July 8, 2019 • 19 mins
New numbers are in for President Trump and he has hit his highest approval ratings for his presidency according to a Washington Post- ABC News poll. While he continues to have strong numbers for his handling of the economy, a majority of people say that he continues to act un-presidential. Also developing over the weekend, Republican Rep, Justin Amash leaves the party and Nancy Pelosi spars with AOC. Ginger Gibson, political reporter for Reuters joins us to break it all down.
Next, it was an elaborate sting operation that Amazon collaborated with the Colorado PD to catch porch pirates, but unfortunately it accomplished nothing. The plan was simple enough, load fake Amazon packages with GPS trackers and then catch thieves on Amazon-owned Ring doorbell cams. It was called Operation Grinch Grab and happened with no arrests. Caroline Haskins, writer for Motherboard at Vice.com joins us for this failed op and also how Amazon’s “Neighbor” app is creating a digital ecosystem in which you are encouraged to think the worst about your neighbors.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's Monday. I'm Oscar ramiraors in Los Angeles and this
is the Daily Dive. New numbers are in for President
Trump and he has hit the highest approval ratings for
his presidency, according to a Washington Post ABC News poll.
While he continues to have strong numbers for his handling
(00:20):
of the economy, a majority of people say that he
continues to act unpresidential. Also developing over the weekend, Republican
representative Justin Amash leaves the party and Nancy Pelosi spars
with AOC. Ginger Gibson, political reporter for Reuters, joins us
to break it all down next. It was an elaborate
sting operation that Amazon collaborated with the Colorado p D
(00:41):
to catch porch pirates, but unfortunately it accomplished nothing. The
plan was simple enough below to fake Amazon packages with
GPS trackers and then catch thieves on Amazon owned ring
doorbell camps. It was called Operation grinch Grab, and it
happened with no arrest. Caroline Haskins for Motherboard at Vice
dot com joins us for this failed op and also
(01:04):
how Amazon's neighbor app is creating a digital ecosystem in
which you are encouraged to think the worst about your neighbors.
That's news without the noise. Let's dive in. I've had
concerns with the Republican Party for several years. I've had
concerns with the party system generally. When I first got
to Congress, I thought I could change things from the inside.
(01:25):
But as I've spent time there, I've seen that not
only me, I don't think there is anyone in there
who can change the system. Um, it's pretty rigid. It's
top down. It comes down from leadership to the bottom.
Joining us now is Ginger Gibson, political reporter for Reuters.
Some new poll numbers came out. These are coming out
of the Washington Post and ABC News, and aided by
(01:48):
a strong economy and perceptions that the president has dealt
with it very effectively, the president's approval ratings have risen
to the highest point of his presidency. It's at forty
percent approved of all disapproval, and then among registered voters
that numbers approval and disapproved. The other thing that happened, though,
(02:10):
is that still people think that he is acting unpresidential.
About six and ten Americans say that he has acted
in ways that are unpresidential. What's the more important number this?
Considering we're heading into this whole reelection effort, everything is
getting ramped up. What's the most important number for this?
I think the most important number to look at is
his approval. Numbers disapproving are more than disapproving of the
(02:35):
work the president is doing is significant. These are pretty
big numbers. Now. Look, presidents have had numbers that high
on their disapproval this far out from their reelection and
still one So we can't say that that number means
that he's a goner in but it does show some
unhappiness with him. And I think the thing that's important
(02:57):
to note is you said driven by the economy, but
he's got a really high disapproval despite having a great
economy and despite people feeling economically secure. Yeah, the economy
is the loan issue in this survey, where the president
enjoys positive numbers at fifty saying they approve of the
way he's dealt with these issues, but everything else, even taxes,
(03:20):
he's at, foreign policy, climate change, colomble warming, it's everything
just goes way way down. We know that his base
is very supportive and sticks with him through thick and
thin is this one issue enough to keep that momentum
going for him? James Carvil very famously said when President
Clinton was running for re election, it's the economy stupid.
