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Safeway Club Card Leads to Bogus Arson Arrest
Richard M. Smith writes "Tukwila, Washington firefighter, Philip Scott Lyons found out the hard way
that supermarket loyalty cards come with a huge price. Lyons was arrested
last August and charged with attempted arson. Police alleged at the time
that Lyons tried to set fire to his own house while his wife and children
were inside. According to KOMO-TV and the Seattle Times, a major piece of evidence used against Lyons in his arrest was the record of his supermarket purchases that he made with his Safeway Club Card. Police
investigators had discovered that his Club Card was used to buy fire starters of the same type used in the arson attempt. For Lyons, the story did have a happy ending. All charges were dropped against him in January 2005 because another person stepped forward saying he or she
set the fire and not Lyons."
No decision has been made whether that person will be charged
Are you kidding me? The wrongfully-accused was charged almost immediately, and now this guy fronted up and they're thinking about it?
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
His house was set on fire.
He was charged with and arrested for arson.
What part of this story is "happy"?
The only thing that stood between him and serious prison time (not to mention probably losing all of his friends, family and destroying his career and reputation) was that the criminal who was responsible came forward. Do you know how rare that is? His "fortune" here was like falling off a 110 story building and having a huge gust of wind on a still day scoop you to safety at the very last second.
Let's not even entertain the possibility that someone could have died in the fire. If that were the case, I bet nobody would have stepped forward and this guy would have taken the fall - all so Safeway could target their demographics better. More, he probably would have been sentenced to life in prison at the least and everyone would be cheering for his execution. Because, of course, he's guilty if he has been convited, so he should fry!
This was a stomach-churning close-call.
It could have been anyone. You don't need your card to buy something under your name. Haven't you ever bought groceries before?
You just go through the line and they say "do you have a Safeway Club Card?".
You say, "I don't have it with me".
The cashier will say "What's your last name and four digits of your telephone number?".
Give them a last name and a telephone number. Voila. In other words, you could get all of the information necessary to frame the other person on the basis of a club card purchase, by looking in a telephone book. Any half assed lawyer would know that and have the trial and charges dismissed in a heartbeat.
... also if you were sentenced to death for a crime you didn't commit ?
#include "coucou.h"
I agree, there's not much happy about it.
This was a stomach-churning close-call.
I guess I have more faith in the system.
They'd have to convince a jury that this "noble, hard working volunteer firefighter who loves his adoring family very much and just, out of the kindness of his own heart, adopted a child into his home and family", started a fire to kill them all.
And apparently they planned on doing it with nothing but circumstantial evidence which would vanish once a trial started. Any defense lawyer worth a damn is going to have a Safeway employee on the stand explaining several different ways someone could use his Safeway Club Card #.
If you should ever find yourself on a jury. Chances are, had this gone to trial, he would've been convicted, and be in jail right now.
All the evidence is circumstantial and really pretty flimsy. The dog circling to the front door? Well of course he's going to detect that the family was in their own yard. While from movies we get these impressions of "superdogs" that do police work, in reality, such dogs are quite prone to make mistakes.
So his club card (not, apparently, his credit card-examine what's NOT said. The credit card would've been far stronger evidence. Had he used that, they would've worried about getting evidence from that and not even been concerned with the club card.) was used to make the purchases. So what? I signed up for my club card with bogus information. Sometimes, I forget the card, and I have no idea what BS phone number I put down, so I use my boss's phone #. He must have one of those cards, it always works. But I've certainly never been asked to verify my identity when doing so.
The real moral of this story-cops and prosecutors are often overzealous. When you are on a jury, do not ask yourself "Does it look like this guy did it?" Ask yourself instead "Has it been proven to me, beyond a reasonable doubt, that this person did it? Would I stake x years of my life on the fact that this guy did it?" Because you are staking years of someone's life on your decision. If you cannot say "I am sure"-even if you can say "I'm almost sure"-the vote is not guilty. Even if the other 11 say otherwise. Stick it out and hang the jury if you have to, but do NOT condemn a person guilty unless you are ABSOLUTELY sure. People are exonerated every day because some jury thought "probably did it" equated to "for-sure did it."
