> [The Secret Service agent] asked my for some picture ID. I have some fake photo ID's that a friend made for me years before, when we could make realistic photo ID's from our computers. Almost nobody else could do this because printers weren't good enough. But I had an expensive early generation dye sublimation printer and made some fake ID's for fun. I had one favorite fake ID that I'd used for almost every airplane flight, domestic and international, that I'd taken for many years. It says "Laser Safety Officer" and has a photo of me with an eyepatch. It also says "Department of Defiance" in an arc, in a font that looks like "Department of Defense" to the casual glance.
> As I opened my wallet, I considered whether I should risk using this fake ID on the Secret Service. It probably amounted to a real crime. I had my driver's license as well. But you only live once and only a few of us even get a chance like this once in our lives. So I handed him the fake ID. He noted and returned it. The Secret Service took an ID that said "Laser Safety Officer" with a photo of myself wearing an eyepatch.
I'm not a lawyer, I have no idea how criminal law in the USA works, but why would this be a crime? He didn't fake a Department of Defence ID, he created an ID for a fictional Department of Defiance, it may look similar, it may appear as a "real" ID because it's not just a piece of paper, but it's about as real an ID as a gym membership card.
Not a lawyer either, but in Canada the core issue would be intent to decieve or mislead, as with fraud in general. It's not illegal to use a fake name or alias, nor print your own IDs (as long as you're not forging government IDs). But doing either to manipulate through deception, or mislead investigators, is a crime - fraud or public mischief. I believe it's broadly similar in the USA? Now, he may have lacked the intent to actually make it a crime, but I wouldn't want to have to argue that in front of a judge.
Giving a false ID to law enfordement? That is a crime. Giving a forged ID to the secret service, the people in charge of detecting counterfeiting? That's just idiocy. Misspelling department of defense doesnt make the ID ok any more than printing a tiny lol in the corner of your fake dollar bills.
(Also, falsely claiming a relationship with the military is downright dishonerable.)
What do you mean by "dishonerable" here? Is this an instance of how Americans love the military so much that it's difficult to understand for people from other countries (where being a military isn't different from being a shop owner, or carpenter or doctor or whatever)?
Americans want to believe. Call it "optimism", if you're feeling generous.
American exceptionalism is a thing to believe in which satisfies all of the needs of a believer. It's part of the belief triad "god-family-country".
The military is an extension of the country. There is very little visible military presence in the US, and the military has no role in civilian affairs except in cases of temporary callup for natural disasters etc.
And yet it's a very big military, so everyone has some adjacency to present or historical members of the military.
In short, it's the perfect object of optimistic belief. The military is consistently the "most trusted" part of American society -- perhaps because all the things it does, it does elsewhere.
And for the most part, American foreign policy is pretty similar across political lines, so there's no inherent partisan rift, making it an easy and safe thing for everyone to agree on.
A foreigner might argue that that is a flimsy basis for belief. They might point to some tragic events visited upon the world by the US military. They might say that Normandy was a long time ago and it doesn't justify everything that's happened since then.
Many Americans would agree with that. But that's the outsider's view. First and foremost, internally, the military is a jobs program. And it's very very good at that! Tons of training and education, incredible amounts of commerce and technology, genuine personal development, and on the whole very little international malfeasance.
Defense contractors are and will continue to make millions.
Cost of the Bush Era wars will probably reach $2 Trillion due to long-term healthcare costs for veterans (on top of the bombs and MRAPs and M-16s, etc.).
One of the biggest financial coups in US history. Mission Accomplished indeed -- cuz that's what he was celebrating with that flight.
Search for the list of the richest counties in the US, and notice how many of them are in the Greater Washington DC area (VA & MD).
Hard to answer this without delving down a political rabbithole. In the USA, there is sentiment for both military service members (not to be conflated necessarily with the military industrial complex or military campaigns), "first responders" (police, firefighters, EMS and hospital workers, etc.).
The sentiment for the military and first responders is that they either have already, or could at any moment, be called upon to put their health and life at risk on behalf of the rest of us citizens and allies - so that the rest of us can live a free and peaceful life in pursuit of happiness. The sentiment is one of sincere gratitude of the deepest variety.
I personally don't think the existence of this ID card mocking the DoD is anything but harmless fun. In fact, the freedom to make such content is a part of the freedom of speech the DoD works to protect. However, as much as I enjoy Woz, I agree that giving a false ID to someone a law enforcement agent who is simply trying to do their job, isn't smart or too funny, it's intentionally obfuscating a process and stealing time (tax payer dollars) from the agent trying to do their potentially deangerous job and prosecute true bad actors.
Law enforcement in the US is far from perfect, and trust me, there's a place and value to peaceful civil dissobedience. However, there's also a psychological and monetary cost. The costs of Woz's act seem very benign to me, but I can see how others could easily get spun-up about it - especially if your job is law enforcement.
No matter what country you’re in, the military is in a position of authority (except maybe Costa Rica). Generally people consider a lie to be worse if it’s a lie you can use to get power.
Reminds me of a time in 7th grade when I wore a band t-shirt that I had received as a gift. A kid in my class took exception because he doubted that I even owned any of their albums. The kid called me a "poser".
It also makes me think of my uncle who is a very proud labor union member. He gets upset if anyone says anything disparaging about labor unions.
My point is, it sounds to me like people taking honor in being a member of an exclusive club, and they don't like it if other people do things to belittle their club membership, like by pretending to be a member.
I wonder if there is some psychological term for that behavior.
Your comment is rather offensive. Stolen valor is a crime. Wearing a band t-shirt while not listening to the band is not. Military members risk their lives for others. People that do this get respect, be it a Dr, Military, Police, etc.
A civilian wearing an army T-shirt is not “stolen valor” in the sense that stolen valor is a crime, so this is, at best, equivocation.
While I believe (but I don’t feel like checking the UCMJ) there is a much more extensive crime (or set of crimes) relating to stolen valor within the military, the crime of stolen valor that it is possible for a civilian to commit consists of, and (outside of selling military decorations) only of, fraudulently claiming one of narrow set of awards with the intent to obtain money, property, or other tangible benefit, specifically:
a Congressional Medal of Honor,
a distinguished-service cross,
a Navy cross,
an Air Force cross,
a silver star,
a Purple Heart,
a Combat Infantryman’s Badge,
a Combat Action Badge,
a Combat Medical Badge,
a Combat Action Ribbon,
a Combat Action Medal, or
any replacement or duplicate medal for such medal as authorized by law. 18 USC Sec. 704.
I didn’t say a civilian wearing an army shirt is stolen valor, however pretending to haven been in the military while never having been is.
Wearing a band shirt and an army shirt are not comparable at all. The default thought when someone sees someone wearing a military shirt is “oh they were in the military”. The thought when wearing a band shirt certainly wasn’t “oh they must be in the who”.
> I didn’t say a civilian wearing an army shirt is stolen valor, however pretending to haven been in the military while never having been is.
Again, no, not in a sense of “stolen valor” where “stolen valor is a crime” is true, it isn’t. You are still engaging in thebsame equivocation where you are trying make an argument grounded in “this behavior has a name which is also the name of a crime”, even though the behavior in question is not within the scope of the definition of the crime. Fraud is a crime (older than “stolen valor”, which is a novel 21st century crime in the US), pretending to have been in the military other than as part of a fraud scheme is not. (ISTR at least one state has proposed a more general ban on this, but even if it passed it would likely be struck down aa violating the First Amendment, just like the earlier and somewhat broader version of the Stolen Valor Act was.)
> Wearing a band shirt and an army shirt are not comparable at all.
To the extent that there is a defensible argument for this position, it doesn't involve invocations of non-germane criminal law.
I apologize for making you feel offended. That was not my intent.
I wasn't trying to make light of the service of military members. I agree that it is wrong to try to obtain fake respect.
I was just recounting two specific tales from my memory about people being defensive against others disrespecting their social circles. I find the behavior interesting ... maybe because I have never felt that way before about something.
When I mentioned psychology, my curiosity was in the context of behavior psychology (what is the word used to describe the behavior), not in the context of a mental illness.
Incidentally, I did like the band's music, I just didn't own any of their albums.
> No matter what country you’re in, the military is in a position of authority
In the United States, the military has no authority over citizens. It's a foundational law. Exceptions can be made under temporary and unusual circumstances.
I disagree. I can't think of any western country where the military are in a position of authority. It's something we have got rid of over the past 50 years, with the end of the juntas in Greece, Spain, and Argentina; Franco's Spain; and so on. There are some countries where the military are not running the place, but are "kingmakers", but I can't think of any western ones.
Authority isnt the word. Im in the military and that gives me absolutely zero authority in civilian life. It would be a crime for me to even attempt to wield such. But i do expect a modicum of extra respect for people who give up time/money/priviledges of civilian life in order to serve thier country. I dont expect cops to let me get away with speeding, but i do expect them not to detain me by the roadside in uniform for a "random" check.
I agree with you overall, but that "serve their country" line makes me cringe every time.
The military's operations are vast and numerous, but also politically-motivated and, at times, disgustingly utilitarian. Obviously, no grunt should bear that burden, but I feel better served by the post office.
It is cringe worthy, but when you get orders for a multi-year posting far away from friends and family, it really does feel like servitude.
It was -30 outside this morning. My car hates me for bringing it here.
Some people join the military to serve their country.
But everyone in the military is indoctrinated to believe that they are serving their country.
Some of them are shipped overseas. Some live in Virginia Beach. Some are physically endangered. Some sit behind a desk.
There are good and noble people who choose a life of service. Some of them are in the military. Some of them are food kitchen volunteers.
Not everyone in the military is noble, or serving their country. Any more than any other federal employee.
It's difficult to know the appropriate level of respect or honor to give to a random person displaying the paraphernalia of military service. "Thank you for your service" is free, and perhaps genuinely felt and received in some cases (but also vacuous at times).
I've worked with a lot of ex-military folks. And several members of my family are current or former members. I can't think of a single trait that is common to all of them.
Not physical fitness. Not leadership skills. Not honesty or honor or respectability. Not intelligence or grit or perseverance or fashion sense.
The median is probably higher than the average across the whole population. So there may be a correlation. Except fashion sense!
However this does not persuade me that there's a reason to differentially treat military vs random citizens in your example of a traffic stop. But I'm also not a cop!
There is professional curiosity amonst the "armed" professions. Being in the military also means, to a cop, that you probably dont have any warrants out of you and that you have a job, two things they cannot assume about the random people they interact with every day.
> Not everyone in the military is noble, or serving their country. Any more than any other federal employee.
I stopped reading here. Every military member swore an oath. They have no choice of duty, but they still swore the same oath to die for their country. Anybody attempting to minimize their sacrifices should remember things like Pearl Harbor, which killed all indiscriminately. And remember that desks fit in tents fit on ships and in tents, which are themselves in active war zones.
You said a whole lot of nothing here. Tell me how those willing to die are somehow the same as someone not and it’s somehow psychological?
This seems like a psychological issue with some demanding they have given just as much, and are just as important, yet are too scared to pay the ultimate price.
Or how about the psychological issue that results in hatred towards the military? That one I witnessed personally and I find very interesting.
Some people love the Kool-Aid, some people drink it out of convenience, some people detest all sugary drinks on principle, and some people just find flavor chemistry to be fascinating.
Sorry to be blunt, but you chose that life. There are vast numbers of people serving their country economically (albeit perhaps indirectly) in uncomfortable circumstances and they all deserve respect.
Without a doubt, it is servitude, but I feel it downplays the plight of servicemen like yourself to roll it up into that "of country". The expended lives towards obtuse ends is far more tragic than that of something noble like life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I wish you luck on your tour, wherever it is.
Yes, because we all are by merit of participation alone, and servicemen are often baited into enlisting via capitalistic motivators (enlistment bonus, GI bill, insurance, etc.) We'd be dealing with reality, not the denial proliferated by force in boot camps.
Serving in the military is different from other jobs as soldiers may be sent to dangerous situations where there is a risk of death. Although many Americans believe the decisions made by politicians that put military personnel in harm's way have not been good, this does not take away from the bravery of those who voluntarily choose to serve their country.
They need a job and being a soldier is a job. A glorified one where words like bravery and valor are thrown around in the US to make people accept risking their life in a noble way.
And I realize that some people will actually be driven by these ideals and there are things like military families where this tradition is actually strong and it gives them purpose but for the average soldier, they just needed a job and the propaganda worked.
1. Although military people are paid, it's not enough to compensate the amount of time, health risks, and loss of normal rights and freedoms experienced by young people.
2. Are we better off or worse off if people think of service as just a job to pay the bills? I'm not naiive about this, but we want people to take it seriously, not treat it like a retail job at the mall.
3. A small number will ultimately die. I think you would be a foolish leader/government to give those people who died for you anything but respect if you hope for similar sacrifice in the future.
In the US, the military is actually used for combat operations so the risk of being injured or killed is higher than being "a shop owner, or carpenter or doctor or whatever". The majority aren't but you're still signing up for it when you join so you are given an amount of elevated respect. It's not something you sign up for willie nillie. You're obligated to serve for at least a tour (4 years I believe) and in those 4 years, you've lost every bit of free-will. It's a sacrifice that I wasn't willing to make so kudos to those who do.