(03:41):
I think this could be the it's not the economy
stupid election. If it's just not enough to bring Donald
Trump over the finish line. That is an important and
significant number. And if people think that voting for a
Democrat risks the economy and risk their economic security, that
will considerably help President Trump get reelected. And really, we
(04:03):
know that their strategy is going to be trying to
stoke that exact fear, trying to make voters think that
voting for a Democrat will hurt them personally in terms
of their economic security. So he's really betting his whole
reelection on those economic numbers and hoping that voters will
overlook those really high number of people who said they
think he's acting unpresidential to keep their own personal economic
(04:27):
conditions secure. Former Vice President Joe Biden still maintains a
huge lead. Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Pete Bout,
They're all kind of right there within a point or
two or even tied with the president. So Joe Biden
really the only candidate who's ahead of the President at
this time right now. The thing about President Trump and
(04:48):
Joe Biden is that a matchup between the two of
them would bring no surprises. Their candidates to the American
public knows they're familiar with, and they wouldn't have to
learn much about these candidates when it comes to the
rest of them, even Bernie Sanders who ran four years ago,
the American public would still have a lot to learn
about these candidates. And for that reason, I think you
(05:10):
see a real potential for them to either maybe perform
as well as Joe Biden or maybe perform worse than
Hillary Clinton did against Trump as the American people get
to know the rest of the field. Also developing over
the weekend, where two instances of intra party fighting, if
you will. Representative Justin Amash is one of the only
(05:31):
Republicans who have argued that the President has engaged in
impeachable conduct. He actually left the GOP. He's now declaring
himself an independent. And on the Democratic side, Nancy Pelosi
has been fighting a little bit with Representative Alexandria A.
Cassio Cortez and a crew of other progressive congresswomen. She
hit back at them for not voting with the border
(05:52):
aid package that they just passed, and kind of said, hey,
you know, they have this whatever, but in the end,
you know, and they have this whatever, and they have
their Twitter following, but in the end they only had
four votes, meaning they're not very influential as people think.
And Ocasio Cortez kind of hit back at that whole notion, saying,
we're trying to shift public sentiment on this whole thing.
Let's take them one at a time. Representative Amash whose
(06:13):
name is still rumored to be a potential Libertarian presidential
candidate next year. Their process starts much later in the
Republicans or the Democrats do could mount a campaign against Trump.
He's been a vocal critic of President Trump. On Sunday,
he got up on the Sunday morning shows and he said, look,
Trump commands that people be loyal, and my obligation is
(06:34):
not to be loyal to him, it's to be loyal
to the Constitution. This is a rare case of a
Republican willing to speak up, willing to say they don't
like what President Trump is doing, and have no doubt
those of us in Washington's here this rumbling from Republicans
in some quarters, and they just aren't willing to say
it out loud. And that's exactly what he said to
(06:54):
He gets text messages and other messages saying hey, thank
you for doing this, but they won't say it publicly.
That's right. We get the sense that there was a
fear that there will be a political backlash that the
voters of their party are with Trump, and that if
they don't get in line, he will sort of turn
his supporters on them and run them out of public office.
Their argument being that they can do more to counter
(07:16):
sort of the parts of Trump's agenda they don't like
by being in office than by being gone. But the
criticism being that they're allowing a public opinion to shift
and they're allowing the American public to think that they
all agree with with all of the things that he
says and does. On the democratic side, I mean, just
to wrap that up briefly, the progressive wing just wanted
a little more certainties with where the money was going
(07:36):
to go for in that border aid package, and they
didn't get that in the final bill that was passed,
and that's where the fighting started, and you're looking at
Nancy Pelosi, who watched over the last eight years as
Republicans fought with inside their party, with John Bayner and
Paul Ryan trying to handle a Tea Party faction. And
really we know Nancy Pelosi has tried to resolve to
(07:58):
not have that happen, and inside her caucus with this
progressive flank now at this point, the progressive flank, as
she points out, as quite smaller than the Tea Party was.
She's tried to give them power in places that Republicans
didn't give their conservative caucus, and she's been much more
willing to be critical of them vocally than her Republican
predecessors were. We're seeing all that play out in this
(08:20):
little bit of in fighting. Gender Gibson, political reporter for Reuters,
Thank you very much for joining us. Thanks for having me.
Such neighbors As an app is set up to instdivize
people to buy ring doorbell cameras. It's designed to sell
(08:41):
people on a product, not to necessarily give people accurate information,
in an accurate sense of how the neighborhood is and
what the atmosphere is and how it operates. Joining us
now is Caroline Haskins, writer for Motherboard, which is Vice
dot COM's tech website. We're gonna be talking about Operation
Grinch Grab. I love when people give things these silly names.
