35 votes

Five more arrests as Louvre jewel heist probe deepens and key details emerge

21 comments

  1. [14]
    aetherious
    Link
    The most surprising thing to me is that the first alert to the police came from a cyclist nearby and not their own security system.

    The most surprising thing to me is that the first alert to the police came from a cyclist nearby and not their own security system.

    13 votes
    1. DefinitelyNotAFae
      Link Parent
      It may depend on the specific triggers in the system. Like certain actions may put off an audible alarm or a silent alarm just to the security office and certain other things may automatically...

      It may depend on the specific triggers in the system. Like certain actions may put off an audible alarm or a silent alarm just to the security office and certain other things may automatically notify the police. Just like how some fire systems will put an entire building an alarm for one smoke detector and contact the fire department and others will require to smoke detectors to go off before making an entire building evacuate just doing an audible alarm when there's a single one activated. But they also have said that their system needed updated for a while so it could just be really old and bad

      8 votes
    2. [12]
      rosco
      (edited )
      Link Parent
      Ok, lashing on my tinfoil hat and asking for someone within the technological surveillance space to explain why I'm wrong. Genuinely. This feels similar to Luigi, where a random anonymous tip is...

      Ok, lashing on my tinfoil hat and asking for someone within the technological surveillance space to explain why I'm wrong. Genuinely.

      This feels similar to Luigi, where a random anonymous tip is able to undo what seems like very high levels of preparation and escape. We're at a point technologically where most of our movements, inquiries, and conversations can be tracked, sorted, and analyzed very quickly. I'm wondering if there is just a much more impressive and invasive state surveillance system in place than we're led to believe and these "tip offs" are a convenient way to cover for it.

      EDIT: Great responses, tin foil hat is off. Thanks for the reality check!

      6 votes
      1. [2]
        CannibalisticApple
        Link Parent
        I don't think this escape had a very high level of preparation. They got caught in part due to DNA left at the scene (and they also dropped a whole crown), and the notoriety of the theft pushed up...

        I don't think this escape had a very high level of preparation. They got caught in part due to DNA left at the scene (and they also dropped a whole crown), and the notoriety of the theft pushed up the timeline for testing that sample as a priority.

        Once I heard a mention of DNA I just knew it was over. You get one thief, it won't be hard to find the others from there. And plenty of people would be willing to call in their friends or acquaintances if they thought they were involved in this given the notoriety.

        15 votes
        1. rosco
          Link Parent
          Totally fair, tin foil hat off.

          Totally fair, tin foil hat off.

          3 votes
      2. [4]
        PelagiusSeptim
        Link Parent
        The fact is that the heist was largely successful, I don't know how well it indicates some all powerful surveillance state when they were unable to prevent the crime? People reporting crimes has...

        The fact is that the heist was largely successful, I don't know how well it indicates some all powerful surveillance state when they were unable to prevent the crime? People reporting crimes has always been the most common way people get caught

        7 votes
        1. [2]
          cfabbro
          Link Parent
          Not only that, but a bunch of masked and helmeted men driving around in a basket lift near the Louvre is rather conspicuous behavior too... so it's not exactly unbelievable that someone reported...

          Not only that, but a bunch of masked and helmeted men driving around in a basket lift near the Louvre is rather conspicuous behavior too... so it's not exactly unbelievable that someone reported it to the police after seeing them.

          10 votes
          1. Foreigner
            Link Parent
            I'm very familiar with the stretch of road they used to access the Louvre and I wasn't surprised they initially got away with it. It's on the side facing the Seine, and there are no storefronts,...

            I'm very familiar with the stretch of road they used to access the Louvre and I wasn't surprised they initially got away with it. It's on the side facing the Seine, and there are no storefronts, cafés, etc, on that side. There's the Pont des Arts bridge which is fairly frequented by tourists and buskers, but on the roadside itself no one really hangs around for long because there are a lot of vehicles passing through. The traffic lights are on either end of the museum, so no one but the buses are stopping in the middle where it happened unless traffic is bad.

            I can also see people not paying much attention to a truck doing some work in the area. Construction or repairs in Paris happen basically constantly, and parts of the Louvre have been undergoing renovation for several months, including that very spot. Certain areas are also used for Fashion Week and other shows, so it's not unusual to see trucks and tents set up next to it. It's easy to overlook something like that unless you're paying attention. Not surprising they had enough time to set up, get in and out, before someone was able to alert the police. It points to a major failure in surveillance on that side of the building and unfortunately it comes down to the same old story. Not enough funds to pay for the equipment and trained staff.

            10 votes
        2. rosco
          Link Parent
          Totally fair, tin foil hat off.

          Totally fair, tin foil hat off.

          2 votes
      3. [2]
        DefinitelyNotAFae
        Link Parent
        The people who reported Luigi were specific folks though. Iirc the customer was interviewed and the employee was known but kept anonymous. I think it's specific enough that someone at that...

        The people who reported Luigi were specific folks though. Iirc the customer was interviewed and the employee was known but kept anonymous. I think it's specific enough that someone at that location would have spoken up and said "none of us called" if that had been the case.

        I haven't followed the Louvre situation but while I think we are on more cameras than we think we are, it is usually just that most people are not movie level criminal masterminds

        5 votes
        1. rosco
          Link Parent
          Thats fair, tin foil hat off.

          Thats fair, tin foil hat off.

          3 votes
      4. [3]
        R3qn65
        Link Parent
        Just for what it's worth, nobody has ever provided proof that phones (the most common scapegoat) are listening to your conversations. The most likely hypothesis is that we notice when we get...

        We're at a point technologically where most of our movements, inquiries, and conversations can be tracked, sorted, and analyzed very quickly.