Enrolling into military is a choice and you know risks beforehand, there’s nothing about that choice that deserves worship-like cult status military has in US.
And why do you think they take those risks? Do you think they would if people treated it like a job at mcdonalds? Would their families support them in being away for so long for 30k/year?
But psychologically, the drive to be a part of something important is very strong, especially in young men.
The military has a rich mythology that plays into, and perpetuates, this.
This is not bad or unhealthy! But it is also not inherently good. There are other groups which use the same tactics to recruit people for bad services. It very very much depends.
> Giving a forged ID to the secret service, the people in charge of detecting counterfeiting?
Well, he was on a thin ice but nevertheless still within bounds of the law. He did not forge or fake the ID, it was a fictitious one like Disney World passport. The ID had his real name on it, no lies there. The $2 bills were legit as well. And mocking federal agent was not a crime.
Presenting a fictitious Disney World passport to law enforcement as a real ID would be just as much as a crime as trying to deposit fake money from a child's playset at the bank. It's the action of trying to deceive that pushes it into criminal territory.
If it has his true name and photo on it, it's real identification. It's just not official or governmental identification. What makes a forged ID "forged" is not that it's not state issued, it's that it passes itself off as being state issued.
A reasonable person would interpret it as a department of defense ID. That's the standard that is going to be used against you in court. Identification intrinsically has provenance at the core of it's concept.
Just like you'd be fucked if you tried to deposit dollars for the federal bank of amerigo, your fake country.
Showing a counterfeit driver’s license, passport etc. is obviously a crime. What he did was equivalent to showing your company issued ID. Would that be a crime?
It had a logo meant to fool a casual observer into reading "department of defense". Inserting a misprint doesn't make something ok if they decide you were intending to create a false impression in a hurried cop.
It's a Felony to lie to federal agent. Who doesn't know that?
Under 18 U.S.C. § 1001, it's a felony crime to: make a “false statement” to an agent of the > federal government related to a federal matter.
...
A “false statement” can be:
a material omission.
a material misrepresentation, or.
using a fraudulent document.
Proffering a fake id when asked for a real id is clearly using a fraudulent document.
Yes but it wasn “fake”… it was “entirely made up”. There’s a legitimate difference here that I’m sure lawyers would have a field day with. And I’d imagine the agent would have requested additional Id if they actually cared since it’s a simple enough thing to ask again if they took one look at it and weren’t satisfied.
I l mean, even without invoking sovereign citizen craziness, it’s pretty easy to imagine a legitimate lawyer arguing the difference between “fake id ” as in an identity document fraudulently attempting to look like a legitimately issued document, and “made up” as in bearing no more than a superficial resemblance to other legitimate identity documents. Now obviously the self confessed train of thought of him deliberately taking the chance to see what the agent would do, definitely comes close to outright mens rea but it’s still arguably not an admission of intent to mislead, and it would all come down to the lawyer… if the agent even cared. Discretion used to be a big part of the “investigation cop” toolkit psychology wise, and fraudulent currency investigation by a secret service agent is much more serious than “this guy shows me his made up id card”
It’s easy to imagine that, but it is not realistic to think it would actually happen.
In the event it got to court, any sane lawyer would advocate for a yes it was wrong, but there was no ill intent defense. Trying to split hairs about the difference between a “fake id” and merely a made-up ID would just be digging deeper into the hole.
When you’re pulled over for 70 in a 60, you own it, acknowledge the mistake, and hope that recognizance is enougn to get you off. You don’t create elaborate sophistries to “prove” that 70 is actually the same thing as 60, or that the signs that say 60 really mean 70. Nobody buys that kind of thing.
I drove alone to the US from Canada for a trip in 1999 no passport (never had and still don't have one). The US Border Agents used my driver's license as proof of my ID.
But they were convinced my goal was to go there to live. they tore my car apart, took everything out of luggage. They let me go but thought I was never coming back.
All I was doing was going to a Thanksgiving dinner in Scranton.
Because one border guard in particular specifically stated that he didn't believe me but there was nothing he could do to prevent me from entering the USA. But if it were up to him he would not let me enter and would send me back to Canada. He was a dick I remember him even 24 years later. The other guards were much more professional.
I don't even think it's arguable. He intended to deceive a Secret Service officer with fake federal government credentials, and apparently succeeded in doing so. I believe that is a felony. The judge may reduce the charge or throw it out later though because of the obvious wackiness of it.
Yeah, the ID itself might be judged confusing enough to be legally a counterfeit (which is a crime in itself) while the intentional intent to deceive lawful authorities adds another case to the table.
He’s Woz. A household name. I suspect the secret service agent also noticed it being a fake ID but didn’t want to deal with the litany of paperwork in arresting woz for the crime. Maybe the agent also got a chuckle out of it as well.
Hate to break it to you, but if "Tim Apple" isn't a household name, Wozniak certainly isn't. Steve Jobs _maybe_ is, but even that is likely overestimating the public's knowledge.
Not a lawyer either, but this doesn't appear to statutorily require intent. This is the relevant law[1].
I think the easiest way to prosecute this would be under the "authentication features" section:
(1) the term “authentication feature” means any hologram, watermark, certification, symbol, code, image, sequence of numbers or letters, or other feature that either individually or in combination with another feature is used by the issuing authority on an identification document, document-making implement, or means of identification to determine if the document is counterfeit, altered, or otherwise falsified
If he had replicated any of those things, he committed a crime just by making the ID. Using the ID likely has additional penalties, but just making it is a felony by itself. It seems likely he did, because I think missing seals and watermarks (if those existed at the time) would stand out as obvious to a secret service agent or the TSA.
If Sara was 12 when this happened then this occurred around 1998 or so. At that time the "authentication features" provisions of the law didn't exist, as they were added in 2003. (See the "Notes" tab in your link).
I can’t help but shake my head at most of these comments. There was a time when we celebrated anecdotes like this here on Hacker News. I’ve seen this story circulated many times but this is the first time I’ve seen this sort of reaction. These aren’t rose colored glasses, anyone can look up threads of old in which we cheered such defiance toward authority.
People are frothing to frame this story with 2023 glasses and, to me, this reaction makes it all the more clear how today’s culture is so corrosive. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it’s not about privilege of rich white men. Maybe it’s about the rigid conformism that the tech industry has imbued in its people in this past decade. The screams of people glued to Anki preparing for leetcode interviews, not understanding why someone would dare challenge the status quo. Regardless, it’s a sign of the times.
Nothing says "challenging the status quo" like a multi-millionaire messing with normal people who are just trying to do their job...
I'm sure I when I first read this story, I thought it was hilarious. But since then, I've gained at least little bit of empathy. Think of this story from the perspective of the other people. Woz is being a total piece of shit, wasting their time being intentionally as suspicious as possible, just to waste their time and then pull off a "a-ha, this is actually some really obscure legal tender that I as a rich guy can afford to spend to have a cool story to tell about showing up a casino security guy".
The reason why it used to be celebrated on HN, and why GP laments the change is that Woz hacked security. This is a great example of social engineering and it's in the vein of the old 80's hacker mentality. Besides for the fun story, it is a security breach that all these security personnel failed to pick up on.
I agree with the GP that this kind of thing should be celebrated on HN and we should encourage the next generation to continue hacking.
It’s still celebrated. One of the articles with the most staying power on the HN front page I’ve seen in a while was the “owning an airline” one.
While people did debate the ethics of it, the hacking was admired because it was someone not in a position of power hacking an entity that was. It also illuminated a massive security risk which could now be fixed.
And also it uncovered a bit of hidden authoritarian secret anti-citizen secret bits.
Something that drastically limits and can be used to oppress people like a nation-wide travel restriction should be public and require due cause. Not a mystical list where one day you realize "wow guess my life is fucked"
I don't think any security breach was demonstrated here.
Now, Woz was obviously an amazing hacker back in the day and has a reputation of being a good person. So one would imagine there are stories that show him being really clever that are, you know, actually clever rather than just showing off an information asymmetry about trivia (re: these sheets of $2 bills). Where the punchline is something wholesome, rather than him humiliating strangers who have done literally nothing wrong.
No deep inferrence needed. The entire discussion with the security guy is about toying with him, eventually he tricks the guy, "scores a point" and is ever so pleased at himself:
> But I had got a big point on him and I was quite satisfied in that
Like, I can sort of understand the humor value of giving away $2 bills as a tip since they're rare and some people don't know about it. But there is literally no value in baiting people as to whether this is legit money or counterfeit, except for Woz to feel superior to them. And it's not an isolated occurence! He clearly does this all the time, so often that he has multiple variants of the script.
This is not a story to celebrate. It is not challenging the status quo, it is not rebelling against authority, it is not a smart hack, or whatever y'all are describing it as. It is an ugly story of a man with a lot of wealth punching down, playing games using the little people as a prop purely for his own amusement, repeatedly, and then bragging about it.
"Baiting" the security guy has only as much weight as his unnecessary investigation. They knew the bills were fine but he came to investigate anyway and he didn't just ask "Hey, how'd ya get those bills?" but tried to be sneaky. He was also salaried and got paid for the interaction so he wasn't a victim in the slightest, except perhaps to his ego.
The nasty act here, and possibly criminal, was the security guy calling the Secret Service and reporting on someone he knew wasn't actually guilty of anything.
> It is an ugly story ...
Of tedious security people inflating themselves by bothering normal people.
> it's not an isolated occurence! He clearly does this all the time
Thankfully, if these people go unchallenged then when they go off it's on a random unsuspecting person. He's prepared and can take it in stride.
The mistake was to engage with the SS agent without his lawyer. He pretty clearly wouldn't have been arrested but because he essentially volunteered for this fishing expedition they'll perform it.
> He was also salaried and got paid for the interaction so he wasn't a victim in the slightest, except perhaps to his ego.
Yes, trying to hurt somebody's ego would indeed be a pretty good example of humiliating them.
Look, if you think that the bound booklet of $2 bills is a fun gag, there's a humane and lighthearted way to do it. You use the bills as described, but if somebody seems even a bit uncomfortable with them you volunteer an explanation for what's going on. That way they actually have a cool story to tell. And the joke's on you, not them.
But that is not what Woz did. He intentionally made himself as suspicious as possible, in multiple ways, just to try to force people to investigate. It was all about showing his superiority over this sad loser working a 10-hour shift in a suit, who thought he knew a thing or two about counterfeit money. Well, he wasn't all that, and Woz sure showed him who the smartest guy in the room was.
> Thankfully, if these people go unchallenged then when they go off it's on a random unsuspecting person. He's prepared and can take it in stride.
No unsuspecting person would have this interaction in the first place. They would not have gone through the trouble of arranging for legit money to look counterfeit. That is not what normal people do. They would not have a script to follow to string people along, and carefully consider just what the optimal level of dodgy behavior would be. They would not waste others' time for their own amusement. Because that's not what people with even a pinch of empathy would do.
Put yourself into some work situation. I don't know, maybe you're a engineer given this is HN. And you get this bug report from a customer. It's really well written, has a screenshot showing the issue, and includes reproduction steps. You try to reproduce it, and can't. So you ask some questions from a customer, iterate a few times, add some logging statements and ask them to reproduce the problem. etc. And then finally the customer smugly says that there never was a bug. They photoshopped the screenshot, and made everything up. If you'd actually known how this program works, you'd have known that this bug could never exist. It's a hilarious gag, what a prankster! And you were paid for this work, no harm done, right?
No. Fuck that. I would be furious at having my time wasted like that. And this is what Woz did. Not just once, but probably dozens of times. That's just outright sociopathic behavior, and I cannot believe how many people here are defending it just because he is a member of your tribe.
> Yes, trying to hurt somebody's ego would indeed be a pretty good example of humiliating them.
If someone's ego is tweaked when they find they're wrong then perhaps that's a helpful thing to do.
> Look, if you think that the bound booklet of $2 bills is a fun gag, there's a humane and lighthearted way to do it. ... if somebody seems even a bit uncomfortable
They're for tips. If someone is uncomfortable they don't have to take them.
> It was all about showing his superiority over this sad loser working a 10-hour shift in a suit, who thought he knew a thing or two about counterfeit money. Well, he wasn't all that, and Woz sure showed him who the smartest guy in the room was.
That guy had already tested the bills and knew they were legit. If he was honestly curious how Woz got the bills he could have just asked. Instead he decided to fish around for anything he could try to rat out an innocent person for.
> No unsuspecting person would have this interaction in the first place.
But their cases would be identical from the PoV of the security guy. Some thing would "seem off" and the employee would follow them around or harass them over some legit thing that he didn't like and maybe even call the police about it.
If they think that some customers are playing games they might be a bit more on their toes and think about what they're doing, so as to not be caught in a prank. That will have a good impact on innocent people they interact with.
> [Scenario with fake bug report] then finally the customer smugly says that there never was a bug. ... made everything up. ... It's a hilarious gag, what a prankster!