(09:03):
But this is a story about how Amazon got together
with Colorado p D. This was happened in December of
last year to set up an alaborate sting operation to
catch some porch pirates. We've been seeing more and more
news stories about this porch pirates, which are people who
are stealing packages from people's doorsteps. Obviously, people get packages
(09:23):
delivered from Amazon other places as well. You leave it
on the doorstep and then somebody sneaks in and and
takes it right off your doorstep. So Amazon wanted to
get a nice pr thing going. They obviously own Ring,
which is the doorbell camera. They got together with a
GPS tracking company, the US Postal Inspection Service, and the
Colorado p D to have some fake Amazon packages laced
(09:46):
with GPS and hopefully you catch a porch pirate and
you make an arrest and everybody has a good time. Unfortunately,
nothing came of that. Tell us a little bit about
this the world. Colorado Police Department reached out and they
got into contact with Amazon, and they had been working
with seven P Solutions, which is a GPS company, and
they set up these packages and several spots around the
(10:09):
neighborhood and a couple of different zip codes that had
a known thing with sporch pirates, and the idea is
that they were going to catch people stealing these packages
on camera with Ring doorbell cameras, and some of these
were ones that were given to the police department by Amazon,
but they also reached out to the community and said, hey,
(10:30):
if you have these doorbell cameras already, we can use
footage from those as well. The idea is that they
would catch someone on camera and then track them have
this big story. But the story ended after the operation
got set up because they were pretty disappointed that it
resulted in zero arrests. And from the police department's perspective,
(10:51):
obviously they want to appear as if they're addressing something
that's a concerns for the community. But I guess it's
also interesting here is where Amazon and Ring get something
out of this. So I talk about at the beginning
of the article that for these companies, if you fear
your neighbors, if you fear that they're going to steal packages.
If there is this sense that porch pirates are everywhere
(11:13):
and they're coming from your packages, that's good for their business.
I mean, you're less likely to have this directed anger
at Amazon and more likely to have this directed anger
at around you. I remember hearing stories about this operation
going on in Colorado. I remember saying, Oh, they're putting
GPS trackers on certain packages and things, and then next
story kind of went nowhere. I've never heard whatever happened
(11:34):
to it, But you're right. I mean, you start hearing
stories about people stealing packages, and myself, admittedly, I wanted
to buy one of these Ring cameras right away because
I wanted if there's a potential to catch somebody. We've
seen the videos already. The videos are perfect, crystal clear.
You can see a lot of details a lot of time,
and it's as simplest throwing it up on Facebook or
something or this neighbors app that is run by Amazon
(11:57):
and Ring and say hey, help me find this person,
and right away a bunch of people can throughout suggestions.
So it's totally legitimate, and Amazon and Ring do get
something out of a successful operation like this. The idea
is that if they caught somebody on camera, then people
in the neighborhood would hear about it and be incentivized
for their products. So this goes beyond being just a
typical police operation, at least in the sense that most
(12:19):
people think about it. It was a very pr focused
operation that had advertising built into the very structure of it.
I mean, because these companies were communicating with the police
department throughout the whole setup of this operation. Seven P
Solutions did like a briefing slash training thing on police
officers before the operation happened, and they were coordinating how
(12:42):
they were going to be phrasing PR releases. I mean,
this was very constant, intimate communication throughout the operation. So
it wasn't just as if these companies provided the materials
and then said do with it what you will. This
was extremely coordinated with all parties work together at every stage. Yes,
and Motherboard got a bunch of different emails and correspondence
(13:04):
is going back and forth on how all of this
was set up, tell us how the sting did play out,
how many packages did they have, how many cameras were involved.
All that the police department received twenty five Amazon boxes
and fifteen doorbell cameras and fifteen GPS trackers. They don't
get into detail as to because obviously there's a disparity
(13:25):
between twenty five and fifteen. We don't have a sense
of whether there were a couple of select locations and
they set up multiple boxes at those locations. That's possible,
but in an event, that's what we know, and we
know that it's spanned across seven different zip codes within
the Aura, Colorado's municipal area. They were neighborhoods that had
experienced some of these types of thefts, because that was
(13:48):
one of the things I was wondering. I was like, well,
how do you pick them? You're trying to create a
lightning at a bottle here. To a certain extent, it's
at the mercy of these porch pirates, whether they're going
to want to steal something or not. So it's tough
to really get something like this to be successful. I
think that there's this sense that, especially through apps like Neighbors,
which is rings neighborhood watch app. It's like free to download,
(14:10):
there's this idea that porch pirates are a really good problem,
and the app itself promotes that. I mean, if you
download the app, you see, anybody can post footage from
their doorville cameras or posts out cross capping in the
area and within a five mile radius, I mean at
least around the Vice offices and Williams Brooklyn. Almost all
(14:31):
of the posts have to do with package stuff, and
so there's this idea that there's an epidemic, and I think,
especially when people talk about it and they're upset, there's
this sense that it's an epidemic. And the police when
they set up this operation, we're clearly expecting someone to
take the bait. But I think we sort of have
to think about where we're getting this information from and
(14:52):
the fact that neighbors as an app is set up
to incentivize people to buy ring doorbell cameras. It's designed
to sell people on a product, not to necessarily give
people accurate information, in an accurate sense of how the
neighborhood is and what the atmosphere is and how it operates.