        Just for what it's worth, nobody has ever provided proof that phones (the most common scapegoat) are listening to your conversations. The most likely hypothesis is that we notice when we get served an ad related to a conversation we had recently and assume there's a correlation (but how many conversations do you have near your phone that you get no ads for?).

        5 votes
        1. [2]
          rosco
          Link Parent
          I've taken the tinfoil hat off but I don't actually mean our phones listening to us. More of if you use whatsapp, messenger, or whatever else for texting I'm assuming those can be harvested later....

          I've taken the tinfoil hat off but I don't actually mean our phones listening to us. More of if you use whatsapp, messenger, or whatever else for texting I'm assuming those can be harvested later. All those companies cooperate with the government.

          2 votes
          1. stu2b50
            Link Parent
            You'd need a subpoena, though. The french government wouldn't even know who to get the data of. In general the government would not be allowed wide-spread access to do data dragnets unless it was...

            You'd need a subpoena, though. The french government wouldn't even know who to get the data of. In general the government would not be allowed wide-spread access to do data dragnets unless it was much more serious. And even then, all the thiefs would have to do is talk about the subject in code to avoid detection.

            And, of course, if they use an E2EE messaging service, which today also includes whatsapp and messenger, no one can get access to that data.

            6 votes
  2. [7]
    EmperorPenguin
    Link
    Not directly related to the article: So for most current events, I'll see people share articles saying that a thing happened, then I'll start to see posts joking/memeing about it, or posts about...

    Not directly related to the article:
    So for most current events, I'll see people share articles saying that a thing happened, then I'll start to see posts joking/memeing about it, or posts about the fallout of the event. For this Louvre heist, however, I've only seen the secondary content. On Tildes, on other social media, and on my various Discord servers, nobody shared the articles when the theft itself occurred, they all waited until that German company made an ad about their ladder being used in the heist. Then everyone acted like we'd all heard of this heist already. I thought that was kinda odd, I must have missed the Tildes article. But I checked the various tags like "crime", "theft", "france.paris", and even "louvre", and it looks like nobody on Tildes reported on the original event. It's not the craziest thing in the world, but I just found it kind of unusual...

    6 votes
    1. mycketforvirrad
      Link Parent
      This link was posted to Tildes by @Fal in ~arts on Sunday 19th October, the day of the event.

      This link was posted to Tildes by @Fal in ~arts on Sunday 19th October, the day of the event.

      17 votes
    2. [5]
      JackA
      Link Parent
      Here you go. Likely didn't show up in your search because by default Tildes search only searches within the current group, the original got posted to ~arts instead of ~news. I did also see it on...

      Here you go.

      Likely didn't show up in your search because by default Tildes search only searches within the current group, the original got posted to ~arts instead of ~news. I did also see it on /r/all and on Ground News for primary reporting.

      The internet does have a weird way of being difficult to just get a 'recap' of events you missed if your attention happened to avoid certain topics on any given day. I've actually found Tildes is helpful for this as the feed is so much slower and old topics can get bumped back up to the top if there's new activity.

      6 votes
      1. [3]
        cfabbro
        (edited )
        Link Parent
        You can search sitewide, you just have to do it from the site's front page. E.g. Which results in https://tildes.net/search?q=louvre, rather than https://tildes.net/~news/search?q=louvre if you...

        You can search sitewide, you just have to do it from the site's front page. E.g. Which results in https://tildes.net/search?q=louvre, rather than https://tildes.net/~news/search?q=louvre if you searched from the ~news group page. And searching from the front page will actually even show results from groups you're not subscribed to, too.

        However, when browsing by tags, even from the front page, you won't see topics with those tags from groups you're not subscribed to. So did you unsubscribe from ~arts at some point, @EmperorPenguin? That would likely explain why the original topic about the theft doesn't show up for you even when you looked at https://tildes.net/?tag=louvre.

        6 votes
        1. [2]
          EmperorPenguin
          Link Parent
          No, I didn't unsubscribe from any of the default groups, and I checked that I'm still subscribed to ~arts. I searched by clicking on the tags on this post, which I see searches inside of the...

          No, I didn't unsubscribe from any of the default groups, and I checked that I'm still subscribed to ~arts. I searched by clicking on the tags on this post, which I see searches inside of the current group instead of across the whole site. I guess I must have used Tildes less than I thought on that Sunday, but I still find it weird that I never saw it on other platforms like the Fediverse/Lemmy and that none of my friends or group chats discussed it.

          3 votes
          1. cfabbro
            (edited )
            Link Parent
            Ah. Yeah, clicking on the tags in the comment section of a topic restricts the results to the group that topic is in. As for why you didn't see it posted about elsewhere on the net, or see/hear...

            Ah. Yeah, clicking on the tags in the comment section of a topic restricts the results to the group that topic is in.

            As for why you didn't see it posted about elsewhere on the net, or see/hear your friends discussing it, it could be one of those things that everyone assumes everyone else has already heard about, so the original story doesn't need to be shared again and again. At the time there also wasn't really much information beyond "a theft has occurred at the Louvre, they broke in through a window using a basket lift truck", and nobody had been arrested yet either... so the story was sort of in limbo while the French police investigated.

            4 votes
      2. EmperorPenguin
        Link Parent
        Thank you! What's weird is that the ~arts post got 95 votes, which on Tildes is massive, and I scroll through Tildes daily, but I don't recall ever seeing it in my feed! I checked and I'm still...

        Thank you! What's weird is that the ~arts post got 95 votes, which on Tildes is massive, and I scroll through Tildes daily, but I don't recall ever seeing it in my feed! I checked and I'm still subscribed to ~arts. The biggest shock is that the article is on the 19th! I never heard a peep about a news story this big until 5 days later on the 24th! Huh.

        4 votes