That's nothing like this scenario. To try to correct it, Woz was happily using their app on his phone when an employee noticed what looked like an error. They stopped him and called him a hacker, tried to trick him into admissions, and when they finally reported and tracked down what he was doing it was just hitting back at the right time to avoid an interstitial, or whatever. The joke is that he was trying to say "it's fine" the whole time and everyone assumes he's a hacker so nobody listens, finally ending up with egg on their face when they wasted their own time.
> And you were paid for this work, no harm done, right?
Well, some to the company. I assume they'd say "maybe in the future, don't go wasting time pestering customers for something that we already knew didn't impact us." It's a teaching moment. It could save them from a lawsuit in the future if that guard thought he had the right to detain people.
> No. Fuck that. I would be furious at having my time wasted like that. And this is what Woz did. Not just once, but probably dozens of times. That's just outright sociopathic behavior,
You're overreacting. This is a perfect example of someone I'd feel needed to be pranked, because it sounds like you're ready to snap on anyone you think is mocking you and you're vastly more likely to do it to someone innocent than either a criminal or a prankster.
> Woz is being a total piece of shit, wasting their time being intentionally as suspicious as possible, just to waste their time and then pull off a "a-ha
You know who's really wasting peoples time? Secret Service and a casino security guard because he tipped with legal tender that they haven't seen before, so they think he's some counterfeiter or something.
I'd fuck with authority who was too stupid to realize that $2 bills are very much legal tender.
I mean, it's not just a 2,its a 2 you see him rip out of a book in front of you. If I had taken that at any of my retail jobs my boss would be on my ass, even if I knew it was legit. You think the casino owner really wants security making judgment calls about whether a dudes custom made book of perforated money is legal tender or not?
If you worked someplace handling money and saw a bill with perforated edges, you'd definitely consider it suspicious. That doesn't require someone to be stupid.
If my entire job was enforcing currency counterfeiting laws then I would probably have to be pretty stupid to think that perforated edges is a strong indicator of counterfeiting.
Why? Keep in mind that there are numerous people that have tried to pass off their pronted bills, Xeroxed bills, or bills clipped out of the newspaper.
Not only that, but why does having lower cognitive ability suddenly mean that others have free rein to mock you, make your workplace unpleasant, and so on? People are just trying to do their job and aren't necessarily educated on the intricacies of federal law on currency.
Is it really that stupid, in retrospect, that they investigated the guy that makes and uses a fake ID when flying? It shows he has a propensity to break the rules, and it may not always be in a strictly fun way
> normal people who are just trying to do their job…
When it's the Secret Service, that's not "normal people", and their job is to figuratively or literally stomp anyone who doesn't sufficiently respect the immensely powerful people they insulate. Portraying them as regular Joe victim here is nonsense.
Counterpoint: Their job is to protect with the highest professionalism, indeed with their life, a democratically-elected person whose opinions and actions they may personally disagree with or even resent. It is a very honorable position if you ask me.
I don't agree with that framing, but we can agree that they are acting as a projection of the power and privilege of the person they are protecting, and that in acting on that person's behalf, they remove perceived but unlikely potential threats that the average citizen would have to simply tolerate. Even if they're just plain folks in private life, their profession is an expression of power and privilege.
That was before we knew that real people suffer after pulling similar stunts. We all know of someone who did something stupid and has faced a lifetime of consiquence. Nobody dares put a fake bomb in a school locker (Woz did that) or give false documents to police for fun. Such things are no longer jokes. They screw up entire lives.
I used to ride fast motorcycles. I know people who ran from the police for fun. Better camera tech in recent years means nobody gets away with that anymore. And when caught, your life grinds to a hault.
"Such things are no longer jokes. They screw up entire lives."
But should they screw up lives? Why should we put up with authorities that can't take a joke. This is the foundation of the culture of defiance that hacking was all about expressing.
They shouldn't, but they do. Just because a law or policy is wrong doesn't mean it isn't a solid reality that other people cannot afford to joke about. I'm not s fan of US drug policy, but I wouldn't dare carry a bag of false drugs just to make fun of police officers who cannot tell the difference.
> But should they screw up lives? Why should we put up with authorities that can't take a joke.
They key concept here is 'trickery', and how 'tricked' someone is on a spectrum. Society trusts our authorities to give their best efforts to keep our daily actions within the realm of 'the law'.
There is a spectrum of what one considers a 'joke'. If you tell an authority a dad joke, when they ask you a serious question, that is a fine place on the spectrum to joke with authorities. If you are giving them fake IDs to _trick_ them (and thus, trick society at large, who have delegated power to the authorities by vote etc...), that is not a good thing, to trick others you are living with, at the far end of the 'joke/trickery' spectrum.
You are right (sometimes), but so is the prankster for challenging authority sometimes.
A healthy society both has rule following and rule challenging. Sometimes there’s too much rule following, sometimes there’s too much chaos, and then things balance themselves out ideally.
If anyone says only one side is the right one, they are ideologically captured. It’s like saying only left or right is the right way to govern a country. It’s both and neither. We need this conflict within society to arrive at healthy decisions.
I’m really unsure whether doing the same thing now would have a high risk of “screwing up” your life. It’s not like he showed anyone a counterfeit ID. What he did is the same as showing a random company ID. Not exactly grounds for arrest especially if he can provide a driver’s license if asked to.
It was a counterfeit ID. If the cop reading it walks away with the reasonable, but false, belief that the person works for the dod, he has presented a counterfeit ID. If he did it to trick the cop, he has knowingly presented false information/lied to police.
Can we stop being so obtuse and only look at the letter of the law and think about the actual practical real-life consequence as a measure of severity? This was a joke, and no harm was done.
Are you really advocating for a felony offence here?
This is the same line of thinking, just reversed, that people use to say "well it's not illegal" when someone does something super shitty that actually has awful consequences.
The letter of the law is that he presented a counterfeit ID to a federal officer where lying to a federal officer is a very serious offense.
You can argue that 'well it was a joke!!' but if you were to joke around to your nearest FBI officer about how you have a bomb in your home and you're going to use it I imagine they wouldn't find it very funny.
> if you were to joke around to your nearest FBI officer about how you have a bomb in your home and you're going to use it I imagine they wouldn't find it very funny.
Agreed! Joking about a bomb is a much more serious and very different situation than showing a joke ID in a relaxed situation - and when you probably have your real ID in your pocket.
Jokes are dangerous. There is a fine line between jokes, wasting an officer's time, and outright obstruction. I wouldnt want to risk my joke landing flat and an angry officer deciding to make me an example.
Sure, that's a personal choice, but I was talking about everyone in this thread saying Woz should have been charged with a felony for his joke. Which is ridiculous.
In your scenario, would you actually be ok or understanding if the "angry officer" made an example of you for this harmless joke? Or would you maybe protest that it was a bit disproportionate or unnecessary?
And finally, hearing people say "jokes are dangerous" in a serious manner makes me very sad for our society. The level of unconscious mass conformism seems to be growing fast, and historically that never leads to good outcomes.
I don't know why this is downvoted, it's correct. Social media means that pranks are no longer ephemeral, and we can also be more aware of how badly wrong it could go.
"Better camera tech in recent years means nobody gets away with that anymore."
Because police rely on technology committing a crime without your cellphone means you most likely will not get caught. We live in an age where wearing masks is acceptable. Where people let you steal from stores and where crime is ignored unless it's on twitter.
Depends if you have something to lose. I suspect a lot of readers here are in the middle ground, where their net present value (including career/family/political/etc opportunities) is not high enough where they can afford to shield themselves without big sacrifices. But it is also not low enough to worth risking losing it all.
For example, they might be able to afford a house in a nice school district, daycare, saving for retirement, paying for healthcare, and taking care of elderly parents, but a job loss from one spouse could easily derail this train, and certainly legal expenses would.
> Where people let you steal from stores and where crime is ignored unless it's on twitter.
Well ngl, you sound like you could use less time on the internet yourself. This statement is just preposterous unless you spend hours of your life every day obsessing over twitter drama.
There are US cities with drones in the air taking pictures of the city. Say somebody robs a bank. Review the picture history from when they arrived at the bank, go backward watching their car until you find out where they live. Drive over and arrest them.
This 'time machine' feature of ubiquitous surveillance is going to be a brave new world.
Better dash camera on police cars, and police body cams, mean they always have your plate number. You cannot run for fun if they already know where you live/work.
I think things like this were more likely to get laughed off or at most a scolding from a judge back then, as opposed to some BS terrorism-related charge, back in the day. I think back to what I did in high school with model rocket engines and the like and I'd probably be convicted of something now.
Standard caveat of being a middle class white dude makes this easier.
Often my dad would recant to me absolutely batshit anecdotes about the antics people around him got into punctuated by "but it was the 70s".
The past truly is a different country.
Hacking was aggressively criminalized. We lost Aaron Swartz. There are real threats to people with curiosity these days, and that seems to be an intentional result of the laws and enforcement in the US.
In my personal observation, a lot of what spoiled the zany fun of using technology for rule breaking was the rise of really evil large tech companies. It kind of took the mirth out of it because their evil willingness to do anything to Hoover up more data is always sitting there in the background.
Agreed, even events like DEFCON and the general infosec scene seem to be leaning more and more towards "conformance". It used to be a badge of shame to be a fed and now I feel uncomfortable talking poorly about the US intelligence community. I hesitate to complain because those who questioned the status quo in the past had the same types of people breathing down their neck. I will simply ignore them and continue doing my own thing
Yes why should people fear authority? It’s not like there is a history of corruption and brutality in the police department or five policemen beating a man to death in Memphis within the last week.
In my experience, business ppl are the ones who like to break the rules more than others. I would argue most people here are employed engineers, and they mostly love following rules.
I disagree, a key social purpose of complex legal rules is regulatory capture that allows powerful people to stay powerful. Smart powerful people don’t have to break the rules, they follow them in practice but not in spirit, whereas people without access to lawyers and legal sophistication break rules unknowingly, even when following them in spirit.
I'm talking in the practical kind of way: speeding, parking where you're not supposed to, "better to ask forgiveness than permission" kind of things, creative bookkeeping (I'm from Belgium :D), ... .
No idea what kind of high profile business owners you know, but in my circle in Belgium, most are small business owners. In my experience, employees like to follow rules, business owners like to push their boundaries.
I do know some high powered industry leaders in the USA. At that level you don’t break the rules, you make them… specifically to exclude you competitors while leaving carefully crafted loopholes for yourself.
I agree that what you are talking about applies to scrappy startup types, the same people that eventually stop breaking the rules once they have enough power not to need to.
I feel like the undertone of hacker news has always been hacking in ways that are productive (and therefore possibly applicable to making money). Woz does interesting stuff and this is such an example, but it's not really "productive"
This is an objective _abuse_ of authority/power by an ultrawealthy, tone-deaf "hacker", who frankly didn't seem to remember any of his engineering skills when he spoke at my university ten years ago.
Please tell me you see that. Or at least, are not personally ultrawealthy yourself.
> anyone can look up threads of old in which we cheered such defiance toward authority.
Maybe it's good if the industry has ceased having such a teenagery view of things. The article won't load for me, but it seems there was no meaningful protest against some illicit government abuse of authority here. Dude was just printing and using fake IDs because he could.
As a millennial who used to be much more simpatico with your way of thinking, I would say I've become very against it because it is exactly the sort of attitude that I have seen lead people to Trumpsim, anti-vaxxing, etc. It's just irresponsible and arrogant to think that authority/government = bad and that any sort of finger to the man is intrinsically worth celebrating.
Because we get a statement showing what the PD used our tax money for, every single year, vs the endless black hole of the IRS. Also we can fire and disband them if we so wish. For us "Defund the police" is not a toothless meme, it's a reality that we can implement if the police become a nuisance. For instance my town fired the entirety of its' PD a good decade ago.
Counterpoint; why do city folk hold their police deparments in such low regard and scream for their defunding yet somehow hold the federal enforcement agencies in some do-no-wrong-holier-than-thou limelight?
I’ve never known federal police to stop and frisk, racial profile, be accused of police brutality or stop someone for “suspiciously” walking through his own neighborhood where the county is only 2.9% Black (my 6 foot 3 step son who grew up in the burbs all of his life), we lived in the most affluent county in the metro area (this was Atlanta metro not saying much in the grand scheme of things) and we had a household income twice the median since I work remotely for $BigTech.
But that didn’t stop them from thinking “we didn’t belong here”.
It’s the same reason NWA never wrote a song called “Fuck the FBI”…
Are you serious? Look up COINTELPRO. The FBI very literally tried to blackmail MLK into committing suicide. They helped Chicago law enforcement assassinate Fred Hampton. They tried to undermine the civil rights movement at every turn.
When we say “defund the police”, it includes federal law enforcement.
They absolutely do all of that, if you live within 100 miles of a federal border, and anywhere else they happent to have jurisdiction. Being detained by feds sans warrant is patently unfun, lemme tell you that.