Let's talk a little bit more about that neighbor's app.
(15:12):
This is this neighborhood Watch app. It's a social media
crime reporting app that's owned by Amazon, and you know,
they've been having a little bit of problems a lot
of people are racially profiling people at The video on
these things does look pretty good, but not always depending
on the time of day, so a lot of times
it could lead to people suggesting a wrong suspect. Things
(15:33):
like that tell us how this has been playing out.
Earlier this year, I monitored every single post that went
on neighbors in the around the Vice offices and Williamsburg.
So this included most of Brooklyn, parts of Queens and
parts of Manhattan, and a large, large majority of the
people that you could see clearly on camera where people
(15:55):
of color. And in the app, you don't just have
to post footage and say this person is stealing a package.
You can just say this person was suspicious, could be
walking by or say walking up to a door and
looking for popular address. There's lots of reasons that people
look at a house or examine it for some particular
reason and they say, oh, they're being suspicious, or people
(16:17):
that are say working for a Verizon or dropping off
a package and they're deemed to be suspicious. And it
became very obvious that the app has a major racial
profiling problem, and it's guidelines state that they encourage users
who think before they post, but there's a sort of
culture on the app to share everything that's happening for
(16:40):
you with the idea that you're making everybody around you safer.
But I think the thing to be asking yourself is
are you making everybody around you safer? Or are you
sort of sponsoring this atmosphere of fear to fear your
neighborhood and to fear the people that live in it,
and to determine who was a part of the neighborhood,
who is a proper neighbor, and who is suspicious. Each
(17:01):
of these neighbors post has a label, crime, safety, suspicious, stranger.
Some of these things are very subjective. You know, if
you're in your house all the time and you really
don't know your neighbors, maybe anybody can be a stranger
at that point, even if the person lives two doors
down from you and you never met them before. Suspicious,
you know, I mean, that could be a ton of
different things. I think there was one of the examples
(17:22):
you gave is a group of kids that were going
somewhere and people were labeling them a gang. I think
they were just trying to get up to the roof
or something, and they were labeled as a gang. So
a lot of this stuff is very subjective, and you
see stuff like this all the time. I mean these
aren't isolated incidents. Frequently you'll see you children on this
app and sometimes they're walking by. Sometimes they'll do something
(17:44):
petty like steal something off the lawn, but there's just
this reaction of rage because the app has fostered this
atmosphere where any single minor thing that happens is worth
talking about, worth sharing, and worth being upset about, worth
being cacreed about. And you know, we've been critically about that.
It's interesting how much these apps and these cameras really
(18:07):
can contribute to all of this. Amazon for its part,
has also been fostering more relationships with law enforcement. Obviously
we had this case with Operation Grinch Grab, but they've
also been doing stuff with their promotion of their real
time facial recognition software. It's called Recognition with a K.
It's relatively inexpensive. They've been working with certain law enforcements
areas so that they can set this up, so they
(18:30):
can do tests and see how well this stuff works.
Be a killed for Amazon is very clear in these cases,
I mean, getting a contract with law enforcement is obviously
great and if the public knows about it to a
certain degree. I mean, if there's this entire ecosystem of
products that are sort of working together in different ways.
If you have a rain doorbell cameras, you have the
(18:51):
Neighbor's app, you have recognition in your neighborhood, and a
couple of cities around the US, then you really have
this entire ecosystem that's between Amazon and law enforcement. And
it's just important to think about Amazon's incentives as a
private company and how that could not overlap exactly with
(19:13):
the needs of a community because it's a corporation. It's
not it's not a public body. Caroline Haskins, writer for Motherboard,
which is vices tech website. Thank you very much for
joining us, Thank you for having me. That's it for today.