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
I can't believe everybody just queues up and plays their privacy invasion game. What's next? "Identify for retina scan" to buy a pint of Ben & Jerry's?
The club cards are a paper thin scam. They raise prices slightly, then offer the club card to get slightly lower prices than they had before the card. Then, a couple of months later, after everyone is signed up, they raise the prices. You're now paying at least as much as you were before the card, and if you resist you're charged 30% more as a penalty for not voluntarily surrendering your personal information.
US currency does still carry the phrase "legal tender", right? I guess they can legally force you to pay a 30% penalty for paying in cash.
I'm not an anarchist, but it really is nobody's business if I want to buy a box of condoms, three tubes of KY jelly, 50 feet of rope and a jar of Smuckers (TM) strawberry jam.
Coercing people into surrendering their personal information to buy groceries is wrong. It's an abuse of technology. That so few people complain about this loss of privacy is proof of how bad things are in the United States of Sheeple. Hopefully there will be some more high tech screw ups where people are falsely accused, or similar problems arise from using this dubious source of data, and people will finally awaken to what a shady scheme this is. Until that happens, I'll go out of my way to find one of the few stores that don't abuse my privacy. Have we really fallen so far that Safeway's desire for marketing data has now superseded our right to privacy?
Every time I to argue for privacy like this, I get responses from neo-Nazis who comment, "If you didn't do anything wrong, you have nothing to fear." Well, apparently "nothing" includes being falsely accused of a felony and the public humiliation of being tried for attempting to burn your family to death in their sleep.
Anybody remember when the police INVESTIGATED crimes, rather than just subpeona DNA, credit card records, phone records, Safeway records...?
The fifth amendment guarantees that no US citizens can be forced to testify against themselves. If forcing some guy to provide a DNA sample isn't forcing him to testify against himself, I don't know what is.
Technology itself isn't responsible for our eroding privacy, but it sure makes it easier for those who want the power that comes with all the collected personal data.
>> My ultraviolent Linux switch video.
- You don't need to present a shred of identification to get a card -- you don't even have to give the right address, since they give it to you right when you apply for it.
- You don't even need an actual card -- stores will allow you to enter a phone number in place of swiping the card -- and there's no way for them to know if you enter the right number.
If this was critical evidence in their case, they didn't have a case. (In which case, it's no surprise they jumped on the 3rd party who came forward to confess).150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for slashdot.sig (129323052 bytes).
Many people spend months in jail while awaiting trial. So it's also a problem with the judicial system.
That was not the case here, but even if you're not in jail, the prospect of jail is a very stressful and disruptive experience: You need to appear in court multiple times, and perhaps pay for lawyers and bail. It also destroys relationships and careers, so it's really a problem with society as a whole.
...You think it's OK for a company to coerce customers...
Who says that the "personal" information has to pertain to you? Just invent some and give it to them. There is no law that says the info you give them has to be yours and they really have no way to check up on the whether the data pertains to you, someone else or to some non-existent person. They can still use the bogus info for their marketing statistics, just that they have no correct data on who bought what to give to the cops on demand. As the cops find out that most of the "personal" data the grocery store has is not associated truthfully with anyone, they'll stop bothering to even ask the grocery stores for it.
All theory is gray
Nope, because then they would start the Grocer Industry Association of America (GIAA), and lobby Congress to make it a felony punishable by having your left testicle or ovary removed for providing fake information to grocery stores. Stupid as that sounds, it appears that law enforcement is getting into the data-mining business bigtime, and we're not just talking Federal here. Local cops are doing it too. Either way, that's a valuable source of "anti-terrorist" information that they would love to keep available: the last thing they want is for it to become common for people to protect themselves by deliberately contaminating these private databases. The fact that the corporate types want to do this anyway means it will probably become mandatory in the name of "security". {sigh} I guess this is one of the downsides of cheap data storage. Kinda makes you want to throw up.
This is another of those things that has little effect on criminals and terrorists but can royally screw over an honest citizen. I feel pretty much the same way over our local tollway I-Pass system: they roll over for the cops and attorneys on transponder data all the time. It's time we wake up and realize that the dubious "benefits" provided by mass acquisition and insecure long-term storage of personal information is probably not worth the effort.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.