I suppose I'm happy for you having the privilege to live such a sheltered life where you don't see any of this.
no kidding, you could bluff your way out of a murder charge or even convince the police that your naked bleeding victim screaming to get away from you was better off in your care. (see jeffery dhamer)
When an entire population is far more homogeneous than most modern Western states, the heightened social trust and cohesion permits this kind of harmless fun (among many other benefits). It's one of those sacrifices made to accommodate diversity which is almost impossible to quantify and existentially unsettling to even try.
Maybe this struck a nerve because I'm an American born-and-raised PoC, but frankly I believe this is a bad opinion that is often pushed by racists (even if the idea itself isn't necessarily inherently racist).
Heightened social trust in people of one's own ethnicity isn't a fact of life, it's just racism. It's what causes PoC to be profiled by law enforcement, on average have worse outcomes for the same crimes in the justice system, etc.
I know that this isn't just the way humans are wired. I met so many people (including police) in my life that I would consider truly "colorblind" and treat everyone with respect, regardless of their ethnicity.
Different shared cultural values (as opposed to just differing race) is also not as much of a problem as some make it out to be. First, most cultures of people that are immigrating to the US (I can't speak for Europe, I'm not very in the loop) have values largely compatible with Western ones. Second, most immigrants will at least somewhat assimilate into the culture of their host country, especially after a generation or two. Note, this doesn't mean throwing away their native culture.
I'd also like to point out that Woz's America was definitely NOT homogenous.
>Heightened social trust in people of one's own ethnicity isn't a fact of life, it's just racism.
It is a fact of life, it's natural and there's a clear evolutionary impetus for it. I would argue that this is how we are wired.
Of course we feel more comfortable among our own. You are far more at ease if you walk into a room to be surrounded by people just like you, rather than strangers from the other side of the world with their alien appearances, behaviours, and even smells! Who knows how the reptilian subconscious analyses this information - are we at war? conquered? lost? isolated? kidnapped?
In a more modern sense, we can more readily let out guard down among our own, knowing we share a common history, culture, humour, etc, while we must precariously navigate the invisible minefield of sensitivities in a more diverse group.
I don't find this to be true in my experience. Pretty much any moderately-sized university campus in America is a counterpoint to what you're saying. These communities can be very diverse, and while it's true that you can often find various cliques that split along various demographic lines, members of diverse university communities still live, learn, and work in close proximity.
I think implicit in your comment is the assumption that people with different backgrounds are somehow defacto strangers. But what makes it all work on a university campus, imo, is that everyone has a purpose; there are no scary strangers because everyone's motivations are well-understood, since everyone on campus has a job to do. No one is really a stranger.
It doesn't matter if you are of a different color or gender, or that you come from a place I've never been to, or that you speak a language I've never heard, or that you eat food I've never tasted. My lizard brain doesn't kick in when I interact with you because you are just here to study and learn, or to help in that process.
As an example, I am a professor and I have a new colleague. He is from the other side of the world, he was born a decade before me, he eats food different from mine, he worships a different God than I do. But we get along just fine, and that's because despite all those differences, we still have more in common than not. And even if we didn't, we still have to rely on one another and work as a team to achieve a common goal.
Correct. It's mostly social and not based on 'looks,' per se. Let's give an example. I'm white as a ghost. But from pre-school age I went over to my Indian neighbor's house to play. I'm fond of the cooking and the accent of Indian-born English speakers is totally normal for me, probably more normal than a Southern accent.
Now if I go to India to do some work I will seek out some other Americans to befriend while there, perhaps naturally looking for people like me. But by this I mean other Americans whether Indian-American or otherwise -- I don't mean whites who literally look like me. Get it?
> It is a fact of life, it's natural and there's a clear evolutionary impetus for it. I would argue that this is how we are wired.
Is it? I reject this wholesale. Do you have evidence?
If you do, why have you set definitions of "otherness" at skin color? I feel quite comfortably "among my own" alongside basically any human, because they're humans just like me. Don't you?
You are only confirming that nominally, ethnicity and race are not important.
For example, a white American of Slavic descent is more comfortable in a room of non-white Americans who also smell of Budweiser than they would be in a room of Russians in Russia speaking Russian and smelling of vodka. Get it?
Several. If race isn't a factor for you selecting a partner, landing on someone with a different race is fairly common, especially considering I live in a diverse area.
Clearly you haven't read or been in any post-soviet country, near perfect "ethnical cohesion", doesn't stop crime or increase trust in any way.
Frankly that's arrogant and narrow-minded view; homogenous culture might cause less conflicts and problems when the culture itself is one promoting that in the first place
The countries with lowest crime numbers in EU per capita are (ordered by crime rate increasing):
Slovakia, Hungary, Estonia, Cyprus, Slovenia, Czechia, Poland, Bulgaria, Croatia, Lithuania, Romania.
All of them are socially pretty homogenous. Most of them escaped Soviet block. Some even escaped Soviet Union. On the other hand, look at the countries from the other side of chart (this time, rate decreasing):
Belgium, Spain, Portugal, Sweden, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Germany.
As this data concerns only EU, there is no UK here, but as I remember, it had around 3x crime rate as the Republic of Ireland, which would put it on the tops of the EU list.
Of course, increased diversity might not be the only differentiator between the countries from the top of the list and those from the bottom, but I think it defeats your point (almost as if you were racist for having irrational fears against living in a post-soviet society, which aren't backed by numbers).
I think focusing exclusively on latest data is problematic. Many post soviet countries had huge amounts of crime in the 90s and early 2000s. Crime rates gradually decreased after they joined the EU until they reached their current levels.
The degree of ethnic homogeneity did not increase during that time, if anything it slightly decreased (or significantly in some major cities).
One possible explanation is that people willing to engage in low level crime simply moved to richer western countries because well they were (and still are) richer... e.g. in Norway Lithuanians are the second largest group of people who are imprisoned (after local Norwegians). The situation is similar in some other Western European countries. I'm not an expert but if I wanted to rob/steal from people and businesses I'd probably do that in Norway, Germany, or Switzerland rather than Romania or Lithuania. The risk versus reward ratio seems much better there. Also there prisons are way nicer (especially in Norway).
This is disingenuous to say that people emigrated in order to do crime. But you could also find statistics on sexual assaults which also suggest that rape is a lot more prevalent in western europe (and probably, that the rates since the 90s didn't change much on the east).
I would say, that based on my experience on growing in Poland (I was born in 1998), the people become richer and suddenly everybody now seems to be minding own business. So after you fill some economic needs, the will to pick on people decreases. But that will is surely dependent on how much you trust others are think similar (and won't rob you).
Anyway, the parents' commenter point was
> near perfect "ethnical cohesion", doesn't stop crime or increase trust in any way
I can't see why should it be true. Perhaps it doesn't stop crime completely, but perhaps it actually increases trust. Based on the argument above we can't know.
> This is disingenuous to say that people emigrated in order to do crime
Why? Obviously the majority of those who emigrated did not do so with the intention to commit crimes. However some people did. The question is whether they are under/over represented in the emigrant population.
Another aspect is that high emigration generally results in better conditions for those who remain due to higher demand for labor. Which might also decrease crime due to lower unemployment/higher wages.
> Perhaps it doesn't stop crime completely, but perhaps it actually increases trust
According to https://ourworldindata.org/trust Eastern European countries have lower interpersonal trust compared to most Western European countries and especially Scandinavia.
Of course it's also a question of attitude. And people in different cultures might interpret the question differently and/or be predisposed to answer it in a certain way even. Then again being from the region myself I can't really say that people here trust others more than in WE, ussually it's the opposite especially outside of certain social groups.
The U.S. is one of the higher-trust societies, socially, while also being extremely racially diverse.
It sounds like pro-social culture and your people being rich probably matter more than race, and Eastern Europe has a critical deficit in both of those. :p
Mostly thanks to "inheriting" it from russia in form of being post-soviet satellites... it took decades for most countries (and for other it is still in progress) to get from "you need bribe or connections to get anywhere in bureaucracy" for example.
That's true for countries in which russia directly meddles. Countries that thrown off the yoke, like Czechia or Poland have one of the lowest crime rates in the world.
That's one of the sources of Lukashenko's legitimacy, just as economic growth is a source of CCP's legitimacy. Russia has to reason to destabilize Belarus since their ruler is complicit.
It's not binary. Mark Potok of the SPLC has a poster on his wall tracking the demographic decline of Whites in America. You don't need to look far - official population statistics, your kid's school, or your local Walmart - to see this massive, rapid demographic shift in action.
> This needs a citation. It's the sort of "common sense" all too often advanced by people with - frankly - racist or ethnonational agendas.
Jumping straight to claiming someone has a racist or ethnonational agenda because they didn't provide a citation seems uncharitable. It comes off as a worse form of sealioning. I'm not sure if you're trying to do that intentionally but I mention it so you can understand the hostility it may create.
Harvard professor of political science Robert D. Putnam conducted a nearly decade long study on how diversity affects social trust. He surveyed 26,200 people in 40 American communities, finding that when the data were adjusted for class, income and other factors, the more racially diverse a community is, the greater the loss of trust. People in diverse communities "don't trust the local mayor, they don't trust the local paper, they don't trust other people and they don't trust institutions," writes Putnam.
That said, there can both be problems and benefits of something, and in his research on diversity this is considered:
Putnam says, however, that "in the long run immigration and diversity are likely to have important cultural, economic, fiscal, and developmental benefits."
He asserted that his "extensive research and experience confirm the substantial benefits of diversity, including racial and ethnic diversity, to our society."
When everyone comes from the same background and/or culture there is a shared understanding. Mix two different cultures and you have less shared background mix in 100 and you have little.
It's not a race issue when this is experienced in Africa/Japan/Sweden/Finland.
Calling new idea to you racist is racist. Most of the times the word racist is used it is used incorrectly and often in a racist way.
It's not a new idea to me. It's an idea I've encountered many times, often propping up arguments of various kinds against pluralistic societies - which is an argument implicit in the comment above. Those arguments lead directly to ideas around ethnonationalism and segregating societies by cultural background, which is a direct analog for ethnicity.
There's a straight line between that argument - which again, almost always gets through around with out any kind of citations or research support - and ethnic cleansing. It's directly attached to racist ideas. Similar to social darwinism, it's something that seems like relatively harmless common sense on the surface, but leads to horrific implications when followed to its logical conclusion.
Interesting. So you don't actually argue that it's untrue.
You just argue that people shouldn't acknowledge it because doing so would lead to policies you think would be immoral.
I'm just not sure that this anti-truth stance is tenable or really worth it. What if we can acknowledge the facts and then... handle them in a non-evil way?
Or perhaps even use that knowledge to head off terrible outcomes that might otherwise happen? E.g. Lebanon-style ethnic civil wars.
I generally think that knowing the truth is useful and equips you to do good things. You just need a non-childish moral system to integrate it (too easy to feel moral if you just wish away the hard facts of the universe).
No, I argued that it's the sort of thing people assume is "common sense" when it is often very poorly supported. And my argument was that said assumption often comes from a bad place (when you examine it) and leads to a bad place.
Have you ever nodded your head in agreement at the assertion that the middle east/Africa/etc is so screwed up because the colonial powers drew arbitrary borders?
I knew I read something somewhere and this is the closest I could find. But I think it’s related.
So when I asked ChatGPT
> Are countries with less racial diversity more likely to have a larger safety net”
because my GoogleFu was failing me, of course it gave me a non controversial generic answer.
But when I asked it for citations it gave me this
> A 2018 study published in the journal Social Science Research, which found that countries with more ethnically diverse populations tend to have less generous welfare states.
> First, vignette experiments established a consistent and pervasive deservingness gap: welfare recipients belonging to the ethnic ingroup are more likely to be considered deserving of welfare support than the ethnic outgroup
That's very circumstantial evidence that requires more examination. Is that a direct result of the diversity - or of the history that generated that diversity in the first place?
In most countries that are ethnically diverse, that diversity was created through various forms of colonialism. Often with racial imperialism deeply ingrained in it. Which means those countries have long running strains of racist ideas and ideologies that forms the foundations of the ethnic "in group" and "out group".
Which is not to say that ethnic strife doesn't exist in non-colonial countries as well, but that this line of thinking and examination is a) extremely complex, b) inextricable from the history of the systems under examination, c) inextricable from deep histories of racist thought - often imposed by colonnial or imperialist powers, and d) similar to social darwinism in that it is often presented as common sense, but leads to some very dark places when taken, unexamined, to its logical conclusion.
Yeah, I mean, there's a good reason for that. To do the topic justice requires a lot of pretty delicate work. The only way to give a shorter answer with out tripping into dangerous territory is for it to look something like my last paragraph.
If I was searching for comparisons, I would look at Stockholm and suburbs in 1990s compared with present. I am told there are now areas where those born in .se and the police just avoid due to take-over by gangs of (some) recent immigrants.
Yeah, my reaction was -- after he read you your miranda rights, why were you even talking to him without a lawyer?
But after thinking about it more -- and I'm in my mid-40s -- I think what it also reminds us of is that law enforcement actually used to be a lot more reasonable -- to be clear, this may probably only apply to white people who appear as if they are not poor. But I think maybe the police (whether local or national security) have actually maybe gotten a lot more intense in the past 30 years. Possibly actually more intense for everyone.