Join us on social media at Daily Dive Pod on
(19:35):
Twitter and Daily Dive Podcast on Facebook. Leave us a comment,
give us a rating, and tell us the stories that
you're interested in. Follow us and I Heard Radio, or
subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. The Daily Dive is
produced by Miranda Moreno and engineered by Tony Sorrentina. I'm
Oscar Ramirez and this was your daily dive
It's Monday. I'm Oscar ramiraors in Los Angeles and this
is the Daily Dive. New numbers are in for President
Trump and he has hit the highest approval ratings for
his presidency, according to a Washington Post ABC News poll.
While he continues to have strong numbers for his handling
(00:20):
of the economy, a majority of people say that he
continues to act unpresidential. Also developing over the weekend, Republican
representative Justin Amash leaves the party and Nancy Pelosi spars
with AOC. Ginger Gibson, political reporter for Reuters, joins us
to break it all down next. It was an elaborate
sting operation that Amazon collaborated with the Colorado p D
(00:41):
to catch porch pirates, but unfortunately it accomplished nothing. The
plan was simple enough below to fake Amazon packages with
GPS trackers and then catch thieves on Amazon owned ring
doorbell camps. It was called Operation grinch Grab, and it
happened with no arrest. Caroline Haskins for Motherboard at Vice
dot com joins us for this failed op and also
(01:04):
how Amazon's neighbor app is creating a digital ecosystem in
which you are encouraged to think the worst about your neighbors.
That's news without the noise. Let's dive in. I've had
concerns with the Republican Party for several years. I've had
concerns with the party system generally. When I first got
to Congress, I thought I could change things from the inside.
(01:25):
But as I've spent time there, I've seen that not
only me, I don't think there is anyone in there
who can change the system. Um, it's pretty rigid. It's
top down. It comes down from leadership to the bottom.
Joining us now is Ginger Gibson, political reporter for Reuters.
Some new poll numbers came out. These are coming out
of the Washington Post and ABC News, and aided by
(01:48):
a strong economy and perceptions that the president has dealt
with it very effectively, the president's approval ratings have risen
to the highest point of his presidency. It's at forty
percent approved of all disapproval, and then among registered voters
that numbers approval and disapproved. The other thing that happened, though,
(02:10):
is that still people think that he is acting unpresidential.
About six and ten Americans say that he has acted
in ways that are unpresidential. What's the more important number this?
Considering we're heading into this whole reelection effort, everything is
getting ramped up. What's the most important number for this?
I think the most important number to look at is
his approval. Numbers disapproving are more than disapproving of the
(02:35):
work the president is doing is significant. These are pretty
big numbers. Now. Look, presidents have had numbers that high
on their disapproval this far out from their reelection and
still one So we can't say that that number means
that he's a goner in but it does show some
unhappiness with him. And I think the thing that's important
(02:57):
to note is you said driven by the economy, but
he's got a really high disapproval despite having a great
economy and despite people feeling economically secure. Yeah, the economy
is the loan issue in this survey, where the president
enjoys positive numbers at fifty saying they approve of the
way he's dealt with these issues, but everything else, even taxes,
(03:20):
he's at, foreign policy, climate change, colomble warming, it's everything
just goes way way down. We know that his base
is very supportive and sticks with him through thick and
thin is this one issue enough to keep that momentum
going for him? James Carvil very famously said when President
Clinton was running for re election, it's the economy stupid.
(03:41):
I think this could be the it's not the economy
stupid election. If it's just not enough to bring Donald
Trump over the finish line. That is an important and
significant number. And if people think that voting for a
Democrat risks the economy and risk their economic security, that
will considerably help President Trump get reelected. And really, we
(04:03):
know that their strategy is going to be trying to
stoke that exact fear, trying to make voters think that
voting for a Democrat will hurt them personally in terms
of their economic security. So he's really betting his whole
reelection on those economic numbers and hoping that voters will
overlook those really high number of people who said they
think he's acting unpresidential to keep their own personal economic
(04:27):
conditions secure. Former Vice President Joe Biden still maintains a
huge lead. Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Pete Bout,
They're all kind of right there within a point or
two or even tied with the president. So Joe Biden
really the only candidate who's ahead of the President at
this time right now. The thing about President Trump and
(04:48):
Joe Biden is that a matchup between the two of
them would bring no surprises. Their candidates to the American
public knows they're familiar with, and they wouldn't have to
learn much about these candidates when it comes to the
rest of them, even Bernie Sanders who ran four years ago,
the American public would still have a lot to learn
about these candidates. And for that reason, I think you
(05:10):
see a real potential for them to either maybe perform
as well as Joe Biden or maybe perform worse than
Hillary Clinton did against Trump as the American people get
to know the rest of the field. Also developing over
the weekend, where two instances of intra party fighting, if
you will. Representative Justin Amash is one of the only
(05:31):
Republicans who have argued that the President has engaged in
impeachable conduct. He actually left the GOP. He's now declaring
himself an independent. And on the Democratic side, Nancy Pelosi
has been fighting a little bit with Representative Alexandria A.
