico, right?

[labster]

Ah yes, for all of those thieves looking for a quick buck driving 1300 miles round-trip to Gallup instead of a quick hop down to TJ where they can grab contraband for the return trip. I guess instead of drugs, the New Mexico bandits can bring back some of those cheap (cheep) small-cage eggs back to California, but they’ll have to be fast, like Burt Reynolds did with his eighteen-wheeler.

[bdcravens]

Burt Reynolds drove the Trans Am. Jerry Reed drove the eighteen wheeler.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smokey_and_the_Bandit

[mindcrime]

The boys are thirsty in Atlanta and there's beer in Texarkana and we'll bring it back no matter what it takes...

[Arainach]

No, Mexico. California doesn't border New Mexico, but they do border Mexico.

[mushbino]

That's Old Mexico

[dylan604]

They could always implement a 3 day waiting period and require background checks. That's worked so well in other markets /s

[acomjean]

When my car was totaled I had to buy a new hood. When I brought the car to the state salvage inspection station they checked the VIN #s of the car (front and back). The work was done in New York and it was a new after market hood and there was paperwork attesting to that. There was a pile of a couple doors and some wheels that had been confiscated because they were from stolen vehicles. So in MA there must already some sort of process for tracking this stuff. Won’t help for raw material and it’s probably not fool proof but it seemed to be something.

‘Bills of sale evidencing acquisition of all major component parts used to restore the vehicle. If the vehicle was wholly or partially restored with “used” parts, the receipts must contain the Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) of the vehicle(s) from which the part(s) were taken.’

https://www.mass.gov/info-details/salvage-inspections

[dsfyu404ed]

>There was a pile of a couple doors and some wheels that had been confiscated because they were from stolen vehicles.

The assumptions baked into your comment are probably the most Massachusetts thing I've heard all week.

The yard just has to check that the vins match the paperwork and that you match the name on the title.

Doors aren't serialized (models that put vehicle info on the driver's door not withstanding). Wheels aren't serialized. Those were sitting there because some employee wanted them, either for personal use or to sell.

Source: Worked in industry, in MA no less.