The risks of "messing with" security personel, at least for middle-class-appearing white guys, was very definitely a lot less back then.
There might be some truth to this, but I suspect a lot of this perception has more to do with the dramatic increase in recording equipment in the general public. Given how often police officers get away with pretty clear cut abuse even when there is video, it's not hard to imagine the majority of this behavior was getting swept under the rug.
So in my comment that was only like five sentances, one of them was "to be clear, this may probably only apply to white people who appear as if they are not poor", right?
I'm curious if you are old enough to remember the 80s, although I'm not going to bet any precious precious donuts about it.
How state violence and repression was in the 80s isn't good enough, agreed. But things actually do change, get better and worse in different dimensions. If we insist that things have always been exactly as they are, then it seems fatalistic, they can't possibly change, this is the way it's always been and always will be. But things do change. If they were better in some ways 30 years ago, then this isn't inevitable.
Woz was a prankster, including against those in authority. Look up some of the pranks the MIT "hackers" pulled back in the day. Today, some of them would probably get you arrested on domestic terrorism charges. This is not an improvement, even if it's true that the police of course have always been brutal in some times and places, especially depending on social position of the victims. But nobody (I hope) is looking for equality of brutal discipline, equally oppressive to all.
Yes, I was born in 1974 hence the username. I also grew up in the south and heard plenty of first hand accounts from my grandparents and my still living Black parents.
And as it was revealed last week in Memphis, I don’t anymore breathe a sign of relief when I see a Black cop than when I see a White cop.
< The risks of "messing with" security personel, at least for middle-class-appearing white guys, was very definitely a lot less back then.
I don't think this jives with your comment that law enforcement use to be reasonable. I think this highlights unequal enforcement of the law, depending on who is considered undesirable.
Woz is embellishing for dramatic effect. Decades ago, picture ID meant anything. You could get on a plane sometimes with a school ID. Before holograms and bar codes on driver's licenses, all IDs were presumed to be garbage and just a way to get the spelling of a person's name if in fact the ID was real.
Woz was not in custody and is therefore exaggerating about being Mirandized. He played a prank by giving his clown employee ID. It was in Casinoland where people had goofy job titles and this wouldn't have been so crazy. Nothing to see here.
That said, if he had been in actual trouble or has been committing forgery, the clown ID would have been a bad move.
Mid 80s I flew home to visit family. Wallet was stolen while rock climbing (I foolishly left it at the base in my pack). Have to fly home, what to do?? Easy peasy. Go to the local ski mountain where I knew the employees, had them make me a bogus laminated employee card with my photo on it, and flew back home using it for my id. No problem.
I flew in mid-90s with no ID on tickets booked in name of office manager.
Can still fly in USA without ID. The checkpoint "agents" have you sign a special form.
Last summer I "Scotch" taped the crap out of the barcode and picture on my passport. Checkpoint person asked me why and I mumbled because the real answer was "to see what happens." She called supervisor and he quickly waved me through. May be different effect at immigration.
How is using fake IDs to board airplanes a joke? Only because we are mostly sure this particular man is an innocent manchild, but how exactly does that generalize?
I don't recall if it was specifically 9/11 that it changed, but I definitely recall that you did not used to have show to ID to get on a plane at all.
And at some early points when you did, it was more just like kind of informally showing you were the ticket-holder, not really about security. His "fake ID" saying he was a "laser inspector" is really just an employee ID for a very unsuccesful business he started, right? If they take an employee ID, what's the difference. it just... wasn't actually a big deal back then.
But yeah, in general... it's kind of painful to remember how much less we interacted with security checkpoints 30 years ago, and how much we've gotten used to living in a security state. The phrase "show me your papers" used to be a kind of shorthand for the idea that in a "fascist" state threatening law enforcement is always asking you for ID, but in "America" we can live our lives without interacting with such security apparatus. I doubt people think about it like that, as we live it now too, it's totally normalized.
that the reader may find it hard to believe that you didn't really have to show official ID to get on a plane, or that you could use a homemade employee ID... just demonstrates how normalized and forever-seeming the security state has become.
Although last I checked, you could actually still fly without ID, you need to fill out a form and get extra screening/pat down. Don't know if the "Real ID" stuff has changed that or what.
Still the case in the UK, no law saying you have to provide any ID on a domestic flight (although you'll need a boarding pass), certainly I don't whenever I fly domestically (rarely). Some airlines require ID for ticket purposes (to prevent you from selling your ticket to someone else). Flights between the UK and Ireland are a little trickier, you don't need a passport, as long as you can prove you are either British or Irish. If you don't have a photo ID you can fly from the UK to Belfast and then drive/train/bus to the Republic.
The requirement for a passport and appropriate visa on international flights departing from the UK is I think solely an airline requirement, as if you land in a country you don't have a right to immigrate to the airline gets fined. If you're flying privately it's a different matter.
Obviously you need a passport or other authority to travel when you get to the border of another country (Ireland being the obvious exception for the UK).
Yes, it was a very different world than it is now.
I had a 22 caliber rifle when I was a tween. That wasn't uncommon because I lived in the country, and you pretty much needed such things to scare coyotes and wolves off the yard without hurting them. Obviously it can kill them, but you don't actually shoot them - you shoot close enough they understand the sound from your gun, and the sound on the ground right in front of them. Pretty effective.
It got jammed once, so I walked into town with it cocked open over my shoulder to get it fixed. They can't be fired when cocked open.
Nobody batted an eye. Not that people did that all the time, but everyone knew everyone, and easily figured the story would turn out more simple and mundane than the optics.
It was the early 80's and there was a lot less angst. And it was just a simple local hardware store that fixed it for me. By the 90's, that would never fly, and no hardware store would fix a kid's gun (or anyone's for that matter) in that very same town. By then you needed a Firearms Acquisition Cert, which no tween could possibly get.
I used to buy cigarettes for my mom, too. That was also legal back then.
The 80's was a sort of cross over period that way.
This is still a thing in some places. I am in a very rural area. It is not uncommon for hunters to get out of their vehicle at the gas station here with their rifles to reposition their gear. It would probably be unsettling to a tourist.
Exactly this. As late as the 2001 I could cross into the US from Canada with as little as my birth certificate, which I often did. That was just a cotton blended paper with tattered edges with some writing, and the crest of my province printed on it. There wasn’t even a photo on it! It was closer to writing, ‘I’m daniel plz let me in’ on a napkin, than it is to my passport of today with its photo, barcode, and RFID chip that they can cross reference their data base with.
> As late as the 2001 I could cross into the US from Canada with as little as my birth certificate,
Growing up in Detroit in the 80s (which some people don't realize is right on the border with Canada -- and that you travel south across a bridge to get to Canada! look it up) -- we generally didn't even bring our birth certificate. which may be a testament to our social class -- they could ask for a birth certificate if they thought you seemed "suspicious" (which i'm sure is racially coded), but for 90%+ of crossings, and 100% of our crossings, it was a two question interview without showing any paperwork at all. "What is your citizenship? What is your purpose of travel? OK, go through." No showing of ID at all -- not even a driver's license!
[And again, they could ask for ID -- a driver's license or birth certificate -- if they wanted. I am positive at least 9 out of 10 crossings they did not. I am indeed sure that the race and class appearance (and accent) of the crosser was significant].
We used to patriotically brag (in the time of the cold war and berlin wall) that this was how borders between two stable "free" countries, the US and Canada, could be, "the longest open border in the world".
It makes me really sad to think about how much we have gotten used to living in a security state, that does not need to be that way.
(I'm realizing in my memory that not only did you show no paperwork, for the majority of crossings for people they did not deem "suspicious", you didn't even provide your name at all. I guess they could have been recording your license plate, not sure if they were, but there was no record left of the individual people crossing).
Actually before 9-11 you could enter Canada with only a Michigan drivers license. I did it all the time, had friends in Windsor and I'd drive down just to have dinner with them.
Now you need either a passport or a special Michigan drivers license. Last time I renewed in person after COVID I tried to get one. The lady behind the counter said you don't want one of those. I asked her why and she told me that I'd hold up the line behind me. Since I was renewing months after my license expired due to the office being closed at the beginning of COVID I didn't argue with her.
You can still cross EU borders with just a driving licence, or government issued ID where they have them.
(In practice the vast majority using planes and boats at least probably do take a passport, I always did from the UK, but in theory you don't need one, so if you weren't planning to go elsewhere you wouldn't even need to get a passport.)
> You can still cross EU borders with just a driving licence, or government issued ID where they have them.
For anybody unfamiliar with Europe, I just want to add that there aren't any checkpoints or border crossings, you just drive through or walk over. Half the time you won't even notice you're doing it. You're just supposed to have your ID on your person when you do.
Ireland (and previously the UK) is the only major exception to this, as it's part of the common travel area alongside the UK. In practice, this doesn't make a huge difference when you're an Irish or EU citizen (it does if you're a tourist who needs a different visa to visit), as it's an island, and airlines require a form of ID to board anyway. When travelling from Ireland to Schengen, I usually have a passport in my carry on luggage as a backup, and take my passport-card (similar to a national ID card) in my wallet.
>For anybody unfamiliar with Europe, I just want to add that there aren't any checkpoints or border crossings, you just drive through or walk over. Half the time you won't even notice you're doing it. You're just supposed to have your ID on your person when you do.
The above is only true in the Schengen zone. As soon as you cross the border to a non-Schengen country or you arrive from a non-Schengen country you will go through normal border control (with some exceptions). This includes multiple EU countries beside Ireland like Romania, Bulgaria or Cyprus. And many non-EU countries like Bosnia, Serbia, Monaco, Kosovo, Andorra, Ukraine, Turkey, Russia, etc.
But it also includes certain non-EU countries, like Switzerland. You won't notice having crossed the border before your phone notifies you that it just disabled data thanks to roaming charges getting capped at 50 without confirmation.
(I'm exaggerating, but only slightly.. the irony is that I used to have data roaming included in Switzerland, but the network forced me to a new plan that doesn't have that because the old one was almost but not quite complying with EU roaming rules)
> As soon as you cross the border to a non-Schengen country or you arrive from a non-Schengen country you will go through normal border control (with some exceptions)
Nothing in EU is as simple, therefore it's not only a Schengen/non-Schengen thing. For example a border between North and "regular" Ireland isn't marked in any way, you just cross a brook or a field.
I though the point of the Irish passport card was that it is a passport (not a national ID card), but that the only place where it is needed / accepted is in other EU MS (due to format, and lack of ability to be stamped)? Note - the EU includes a passport union, which has been in place since the EEC days.
i.e. that there should be no need to also carry your passport, unless intending to travel on outwith the EU?
You're right there isn't any need to have the passport booklet when travelling within the EU. I have the passport card on me almost 100% of the time when I'm not at home, as it's kept in my wallet. So I use that when flying within the EU as well.
However, when I'm traveling to somewhere that has a hotel safe, or somewhere secure enough to leave valuables, I'll bring the full passport booklet in my carry-on along with me, and leave it there when I go out. That way, in the unlikely event I should lose my wallet / passport card, I still have the full booklet to travel home on, rather than having to arrange emergency travel documents for the flight back.
I haven't needed it yet, but I don't see the harm in also taking it. It's not as if it takes up an obscene amount of space in my carry-on luggage, nor am I risking losing it by carrying it on my person at all times. It's purely there for peace of mind, and a backup in the very unlikely event I need it.
Lost in translation I think. You could cross the border to Canada with just your state issued ID/drivers license as well back then.
What OP is saying is that it was even more lax than that. OP brought a piece of paper that is trivially forged, no photo on it, that basically just said in writing who they were with no additional ID needed.
Yeah, perhaps. My surprise I suppose is because to me a birth certificate is something somewhat safely tucked away somewhere, extremely rarely required; frankly I don't know how much of a problem it would be to lose and try to replace (maybe not replacing it but fraud would be your greater concern?) but certainly not something generally carried around with you here. (At least, I'd be surprised to learn that's just me?)
Where do birth certificates contain photos? That… doesn’t sound very practical. (Imagining an elderly person handing in their photo as a toddler to border control.)
I get what you’re getting at, but in Canada birth certificates from the 80s had a wallet sized version that had no more information than a drivers license, but it didn’t even have a photo on it. It was just a little pice of paper. I remember that’s very different from modern birth certificates.
I also crossed into the U.S. with my health card that only had my name on it and a number that is meaningless to the US boarder agency, also no photo.
No, a drivers license is not enough, you’re supposed to bring a passport or a national id card. For UK nationals that meant a passport since the UK never had a national id card.
Within Schengen you can get away with just a drivers license since there are no checks, but that doesn’t make it allowed.
In the boarding line of a flight between EU destinations (well, Schengen destinations), I usually see about one couple clinging to their passports. They stand out as if they were dressed up in victorian age safari gear.
Sure, but no matter how far back in history you go this hasn’t applied to everyone. My dad had to jump through hoops to attend a conference in the states in the 90s. Including sitting in a line on the sidewalk in front of the US embassy for hours, as a well respected doctor in his 40s, curious what your thoughts are about that. Then I come to Canada in 2008 and hear people talk about all their trips to Europe and South America and they didn’t know what a visa meant. The world is a very unfair place, and first world people especially non-minorities never knew how bad it was for others. Perhaps post 2001 kind of leveled the Playing field in some ways.