Cassio Cortez and a crew of other progressive congresswomen. She
hit back at them for not voting with the border
(05:52):
aid package that they just passed, and kind of said, hey,
you know, they have this whatever, but in the end,
you know, and they have this whatever, and they have
their Twitter following, but in the end they only had
four votes, meaning they're not very influential as people think.
And Ocasio Cortez kind of hit back at that whole notion, saying,
we're trying to shift public sentiment on this whole thing.
Let's take them one at a time. Representative Amash whose
(06:13):
name is still rumored to be a potential Libertarian presidential
candidate next year. Their process starts much later in the
Republicans or the Democrats do could mount a campaign against Trump.
He's been a vocal critic of President Trump. On Sunday,
he got up on the Sunday morning shows and he said, look,
Trump commands that people be loyal, and my obligation is
(06:34):
not to be loyal to him, it's to be loyal
to the Constitution. This is a rare case of a
Republican willing to speak up, willing to say they don't
like what President Trump is doing, and have no doubt
those of us in Washington's here this rumbling from Republicans
in some quarters, and they just aren't willing to say
it out loud. And that's exactly what he said to
(06:54):
He gets text messages and other messages saying hey, thank
you for doing this, but they won't say it publicly.
That's right. We get the sense that there was a
fear that there will be a political backlash that the
voters of their party are with Trump, and that if
they don't get in line, he will sort of turn
his supporters on them and run them out of public office.
Their argument being that they can do more to counter
(07:16):
sort of the parts of Trump's agenda they don't like
by being in office than by being gone. But the
criticism being that they're allowing a public opinion to shift
and they're allowing the American public to think that they
all agree with with all of the things that he
says and does. On the democratic side, I mean, just
to wrap that up briefly, the progressive wing just wanted
a little more certainties with where the money was going
(07:36):
to go for in that border aid package, and they
didn't get that in the final bill that was passed,
and that's where the fighting started, and you're looking at
Nancy Pelosi, who watched over the last eight years as
Republicans fought with inside their party, with John Bayner and
Paul Ryan trying to handle a Tea Party faction. And
really we know Nancy Pelosi has tried to resolve to
(07:58):
not have that happen, and inside her caucus with this
progressive flank now at this point, the progressive flank, as
she points out, as quite smaller than the Tea Party was.
She's tried to give them power in places that Republicans
didn't give their conservative caucus, and she's been much more
willing to be critical of them vocally than her Republican
predecessors were. We're seeing all that play out in this
(08:20):
little bit of in fighting. Gender Gibson, political reporter for Reuters,
Thank you very much for joining us. Thanks for having me.
Such neighbors As an app is set up to instdivize
people to buy ring doorbell cameras. It's designed to sell
(08:41):
people on a product, not to necessarily give people accurate information,
in an accurate sense of how the neighborhood is and
what the atmosphere is and how it operates. Joining us
now is Caroline Haskins, writer for Motherboard, which is Vice
dot COM's tech website. We're gonna be talking about Operation
Grinch Grab. I love when people give things these silly names.
