Stolen Number Plates
Emergent Chaos comments on the problem of stolen number plates that is emerging in London in the wake of the congestion charge.
Adam views this as a problem of unintended consequences of tracking. While this is certainly a problem in certain situations it is far from clear to me that it is the problem in this particular situation. On the contrary the problem is created by a change in economic incentives for the criminal which in turn is the result of creating a payment scheme that depends on assumptions of the security of a legacy infrastructure that is not designed to meet those needs.
The same is true of many Internet crimes. Phishing emerged as a problem because the security of online banking schemes depended on assumptions about the security of email infrastructure. Rootkits are a problem because operating system security is based on the premise that device drivers are trustworthy.
We know how it broke. How do we fix it?
I have argued at length that the answer to the problem of Internet Crime is accountability. imposing accountability on the Internet is hard because it is widely perceived as an accountability-free environment.
Imposing accountability on number plate thieves is rather easier. People are only going to use a stolen plate to avoid the congestion fee if they think the risks outweigh the rewards. That means being virtually certain that they will get away with it. Rather fewer people are going to use a stolen plate if they know they risk a jail term.
Unlike the Internet criminal who commits their crimes at a distance, the objective of the number plate theft is to be observed using the plate by automated cameras. The prospects for catching them are correspondingly quite good. So good in fact that I strongly suspect that the objective of the thieves is not so much avoiding the charge itself as to avoid detection while perpetrating some other crime. All the more reason to make whatever modifications to the monitoring system as are required to detect this crime.