Funny enough I went to Canada for a quick trip in with my (non-real ID) driver's license and birth certificate, stayed a couple extra days, and arrived back at the border just hours before the switchover to requiring a passport/real ID went into effect.
If I understand it right what while the ID was 'fake' it had his real name on it. So it wasn't more 'fake' than your job ID card with the same data on it.
You only think that it’s not a joke because over 20 years ago some people committed the single most successful act of terrorism in recent history. Was Woz meant to look into the future and be mindful of your presumably American sensitivities?
I’m Indian and india had fairly strict airline procedures even before 2001. Because flight terrorism has a longer history than 9/11. Im curious how you concluded I might be too America focused when you ignored all the countries that has had to battle terrorism for much longer.
Bush and the Congress in general certainly did commit the single most successful act of terrorism in recent history. I'm not sure how showing ID would have prevented that though. The US public brought it on themselves, and today's world is a world away from the hacking culture of the 1980s
You didn't have to do that though, you presumably could've paid cash or card or whatever for a single ticket? The photo I assume was just to stop people sharing a pass.
In much of Europe that's still the case. You can use an electronic or home-printed boarding pass and travel within the Schegen Zone and not be checked otherwise.
I've never tried to buy a ticket with false details though.
It's making a joke out of procedure to check ID that doesn't serve any purpose (even if it might be funny only to prankster) when even obvious fakes pass without problem.
To be convicted the prosecution needs to prove mens rea (providing a fake ID isn't strict liability), his thinking of why he chose to do this would make prosecution a fair bit harder (but obviously not impossible).
Not of intending to trick them into thinking he was anyone other than himself.
The main issue is that he's not at the Department of Defense HQ presenting his Department of Defiance ID, claiming to be with the government but intending to present the joke as an excuse if it fails. In this case he wasn't trying to claim to be government to get out of anything so it's pretty obvious that it's a joke.
> 18 U.S. Code § 1028 (4)knowingly possesses an identification document (other than one issued lawfully for the use of the possessor), authentication feature, or a false identification document, with the intent such document or feature be used to defraud the United States;
He wasn't using the fake part of the ID, just his real name, and it's obvious that it wouldn't have done him any good to do so because there's no legal exemption for laser safety officers. It's pretty obvious that there was intent, this was a conscious act, but also that there was not intent to defraud.
Maybe it’s my nordic background where people value independence (perhaps patholohically so). In general if a husband had any moderately dangerous hobbies it would sound a bit weird where I’m from that they stopped them just because they got married and had kids.
And if they had apprehended Woz he would probably had a lawyer to bail him out and smooth things over. So coming from these two directions the argument that fooling around was somehow traitorous behaviour towards his wife sounded really odd.
In American marriages and maybe this is a general Anglosphere cultural tradition you’re expected to provide and sacrifice if need be for your family (including spouse/kids). So if you had a hobby of, idk, drag racing cars it might be expected you give that up in some marriages, though certainly not all. Also if you have a child your hobby can wind up leaving your spouse with sole child responsibilities which typically falls on the mother. So you wind up with a father who works and then does their hobby, and you end up with a mom that also works and their hobby becomes raising a child. This can cut both ways or course.
I think I was listening to a world-famous rock climber who had toned down their extreme sports adventures (toned down for them) because they didn’t want to die and leave their spouse and child without a father over the pursuit of a hobby. So it’s a maturity thing too.
Most definetly, maturity and actual level of danger.
I don’t think anything Woz has done is moderately dangerous. If they wanted to lock him up I’m sure he could call to a competent lawyer and state he is a respectable citizen who co-founded the friggin Apple.
Woz has an extremely long history of egging people of authority and I don’t think he’s ever been to court from those escapades (please correct me if I’m wrong).
This was not as much about privilege than about Woz having a life long experience of trying to bend conventions and rules and probably had a good intuition how far he could goof off given his social and financial status etc.
Doubtful. You only need to make one mistake to throw your life off track when it comes to playing on the edges of the legal system. You don't know how "close" you're getting until you get a conviction.
You guys only value independence for Western Europeans.
Alligevel vedtager I en "Ghettopakke", der lovligt legaliserede at splitte migrantfamilier fra hinanden. I er lige så dårlige som resten af andre hvide mennesker, jeg har mødt.
I'm not sure why you are venting, but if you are having a hard time in your life I'm sorry you are going through that.
Now, our discussion was about Woz's zany antics, but I still have to clarify some geographical things:
1. Western Europe[0] and nordics[1] are two disjoint sets of countries
2. Of 28M nordic people only roughly 1/5 is Danish. And, there is very little political cohesion between the countries, except by national parliaments copying established successfull schemes from each other when it suits them individually
Personally, I am a Finn and had to google translate the bit of Danish in your message - I don't really follow Danish politics but I don't think it's fair to think every Dane would support this bill. This is actually the first time I read about this.
Yea. It was moment of venting tbh. I just get pissed off when a handful of commentators from Scandinavia act "holier than thou" when there is still some real racism and toxic commentary around migrants. With a mom who's "Mirpuri" (the actual term is Pahari or Dogra. Mirpuri means from Mirpur Tehsil in AJK) background. I've heard down the grapevine how much it sucks for the community in DK and NO.
It is a bit weird you got triggered by this out-of-context association when we were discussing the ethics of Woz's story, but you are correct, nordics are quite racist: https://harvardpolitics.com/nordic-racism/ - I would not say there is "some real racism" but call it a pretty entrenched position unfortunately.
Agreed that I got triggered and completely derailed this thread, and totally apologize about it btw. It just gets annoying sometimes when people from any community (America, Nordics, China, etc) get on a high horse sometimes.
Idk, for some reason the idealization of "Nordics" (itself a highly contentious term - is Estonia nordic? is Greenland?) on internet forums gets annoying, because I can just tell it's white people (in reality Western European+American, not like Romanians, Bosnians, Turks, or Albanians got it better in Malmö) talking to other white people and just completely ignoring the very real elephant in the room.
Once again sorry about that but I think that offhand comment the GP made was the straw that broke the camel's back for me.
I don't think the racism can be helped short term - nordics have been isolated polities that only in past decades have had large flows of migrants from different cultures. (Well, apart from Sweden attempting to conquer Europe in the 17th century but it did not end well).
If it's any consolation nordic people can be quite xenophobic even toward each other so it's not as if they would be uniquely harsh towards specific ethnicity. Every non-native will be discriminated against pretty much equally, regardless of origin or complexion. They abhor anything unfamiliar regardless of complexion. The general narrative of historical racism in these areas is quite different as compared to more cosmopolitan western countries such as UK, France or US.
Law of Jante is a pretty good framework for understanding the nordic mindset (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Jante) - the baseline response even towards in-group members that are different will be severe.
In context of ”the husband has potentially dangerous quirky hobbies, should he stop them or not”, not ”it’s ok to go ahead and ruin your familys finances” - the latter is not really a realistic scenario here.
I am quite an upstanding person, didn't commit crimes and when I see police I change the side of the street I am walking on even.
As a minority, the police is scary. It only takes one bad apple for my life to take a turn for the worse. As it turns out, there is a non-negligible percentage of the population that hates my guts because of colour, so might as well be safe.
Not to belittle your stance, but everything you said is true regardless whether your a minority or not.
Police can be scary, regardless if their skin color matches yours or not. They have near absolute authority to do nearly anything, and you'll lose in a he said-he said court case. But good officers can also be a substantial positive impact on society.
Whilst police is scary in general, it is much more likely for me to have an issue with them than someone who is a middle aged white guy, dressed well etc. People tend to judge others based off of stereotypes, i.e. "which box does this one fit in", and I know that the options for me, on average, are not super lovely.
As such, this isn't an argument for or against police or officers. It is something that highlights the "abusable authority" and for some minorities how the police is more "willing" to do so, on average. Hell, we are at the point where standup comedians are joking as "police wouldn't shoot me, I am not black" since it is quite a widespread fact by now.
Most dare devils do it for the thrill, and don't really think past the moment. And many of the extreme negative examples end in prison or death or similar, regardless of race.
Well, maybe, ask people you know if they would dare do the same thing. You may then see that there is a difference in the way people respond to the police depending on the race.
Sorry but your own life experience and how you think about this incident really do not apply to others.
How is that ID fake? It would have to imitate some ID issued by some organization to be fake.
I think “novelty ID” may be more correct. Just like those novelty dollar bills that kind of look like real currency in some ways but still have significant distinctions.
I had a replica of the Bad Mother F#cker wallet from pulp fiction. One of the TSA people asked to see my id but I think he was so busy staring at my wallet he didn’t actually look at my id when I handed it to him.
People don't always check IDs that well, even people whose job is 90% checking IDs. A friend of mine is a bouncer who has memorized every state's ID (he catches a lot of IDs that scan at other places) and usually gets multiple fakes a night while working.
He got an obvious fake from a blond 6'2" guy. He gave it to our dark-haired 5'7" friend with a very different facial structure and told him to try it at several other bars in the area. Said friend got into every bar.
Just because he does "tame" things doesn't mean he's not abusing his privilege as an uber-rich white dude. He's a million times better person than Musk, but this is still immature behavior that not everyone could get away with because of what they look like. But hey, he's a hacker god so blank check I guess.
Basically he tells story in a way that average person assume he’s printing fake bills, when in reality he’s just cutting and binding sets of uncut bills into a notepad.
Lying to a federal investigator though is a federal crime and one that’s frequently resulted in prison sentences.
Worth noting that Jobs & Woz first product was actually a device to make illegal free calls:
Woz didn't lie according to his account. Technically, he gave a fake ID, but not a fake drivers license. I say this b/c DL's don't show occupation. My understanding is that it had his correct name. So I don't see a lie that most prosecutors would care about given the whole situation.
Not to mention that it is not a good look for a secret service agent to not know the details of the actual currency he is tasked to protect (e.g. available in perforated sheets). I suppose it is possible the agent got called in not knowing the specific details warranting arrest*, but that would be even worse.
* Am I right to think that Woz was arrested given that he was read his Miranda rights?
You don’t need to be mirandized when you’re arrested. That’s a tv show trope. Miranda warnings are more frequently given as part of questioning, which may start on the scene of the arrest but often occurs later.
IANAL
You also don't need to Mirandized at all. Miranda is only needed to use any (direct product of) evidence or starments given by suspect during the interaction in court.
As some additional color, Miranda rights have been aggressively weakened over the last decade, and the current Supreme Court majority appears to really dislike them on their whole.
Berghuis v. Thompkins in 2010[0] made it so that the suspect has to explicitly invoke their own right to remain silent – simply remaining silent is not enough. And just last year in Vega v. Tekoh[1] the Court decided that it is not a violation of your civil rights if you are not Mirandized, and you therefore cannot sue over it.
Together, this basically means that its incumbent on every single citizen to be aware of their Miranda rights, and to know the magic words to say. And you should really, really keep track of if your rights are read to you while you're in custody – police will certainly try to admit un-Mirandized evidence, even after all of that.
> Those magic words, legal experts told USA TODAY, must be affirmatively and explicitly stated as, for example, "I want my lawyer and I want to remain silent" or "I want my lawyer and am invoking my right to remain silent." And then you should stay silent.
Available in sheets, yes; perforated, no. Woz had them perforated at the printer when he had them bound into pads. That's why, I assume, the repeated mention of the agent running his fingers over the perforations.
But was it materially false? im not sure his fake occupation was at all relevant, and since the document identified Woz, I suspect it was materially true.
Stating obvious, ultimately all individuals are responsible for their respective interpretations of the law and even judges error in their interpretations. That said, in my opinion, if an individual intentionally provides false statements or produces false documents to a federal investigator, that doing so is always a crime regardless of if it’s done to evade an investigation, material to a given investigation, etc — in part because knowing if a particular individual is being intentionally truthful is always material to an investigation.
Woz per his own statements said he had to them provide his drivers ID and passport. No idea why you’re taking his account of the story as anything more than yet another lie - which is the point, he knew providing a fictional ID was an intentional misrepresentation of the truth, which I turn calls into questions any additional information he provides, which in turn makes it material to the investigation.
That’s not my understanding of materiality at all.
If the material information he provided was true then all the other silliness is just silliness. I mean, the agent is going to search on the name, probably find a photo in a license database, and confirm the guy is who he says he is, and that is the only point of asking for ID. They are hardly strong authenticators, and no professional is going to take some random bit of ID and use the non-identifying data on it to make decisions. What do you think they are going to do with the data anyway?
The fact is also that Woz did nothing wrong. So why does he have to automatically cowtow to an authority figure? He provided the materially important information in a humorous way. He didn’t do anything wrong. He poked the bear, but only a little bit.
Finally - not every citizen has a passport or even a drivers license. So even if requested, it’s not always possible to produce it.
Honestly - I admire Woz, but I will admit that I find his pranks to be a bit self indulgent. So what? He literally did nothing wrong and poked a bit of fun at the state.