(09:03):
But this is a story about how Amazon got together
with Colorado p D. This was happened in December of
last year to set up an alaborate sting operation to
catch some porch pirates. We've been seeing more and more
news stories about this porch pirates, which are people who
are stealing packages from people's doorsteps. Obviously, people get packages
(09:23):
delivered from Amazon other places as well. You leave it
on the doorstep and then somebody sneaks in and and
takes it right off your doorstep. So Amazon wanted to
get a nice pr thing going. They obviously own Ring,
which is the doorbell camera. They got together with a
GPS tracking company, the US Postal Inspection Service, and the
Colorado p D to have some fake Amazon packages laced
(09:46):
with GPS and hopefully you catch a porch pirate and
you make an arrest and everybody has a good time. Unfortunately,
nothing came of that. Tell us a little bit about
this the world. Colorado Police Department reached out and they
got into contact with Amazon, and they had been working
with seven P Solutions, which is a GPS company, and
they set up these packages and several spots around the
(10:09):
neighborhood and a couple of different zip codes that had
a known thing with sporch pirates, and the idea is
that they were going to catch people stealing these packages
on camera with Ring doorbell cameras, and some of these
were ones that were given to the police department by Amazon,
but they also reached out to the community and said, hey,
(10:30):
if you have these doorbell cameras already, we can use
footage from those as well. The idea is that they
would catch someone on camera and then track them have
this big story. But the story ended after the operation
got set up because they were pretty disappointed that it
resulted in zero arrests. And from the police department's perspective,
(10:51):
obviously they want to appear as if they're addressing something
that's a concerns for the community. But I guess it's
also interesting here is where Amazon and Ring get something
out of this. So I talk about at the beginning
of the article that for these companies, if you fear
your neighbors, if you fear that they're going to steal packages.
If there is this sense that porch pirates are everywhere
(11:13):
and they're coming from your packages, that's good for their business.
I mean, you're less likely to have this directed anger
at Amazon and more likely to have this directed anger
at around you. I remember hearing stories about this operation
going on in Colorado. I remember saying, Oh, they're putting
GPS trackers on certain packages and things, and then next
story kind of went nowhere. I've never heard whatever happened
(11:34):
to it, But you're right. I mean, you start hearing
stories about people stealing packages, and myself, admittedly, I wanted
to buy one of these Ring cameras right away because
I wanted if there's a potential to catch somebody. We've
seen the videos already. The videos are perfect, crystal clear.
You can see a lot of details a lot of time,
and it's as simplest throwing it up on Facebook or
something or this neighbors app that is run by Amazon
(11:57):
and Ring and say hey, help me find this person,
and right away a bunch of people can throughout suggestions.
So it's totally legitimate, and Amazon and Ring do get
something out of a successful operation like this. The idea
is that if they caught somebody on camera, then people
in the neighborhood would hear about it and be incentivized
for their products. So this goes beyond being just a
typical police operation, at least in the sense that most
(12:19):
people think about it. It was a very pr focused
operation that had advertising built into the very structure of it.
I mean, because these companies were communicating with the police
department throughout the whole setup of this operation. Seven P
Solutions did like a briefing slash training thing on police
officers before the operation happened, and they were coordinating how
(12:42):
they were going to be phrasing PR releases. I mean,
this was very constant, intimate communication throughout the operation. So
it wasn't just as if these companies provided the materials
and then said do with it what you will. This
was extremely coordinated with all parties work together at every stage. Yes,
and Motherboard got a bunch of different emails and correspondence
(13:04):
is going back and forth on how all of this
was set up, tell us how the sting did play out,
how many packages did they have, how many cameras were involved.
All that the police department received twenty five Amazon boxes
and fifteen doorbell cameras and fifteen GPS trackers. They don't
get into detail as to because obviously there's a disparity
(13:25):
between twenty five and fifteen. We don't have a sense
of whether there were a couple of select locations and
they set up multiple boxes at those locations. That's possible,
but in an event, that's what we know, and we
know that it's spanned across seven different zip codes within
the Aura, Colorado's municipal area. They were neighborhoods that had
experienced some of these types of thefts, because that was
(13:48):
one of the things I was wondering. I was like, well,
how do you pick them? You're trying to create a
lightning at a bottle here. To a certain extent, it's
at the mercy of these porch pirates, whether they're going
to want to steal something or not. So it's tough
to really get something like this to be successful. I
think that there's this sense that, especially through apps like Neighbors,
which is rings neighborhood watch app. It's like free to download,
(14:10):
there's this idea that porch pirates are a really good problem,
and the app itself promotes that. I mean, if you
download the app, you see, anybody can post footage from
their doorville cameras or posts out cross capping in the
area and within a five mile radius, I mean at
least around the Vice offices and Williams Brooklyn. Almost all
(14:31):
of the posts have to do with package stuff, and
so there's this idea that there's an epidemic, and I think,
especially when people talk about it and they're upset, there's
this sense that it's an epidemic. And the police when
they set up this operation, we're clearly expecting someone to
take the bait. But I think we sort of have
to think about where we're getting this information from and
(14:52):
the fact that neighbors as an app is set up
to incentivize people to buy ring doorbell cameras. It's designed
to sell people on a product, not to necessarily give
people accurate information, in an accurate sense of how the
neighborhood is and what the atmosphere is and how it operates.