Creditability of statements made by an investigator, witnesses, suspect, etc — are obviously material to an investigation and intentionally providing fictitious documents might be a crime, basis for throwing out testimony, throwing out evidence, etc.
Nothing for or against Woz, but I for sure would never intentionally provide fictitious information or document to US federal investigator if situation ever presented itself, since ultimately once done it would be up to the investigator to present it for prosecution and judge to decide if it merited conviction.
Woz makes it sound like the agent actually accepted the fake ID, but they clearly did not, since per Woz, they not only made him produce a drivers license, but also his passport.
Why even put yourself in that position over a joke?
> Why even put yourself in that position over a joke?
Well yeah, I agree with you there. I wouldn’t have done it. Not that I think it’s right, but I suppose that being an old white billionaire changes the equation somewhat.
Are you even legally required to provide ID to a federal officer? I know in some states that you are not required to provide ID to a police officer unless there is evidence you have committed a crime. Quite a few ornery citizens like to video themselves rejecting police officer's requests for ID.
1. The way it usually goes is they don't lie; they just say no when asked to provide ID.
2. It seems like the police officer has to be able to state what crime they suspect has been committed. Standing around looking suspicious is what usually draws attention but it isn't a crime so they just say no when the police ask for ID.
But that's for local police in some states. So again, is it different when you refuse ID to a federal officer? I think the answer is no, that there is no federal statute that requires you to identify yourself to a federal officer unless you are suspected of a committing a crime. But IANAL nor a member of law enforcement nor one of those ornery people who like to challenge the police and even hope they will be arrested on false pretenses so they can have fun suing the police.
I bought some in 1987 when I went on a tour of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. It was in the gift shop and I was 12 and thought it was really cool so my parents bought it for me. I still have them in a folder along with other souvenirs. I would never think of actually cutting them up and spending them. The novelty souvenir value is that they are uncut.
There was a restaurant in my home town that always gave you your chain in $2 bills. It was a silly thing that they were known for. I could potentially see something like this facilitating that.
$2 bill are still among the denominations currently produced in US. Any bank should be able to provide them if requested. Bills I linked from the US Mint to are in uncirculated condition, which is not a requirement for obtaining $2 bills; meaning $2 bills you get from the bank may or may not have been in prior circulation, might have been stamped by the bank, etc.
That wouldn't be problem. Them problem is that it causes visits from the Secret Service. Happened to two of my friends - and only two friends that I know of having sheets of bills.
When I win the lottery and purchase my decommissioned lighthouse to put it on top of my decommissions missile silo, I'm going to wallpaper my new home with uncut sheets of $2-bills.
One of the greatest flaws of modern society is how we systematically beat this natural childlike enthusiasm for bending the rules out of people. I'm just old enough to remember when 'it was just a joke' was a legitimate excuse that could get you out of trouble. If the joke was funny and didn't hurt anyone you might get a slap not he wrist but people of all ages appreciated your effort to make the world a less grim place.
Funny how, in my life experience, "It was just a joke" has been the exclusive use of people who were definitely not joking, absolutely intended to do harmful things, and simply liked hurting people.
They simply thought that so long as they found it amusing, the harm others experienced physically, emotionally, or materially, were not really of consequence. After all, surely if they were in their targets shoes, they would have thicker skin. And that definitely isn't a lie they're telling themselves and others.
And I, for one, am glad that society as a whole doesn't behave this way. Imagine how obnoxious it would be if every other social interaction was somebody messing with you. Wonderful.
Can you imagine being the kid behind the register at Woz’s neighborhood 7-11… Having to put up with him pulling out his pair of scissors and his sheet of $2 bills every time he drops by for a Coke?
“Haha, yes yes, Woz - You’re very funny. Got me again.”
Very little is what it seems. Jordan Peterson makes a convincing argument that dominance hierarchies (having biologically existed longer than sex differentiation) drive significant portions of many interactions even today. So if you think of social interactions in this way, many people may (sort of) "mess with you" in the sense that they are testing your position in some hierarchy.
All of this said, I haven't seen a critical analysis of Peterson's theory, which from what I can tell, does not connect the dots, so to speak, from biological behavior to individual intentions. Still, I think it is fair to say that individual intentions are not required for Peterson's explanation. The human brain does much that is neither conscious nor intentional in the usual senses of the words.
This theory is really interesting to explore and extrapolate. I'll give an example. Let's say someone treats you with a normal level of politeness. You could argue that they are not messing with you, and not challenging your position in any dominance hierarchy. But perhaps this shows they feel confident enough to address you as a peer. Or perhaps they feel like they are in a higher position, and have no need to flaunt it. In any case, your subsequent response will provide a lot of data for the other person.
I think of the number of times that people humble brag. Or the subtle things people do to demonstrate knowledge. The more I think about it, the more I think Peterson's theory is useful in an explanatory sense.
To be clear, I'm not saying I agree with any moral philosophy that suggests such behavior is ideal from an ethical perspective.
It's easy to "live life for liberty and the pursuit of happiness" when your actions do not have meaningful consequences for yourself or your loved ones.
When said actions (paying for something with legal tender) were both (a) legal and (b) harmless, I would say the way to fix any current inequities are to ensure everyone ("with liberty and justice for all") would also fail to suffer consequences beyond missing one's daughter's athletic meet.
The story about Wozniak tipping perforated $2 bills is about a person who breaks the pattern by behaving very suspiciously after fully satisfying the initial profiling measures. It is funny in how that puts people around him into an awkward position, but make the protagonist subtly different (e.g., say he has much darker skin, some innate attribute that reveals poor upbringing, or whatever else is used for discrimination in your place and time) and the story may not have had a happy ending. How many stories would we never read about for that reason?
When the element of comedy hinges on hero being privileged it doesn’t mean it’s not funny, but it does prompt a thought experiment as to whether a world where there’s no such profiling and everyone is treated equal base trust is possible, and if so whether such a story could be funny in that world. Taking high-trust societies I can think of as examples, I suspect either total surveillance or high value placed on following protocols sincerely with the goal of not creating awkwardness would be implied, in which case probably not.
I for one wish there were fewer people around chiding others with tired platitudes for not living their day-to-day lives like someone with $100m in their pocket.
To be fair, this is sort of a mixture of white privilege and changing times as well. I have a much less cool version of a situation where I was pulled over a few years back by state highway patrol at night. Apparently after I had stopped for gas I forgot to flick my lights on and was driving with them off. I didn’t notice because the highway section I was on had lots of lights along it and I have pretty good vision. The officer asked me if I knew I was driving with my lights off, and I told him, “my friends call me hawkeye”.
I’m 30-something white guy, I can easily imagine not feeling comfortable trying that stupid joke if I was anyone else.
I think it's the cutting up that makes it wonky. Not being legal or not but instantly suspicious if you see one with scissor cut edges or imagine making it perforated
I really like this image: It's eight days older than me, but the quality is as good as it gets.
Most of the photos I have from my early years are quite low-res because they were taken with early digital cameras.
Hope these people are doing well!
That said, I think it may be misdated, as I think the image is from closer to 2007/8, as I think I shot it on a 40D which only came out in Aug 2007. I've gone through 3 or 4 generations of photo library management software since then and the metadata may have gotten mangled.
You can tell the age from the $1 bill itself. It looks like it was printed in 2006 and has the signature of Hank Paulson, Secretary of the Treasury from 2006-2009. You can compare it to his signature: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Paulson#/media/File:Henr...
I’m going to have to try this. Clemson fans travel to away games with stacks of $2 bills stamped with Tiger Paws. Been a tradition since the 70s when Georgia Tech wanted to cancel our annual series, so our fans showed up in Atlanta spending the $2 bills everywhere to make sure everyone knew the economic impact when we came to visit. It was a big deal to our fans because we weren’t going to bowl games every year back then, so our game in Atlanta was the big trip for the season.
Been a tradition ever since and our reputation as fans who “travel well” helped ensure bowl game preferences for years.
The true spirit of Woz is not to copy existing social hacks.
> Brian: Look, you've got it all wrong! You don't need to follow me. You don't need to follow anybody! You've got to think for yourselves! You're all individuals!
I bought some in 1987 as a souvenir at the gift shop after I toured the Bureau of Printing and Engraving. I still have them in a folder and to me it is a pretty cool souvenir to remember that trip as a 12 year old kid. I would never think of cutting them up and using them.
As a kid I was in the store with my parents and we were in line for the register. Some guy turned around and looked at me and said "Hey kid, ever seen a $2 bill before?" I said no, and he ripped off a $2 from a pad and handed it to me. To this day I have this $2 bill because I thought it was fake. This is the midwest, no way was this Woz but now I feel that this might not be a fake $2 bill anymore.
Was Wozniak already “the Woz” of Apple fame when this story took place? In which case I assume he could afford the best lawyers on the planet if necessary, plus the President calling to get him out of trouble.
An ordinary civilian might fall down that hole never to come out again. Just showing a fake ID to a fed could be met with serious retribution.
Woz's old friend John Draper knew how to call President Richard Nixon get out of trouble when he ran out of toilet paper, and later Woz paid for Draper's attorney fees when he got busted for being involved with duplicating BART cards:
One oft-repeated story featuring Captain Crunch goes as follows: Draper picked up a public phone, then proceeded to “phreak” his call around the world. At no charge, he routed a call through different phone switches in countries such as Japan, Russia and England. Once he had set the call to go through dozens of countries, he dialed the number of the public phone next to him. A few minutes later, the phone next to him rang. Draper spoke into the first phone, and, after quite a few seconds, he heard his own voice very faintly on the other phone. He sometimes repeated this stunt at parties. Draper also claimed that he and a friend once placed a direct call to the White House during the Nixon administration, and after giving the operator President Nixon's secret code name of "Olympus", and asking to speak to the president about a national emergency, they were connected with someone who sounded like Richard Nixon; Draper’s friend told the man about a toilet paper shortage in Los Angeles, at which point the person on the other end of the line angrily asked them how they'd managed to get connected to him.[8] Draper was also a member of the Homebrew Computer Club.[2]
DonHopkins 4 months ago | parent | context | favorite | on: How MetroCard works (2005) [pdf]
Then there was the time the infamous phone phreak John "Cap'n Crunch" Draper got busted for forging BART Cards...
Steve Wozniak and his son also got mistakenly busted and thrown in a holding cell for 4 hours because he had a (real) BART card that didn't work, so he got pissed off and ended up paying for Draper's attorney fees, and Draper copped to a misdemeanor of altering MUNI tickets, and went on probation for a year, but did not lose his job at Autodesk.
>TECHNOLOGY. March 1, 1987. JUST TACKY! By CBR Staff Writer.
>Aw c’mon John, forging the electronic characteristics of BART tickets is just tacky! John Draper, who inter alia wrote the Easy Writer word processing package, has been caught with $2,500 of forged access tickets to the San Francisco Bay-Area Rapid Transit subway system, and fellah, BART, which has never fully recovered from the teething troubles in the early days when trains used to whistle through stations at 60mph with the doors wide open, can’t afford it; Draper’s real claim to fame is that he discovered in the 1960s that a toy whistle given away in packets of a glutinous and bilious-coloured sugared corn puff cereal called Cap’n Crunch was pitched just right to mimic the tones AT&T used to set up long-distance calls, so that packs of the sickly Cap’n sold out as kids rushed to claim the whistles that enabled them to call auntie in Montana or Mary in Maine; that was ingenious if wicked, but forging BART tickets – tacky, John, tacky.
>Thanks Tom Barbalet for recording this rare interview with John Draper (aka "Captain Crunch" or "Crunchman" these days) about his life at Autodesk, and the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) cards fiasco. Also included here are other life and times of "Crunch".
Partial transcript (listen to the whole thing for the full story about the BART card fiasco -- I'm just transcribing the part about Woz getting arrested here):
[...]
John Draper: So Woz game me a Mac I could use, and Woz also go me a ... Cause Woz got hassled by the BART cops too.
Here's what happened, here's what happened at that point.
Woz went to go see the Oakland A's game. And what he wanted to do, he had his son with him. So his son I think at the time was about 9 years old. And he wanted to take his son to the Oakland A's game.
And his son says "Hey, daddy, can I ride BART?" Sure, why not? So he goes to Hayward BART, er, he goes to Hay- not Hayward, yeah, he goes to Hayward BART, yeah, parks the car, and rides BART to the Oakland Coliseum. Ok.
So what happened was, his son's BART card didn't work. He put it in to the turnstile, and it got rejected coming back. And Woz goes over to the BART attendant and says "Well my card doesn't work", he says "look, it comes back, it came back and said rejected or something."
And the guy, the BART attendant says "Wait right here." He gets on the phone, calls the BART cop. BART cop takes Woz and his son down to the Lake Merit Station, ok. At which time they grilled Woz about what he'd, that he'd, and they were claiming, accusing him of tampering with the cards, and they threw Woz and his son in a holding cell for like six hours.
Tom Barbalet: So let me get this straight.
John Draper: Until they could get an expert to come in and take a look at that card, to make sure that the card had not been tampered.