Let's talk a little bit more about that neighbor's app.
(15:12):
This is this neighborhood Watch app. It's a social media
crime reporting app that's owned by Amazon, and you know,
they've been having a little bit of problems a lot
of people are racially profiling people at The video on
these things does look pretty good, but not always depending
on the time of day, so a lot of times
it could lead to people suggesting a wrong suspect. Things
(15:33):
like that tell us how this has been playing out.
Earlier this year, I monitored every single post that went
on neighbors in the around the Vice offices and Williamsburg.
So this included most of Brooklyn, parts of Queens and
parts of Manhattan, and a large, large majority of the
people that you could see clearly on camera where people
(15:55):
of color. And in the app, you don't just have
to post footage and say this person is stealing a package.
You can just say this person was suspicious, could be
walking by or say walking up to a door and
looking for popular address. There's lots of reasons that people
look at a house or examine it for some particular
reason and they say, oh, they're being suspicious, or people
(16:17):
that are say working for a Verizon or dropping off
a package and they're deemed to be suspicious. And it
became very obvious that the app has a major racial
profiling problem, and it's guidelines state that they encourage users
who think before they post, but there's a sort of
culture on the app to share everything that's happening for
(16:40):
you with the idea that you're making everybody around you safer.
But I think the thing to be asking yourself is
are you making everybody around you safer? Or are you
sort of sponsoring this atmosphere of fear to fear your
neighborhood and to fear the people that live in it,
and to determine who was a part of the neighborhood,
who is a proper neighbor, and who is suspicious. Each
(17:01):
of these neighbors post has a label, crime, safety, suspicious, stranger.
Some of these things are very subjective. You know, if
you're in your house all the time and you really
don't know your neighbors, maybe anybody can be a stranger
at that point, even if the person lives two doors
down from you and you never met them before. Suspicious,
you know, I mean, that could be a ton of
different things. I think there was one of the examples
(17:22):
you gave is a group of kids that were going
somewhere and people were labeling them a gang. I think
they were just trying to get up to the roof
or something, and they were labeled as a gang. So
a lot of this stuff is very subjective, and you
see stuff like this all the time. I mean these
aren't isolated incidents. Frequently you'll see you children on this
app and sometimes they're walking by. Sometimes they'll do something
(17:44):
petty like steal something off the lawn, but there's just
this reaction of rage because the app has fostered this
atmosphere where any single minor thing that happens is worth
talking about, worth sharing, and worth being upset about, worth
being cacreed about. And you know, we've been critically about that.
It's interesting how much these apps and these cameras really
(18:07):
can contribute to all of this. Amazon for its part,
has also been fostering more relationships with law enforcement. Obviously
we had this case with Operation Grinch Grab, but they've
also been doing stuff with their promotion of their real
time facial recognition software. It's called Recognition with a K.
It's relatively inexpensive. They've been working with certain law enforcements
areas so that they can set this up, so they
(18:30):
can do tests and see how well this stuff works.
Be a killed for Amazon is very clear in these cases,
I mean, getting a contract with law enforcement is obviously
great and if the public knows about it to a
certain degree. I mean, if there's this entire ecosystem of
products that are sort of working together in different ways.
If you have a rain doorbell cameras, you have the
(18:51):
Neighbor's app, you have recognition in your neighborhood, and a
couple of cities around the US, then you really have
this entire ecosystem that's between Amazon and law enforcement. And
it's just important to think about Amazon's incentives as a
private company and how that could not overlap exactly with
(19:13):
the needs of a community because it's a corporation. It's
not it's not a public body. Caroline Haskins, writer for Motherboard,
which is vices tech website. Thank you very much for
joining us, Thank you for having me. That's it for today.
Join us on social media at Daily Dive Pod on
(19:35):
Twitter and Daily Dive Podcast on Facebook. Leave us a comment,
give us a rating, and tell us the stories that
you're interested in. Follow us and I Heard Radio, or
subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. The Daily Dive is
produced by Miranda Moreno and engineered by Tony Sorrentina. I'm
Oscar Ramirez and this was your daily dive
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