Tom Barbalet: And the card was a regular card that they just bought.
John Draper: Yeah, just a regular card that they just bought.
Tom Barbalet: So they knew your connection with him?
John Draper: No they did not know my connection with him.
Tom Barbalet: So how did, why was he...
John Draper: His card didn't work. They suspected that he had tampered with the card.
Tom Barbalet: But surely that would have happened to, just in a sample size, a hundred, maybe two hundred people in the Bay Area.
John Draper: I don't know the details, all I know is they arrested him and his son, and they held them up in a, put him in a holding cell for four hours, until they can wake up a, get the BART engineer to get out and examine the card, and once they figured out it was their fault, they let him go.
Tom Barbalet: Right.
John Draper: So when Woz found about the BART fiasco that I did, thing, that I got roped into, Woz says, "I got this attorney, I'll pay for, I'll pay for your legal attorney fees. Go see this guy. So I went and say this guy, this attorney. So he was handling my case in the BART thing.
It's reasonable to be suspicious about the latter, especially as I suspect Woz didn't start the interview with "I bought the currency sheets then had them turned into this" - and anyways, by that time the agent had a checklist to run through, likely including the passport numbers etc. as mentioned in the article.
Even knowing that the bills are being sold in sheets, you wouldn't want to be the agent who let someone go who was doing everything exactly as Woz did except for getting the currency sheets from the guy printing the North Korean superbills...
-- He was on Steve-O's podcast - few months ago - the whole episode is hilarious - - the $2 bill stuff - its at 1:25:25 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRi8r0XQFHU - Steve-O (guy from jackass) podcast is great - btw --
> I carry large sheets, folded in my pocket, and sometimes pull out scissors and cut a few off to pay for something in a store. It's just for comedy, as the $2 bills cost nearly $3 each when purchased on sheets.
> When he said that they don't make bills like this I asked "They don't?" as though I thought it was quite normal to have sheets. My answer was also so emotionless as to confuse him about me, and to make me seem even more evasive. This, again, I do for a comedic effect.
Is it just me, or does the man simply not understand what comedy is?
I enjoy a good joke as much as the next guy. That said, if you are routinely paying for items at the register by cutting bills off of a sheet with scissors and handing the police a fake ID when asked for identification, you’re basically asking for trouble. And you’re almost certainly going to waste a lot of people’s valuable time.
Generally speaking, I do really like Woz as a person. But in this particular instance, he does kind of come across as a big pain in the ass.
It ended on (a) a yet more unbelievable note than everything up until that point, and (b) noting that lots of money changed hands that day, but that all the financial details are ancillary to the story, which is what was important.
> I'd already transferred the maximum yearly tax free gift of $10,000 to each of my kids.
If I'm not mistaken, one tip I've heard is that one can transfer more than that in gifts yearly, and although that requires filing a gift tax return with the IRS, it doesn't mean necessarily mean paying any tax. There's a lifetime maximum that has to be hit, and it's extremely high. (I'm not a lawyer nor an accountant, and this is not legal or tax advice, yada yada)
The nuance is that if you gift below the yearly reporting amount, it does not count towards the lifetime maximum, since it never has to be reported.
So if Woz had given $10,001, then he would have had to file it, and then when he died, it would have added $10,001 towards his total lifetime gift tax exclusion from his estate (currently $13M). But if he gave $10k (or whatever yearly reporting maximum) per year until he dies, then all of that does not get counted towards the $13M lifetime gift tax exclusion, so in a way, it is an additional tax reduction when the estate gets passed down.
> The general rule is that any gift is a taxable gift. However, there are many exceptions to this rule. Generally, the following gifts are not taxable gifts.
>Gifts that are not more than the annual exclusion for the calendar year.
>Tuition or medical expenses you pay for someone (the educational and medical exclusions).
>Gifts to your spouse.
>Gifts to a political organization for its use.
>In addition to this, gifts to qualifying charities are deductible from the value of the gift(s) made.
Woz and Jobs got their first big break from selling physical copies of the 'Blue Box', a device which allowed you to place long-distance phone calls through intelligently breaking AT&T's phone routing network. In today's 'wire fraud' day and age, this 100% would have been illegal -- so note that these two people made today's most valuable company!
Relatively speaking, printing a photo ID or $2 bills is nothing. It is the hacker spirit (notice we are on a site called hacker news!).
The patron saint of hackers is making the rounds again. Whether you are a fan or not, his book "iWoz" is full of these stories like trolling casino pit bosses with the pad of bills.
A few years ago I had the privilege of meeting the woz after an event at which he was a speaker.
I was surprised at how humble and patient he was with people vying for his attention, many asking for him to autograph laptops and whatever else they had at hand.
I got his attention when I asked him about tetris and we geeked out a bit over it. Thats a story for another day but I did walk away from that conversation with a prized souvenir -- an autographed $2 bill: https://imgur.com/gallery/TQo0KOi
Well, I guess Woz was being a “prankster” - and from Wikipedia: “A practical joke, or prank, is a mischievous trick played on someone, generally causing the victim to experience embarrassment, perplexity, confusion, or discomfort”.
I can see the playful side of it, but people and places where pranks are not generally well received would be federal agents and casinos - so from the ‘victims’ point of view I expect they could have done without the bother.
Why does a casino, a legalized scam operation, deserve respect?
When you are a retired billionaire, you have freedom to explore.
See also Penn Jillete's airport "security" protest, though he wasn't retired or a billionaire , but was willing to spend his time/money/privilege fighting for our rights.
Haven't heard of any, but when it was first introduced, the Euro was fairly easy to copy.
There was a man in Italy nicknamed il Professore who was notorious for producing them in bulk while not being particularly conspicuous about it.
According to an anecdote from one of his family members when a cashier tried to confirm whether the 20€ banknote he gave her was legitimate he said "lady, it costs me 18€ to make one of these, so I don't even bother".
Due to this story, if I am teaching basic electronics or how to use a 3d printer to kids, I "pay them for the day's work" with a new $2 bill (which you can get at any bank if you ask and wait a few days). I like them because instead of having some guy on the back they have a pretty painting of the Constitution. I sometimes to have to explain to the parents that yes it's real money.
Sheesh the comments on the ID! All morality and legality aside, we have to take a little bit of context into account. The Great Woz is behaving in the much heralded spirit of the age, encapsulated in things like Make. He may as well actually be the Lazer and Chief (retired) of the Defiance Department. A sense of humor might help with the nuance. Imagine the back-office or radio chatter tho. "Casino security says the bills are real. They have better machines than we do. Right. Some technician at Apple. Makes sense. Alright Tom I'll call you back."
Some of the comments in here scare me to bits: If HN's userbase is that scared of poking at the edges/inconsistencies of authority, even in jest, then how would anyone gain the expertise of challenging said authority when top-down control is pushed too far?
> HN's userbase is that scared of poking at the edges/inconsistencies of authority, even in jest
It wasn't always like this, even just 5 years ago. I don't know where all the weirdos came from but they've fundamentally changed this site, and not in a good way.
Oh, the notebook full of tear-off dollar bills. That used to be a thing. I once read that it was originated by the publicity director of Palisades Amusement Park in New Jersey. Although setting them up for 4-up and perforated is over complicating things.
This seems like a plausible thing to do if you run out of change to tip, banks may not easily give out bundles of $2 in cash simply because of shortage and found this another way to grab lot of $2 notes.
I asked at a bank recently for 100 $2 bills (I needed it for tipping on a cruise ship). The tellers were extremely curious about what it was for. I got 100 still-bundled bills, like in crime movies!
If this isn't something tellers see quite regularly, then what do other cruise passengers do?
I asked for a lot of £5 (smallest denomination note in UK) at the bank once because I was going to a music festival (before mobile card payment was routine). They asked me casually why I wanted them and I explained. Seems to be a Know Your Customer thing.
For a period I was withdrawing 5k cash weekly. I was required to wait for 20 minutes each time and give a reason why. I settled on 'money fight' as it seemed to upset them the most.
My bank tells me it's to help protect vulnerable customers - for example, if you want £2000 cash to pay some builders, they'll ask whether the builders have started work yet.
It very much is to protect vulnerable customers, but it’s not wholly altruistic. UK Banks are (mostly) required to make customers whole if they’ve been defrauded unless they’ve been grossly negligent. The banks have tried to interpret the “gross” part fairly broadly but the regulator and Financial Ombudsman (legally mandated arbitration for consumers where that’s actually a good thing) interpret “gross” as more extreme than “almost anything”. The result of which is that banks are keen to show that they took every possible step to prevent someone being scammed - whether popping up notices during online payments, or asking in person. If they don’t, they can very easily be required to reimburse the customer themselves.
Edit: digging up a citation suggests that it might be a voluntary code that banks are signed up to [1], but the regulatory regime has still swung much more in favor of the customer.
Certainly not the whole reason, these days. But having known a few extremely gullible people, who were blatantly scammed out of thousands of dollars, it is enough reason.
I also get asked this questions if I buy gift cards at the supermarket or pharmacy these days. They have to "unlock" the card at their computer, so they ask if it's really for a gift or if it's some shady person on the phone.
If you watched Kitboga videos on Youtube, you know scammers often ask for gift cards as payment.
I didn't know this was a practice but I suspect some of it might be to detect overly trusting elderly people being ripped off. If it prevents some of that then it's probably a good thing.
That's true for large amounts and there are a lot of scams so it makes sense. But this is around small denominations - I was only getting a few hundred GBP in £5s for a festival.
If they can't just give you the money they have on hand (perhaps deposited by other customers), you are increasing the cost of the transaction for them. Cash is expensive. People complain about card transactions, but wait until you need to deal with cash deposits and withdrawals regularly - that adds up quick, and is the main reason why a lot of businesses in the UK have moved to card only since the pandemic.
It's also the case that criminals prefer cash, and a large number of small denomination notes could be used to facilitate a large number of small value crimes more easily.
Drug dealing is the obvious one, but there are others. I witnessed a shoplifters being stopped by a security guard once, with £200 worth of goods in their coat (booze, steaks), and they offered a £5 note - "it's all I have" - and by making that offer of payment, they reduced the crime and the penalty somewhat to the point the manager and security officer removed the goods, asked them to leave and told them they weren't welcome any more - no police involved. For all that bank knew, you were running a gang of shoplifters doing this.
In my jurisdiction it is enough if it is evident that you intent to steal something. Theft can only be prosecuted if there is intent. Usually if they suspect someone shoplifting they wait and spring the trap when there are enough clues, for example someone briskly walking to the exit.
One story: My wife got stopped in a departement store because she took an item in a sub-shop in the underground floor. It's not a mall. Then she went upstairs to look for more things to shop. The police was there after a short time. This means the shoplifting surveillance system has already sent out an alert to the police when my wife was on the stairs, because employees aren't allowed to hold people. But my wife didn't walk briskly to the exit but strolled around and when stopped she told them she wanted to pay for all things together. The police people even laughed and the employee directed my wife back downstairs to pay.
They were genuinely curious ("which cruise!"). It caused so much commotion that all three tellers got out of their seats - one of them went in the back to look while the others wanted to know more. My teller held the bundle in his hands and noted on its pristine state. I think he was jelly.
The banks often have the $2 notes, but you have to ask explicitly.
The end of this story (paying taxes on $7500 winnings) seems to be hinting at something. Is the message that of course nobody follows all the rules? (Pays those gift taxes)
Its unfortunate how many people can't take a joke. Wozniak certainly wasn't wasting anyone's time as the bills were legal. Wozniak didn't have to deal with the SS agent either and could've easily invoked his 5th amendment right to silence, but he was cooperative instead. Based on the story, it doesn't look as though he claimed his fake ID was a legitimate one either and just handed it over as part of a generic question.
No, don't try to tell me how the secret service agent and the casino employees were victims and how this somehow ties into white privilege or some crap like that. Try spending some time off the internet and return to real life.
I've lived my entire life here and was well into my 40s the first time I ever saw one. When I did get hold of one, I did what many people do with it, which is to tuck it away in a side pocket of my wallet as a curiosity, rather than spend it.
You will almost never come across them unless someone goes out of their way to obtain them like Woz.
Outside of one rare occurrence where I received change in golden dollars and $2 bills, the only time I've seen $2 bills was when my father would buy them to tip with.
Agreed. I found this whole story made him sound very unlikable. Like he considers everybody to be below him to the point of being playthings. Kind of gross.
And if the person you're playing with isn't having a good time as a result? If you're the guy at the head of the queue dicking around, while behind you are the people waiting to get on with their lives?
Oh, look, that was so funny putting myself into a situation that most people would be scared shitless to be in and might not have ended well for them! Let's just waste everyone's time so they can humor me on a joke! I am such an edgy rich white guy! A real hacker!
> As I opened my wallet, I considered whether I should risk using this fake ID on the Secret Service. It probably amounted to a real crime. I had my driver's license as well. But you only live once and only a few of us even get a chance like this once in our lives. So I handed him the fake ID. He noted and returned it. The Secret Service took an ID that said "Laser Safety Officer" with a photo of myself wearing an eyepatch.
Woz plays life like an RPG.