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Man Arrested After Charging iPhone On London Overground Train
An anonymous reader writes: 45-year-old Robin Lee was arrested after he used a socket on a London Overground train to charge up his iPhone. He was handcuffed and arrested for "abstracting electricity". Robin was then charged with "unacceptable behaviour" after "becoming aggressive" when objecting to his first arrest. The Guardian reports: "Speaking to the Evening Standard, Lee said he had been confronted by a police community support officer on the overground train from Hackney Wick to Camden Road on 10 July. The Overground is part of Transport For London’s wider network that also includes London Underground and the buses. 'She said I’m abstracting electricity. She kept saying it’s a crime. We were just coming into the station and there happened to be about four police officers on the platform. She called to them and said: ‘This guy’s been abstracting electricity, he needs to be arrested’.”
Uh ... seems right to me:
abstract
verb
gerund or present participle: abstracting
bstrakt/
1.
consider something theoretically or separately from (something else).
"to abstract science and religion from their historical context can lead to anachronism"
2.
extract or remove (something).
"applications to abstract more water from streams"
synonyms: extract, pump, draw (off), tap, suck, withdraw, remove, take out/away; More
Time for bed, said Zebedee - boing
You do realize this is the UK? We don't use dollars here.
Yup, I realize, but typed what I was thinking without slowing down to convert units. Regardless, this is the internet and I'm pretty sure everyone knows what is meant. If someone from Europe commenting on a US issue talks about the waste of pounds or euros most people here understand that, too.
You do realize it's a private company doing the freaking out, and not public sector, right? LORAL has a contract on suburban rail in Greater London and parts of Hertfordshire through next year.
Sure, they're wasting police time and court time, but we normally herp derps only about government waste around these parts. The private sector is infallible, and if you suggest otherwise you get called a lib.
Yup. Let's spend thousands of dollars worth of man-hours and paperwork and court time over 10 cents worth of electricity.
Not even close.
UK average price per kWH: 0.15 GBP1
iPhone battery capacity: 4.12 WH to 11.1 WH2
iPhone charging efficiency: 61%3
So assuming he fully-charged his iPhone 6 Plus, 11.1WH * 0.61 * 0.15/1000 = 0.00101565, he would have used 0.1 UK cents worth of electricity. If he was using an iPhone with a smaller battery and/or didn't charge the phone all of the way, the power consumed would be even less.
Sources:
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/...
"13 Abstracting of electricity.
A person who dishonestly uses without due authority, or dishonestly causes to be wasted or diverted, any electricity shall on conviction on indictment be liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding five years."
So yes, the language is precisely correct.
Technically he has also committed a criminal offence.
However, PCSOs (which are sometimes known unaffectionately at "plastic policemen" are non warranted police officers with very limited powers. Most of their arresting powers are actually the same as those available to any citizen (aka "citizens arrest") and have very limited conditions of applicability. PCSOs do have some additional powers specially granted:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
However, they are a modern invention and of considerably lower status, both legally and in the public perception compared to the more traditional volunteer role of "Special Constable" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
The problem here is that PCSOs generally lack common sense and seem to be power-happy. Unfortunately their warranted colleagues feel some obligation to back them up, rather than telling them to grow up, as might be applicable in cases like this.
Unfortunately for the artist, even through he has been de-arrested, he now probably no longer qualifies for the visa waiver programme for entry to the USA as the US notion of arrest is somewhat different to the English notion and the USA as far as I know does not have a concept of "de-arrest".
So actual harm has been done. No wonder the public perception of the police is falling like a lead balloon.
Why can't women be like Hedy Lamarr - beautiful, talented and inventors of frequency-hopping spread-spectrum techn
Not so powerless as you might think: https://www.gov.uk/government/... [www.gov.uk] In this case, she simply alerted 'real' police officers to the 'offence'. If the guy had not bercome aggressive I expect he would have been sent on his way.
Time for bed, said Zebedee - boing
You do realise that this is exactly how it was, right? There was a sign, and it exists because plugging in might damage your equipment. From TFA:
On this actual subject, this is 100% LOL worthy and really did have me snigger because I'm thinking "WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK ELECTRICAL SOCKETS ARE FOR YOU DUMBASS!!!".
They're for the cleaning staff to plug their vacuum cleaners in. They are clearly labelled "not for use by the public".
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Technically it's theft. You've cost the rail company money (pittance though it may be) and potentially risked a fire by plugging an unknown device into an electrical socket.
I stopped reading here and I'm seriously hoping you're kidding. "risked a fire"? Seriously?
Apple recalled millions of their original iPhone/iPod touch chargers. The small 5W USB adapter, they were a fire hazard. They still use the design, last I checked they still put the little green dot on them that differentiated the later safer models from the original hazardous models.
No court time at all for abstracting the electricity. If you read the article (yes, I know, I know...) you'll learn that the police agreed this was a ridiculous arrest and de-arrested him ("de-arrested" is more of a statement than simply releasing him without charge -- pun unintended; it means that the arrest should never have happened, and the arrest is struck from the legal record so it won't give the person difficulty getting visas etc.)
He's still in trouble for acting like a dick when he was arrested, though.
Quidnam Latine loqui modo coepi?
So assuming he fully-charged his iPhone 6 Plus, 11.1WH * 0.61 * 0.15/1000 = 0.00101565, he would have used 0.1 UK cents worth of electricity.
I think your calculation is wrong. The charging efficiency normally specifies the fraction of the consumed energy that actually ends up being stored in the battery. So your calculation should be 11.1WH / 0.61 * 0.15/1000 = 0.00272950 so almost 0.3 pennies. Still not enough to make it worth charging him (though I don't know what the capacity or charging efficiency is in his case ;-).
When I clicked on the link to see the definition of "abstracting electricity", in the section on case law the offense cited was meter tampering. As in substantionally "more than a few electrons." The cost of prosecution would far exceed the cost of the electricity used. (I would also see where this particular law would apply to unauthorized taps or splices, where the power draw would be signifiant.)
One issue the article did bring up: the power at that train-car outlet isn't at all clean. If it uses external power pickup (third rail or overhead catenary) I could see where the surges, sags and dropouts would be severe enough to damage a phone or laptop, especially as the drive motors of the train, a highly inductive load, would cause very large spikes as the power pickup loses and re-makes contact. Contrast that with a long-haul train which supplies power from a locomotive generator, which shouldn't flicker at all.
So it could well be that there is a cause for action of a different sort: "We are not liable for any damage caused by plugging anything into the outlets on this train."
most of the airports and stations I use have free charging points.
The story here is someone was stupid enough to go to London then act surprised when it turned out to be a shit hole.
A lot of trains in the UK have charging points for public use. They even have wi-fi on parts of the Underground now. However, the socket in question was apparently clearly marked "not for public use". The man knew he could get into trouble, he was just a bit surprised at how much.
I mean, we're talking about the country that wants to make secure online shopping and banking illegal.
Nope. The country does not want to do that. The Prime Minister of the country wants to introduce certain measures that, as a side effect, would make secure online shopping and banking illegal, but there's no evidence that the country as a whole would like that idea if they knew what the consequences were.
The place is an international joke.
You can find crazy things about any country that makes it an international joke in the eyes of everybody else. If you are an American you should understand that everybody else thinks of US gun laws as a dangerous joke and the fact that it seems their police officers would shoot a man for stealing electricity as arrest him (if he is black) would be viewed as a joke if it were not so tragic.
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
Is this true on London Overground trains? On the trains I take in the south, the plugs are clearly labelled as only for mobile phones or laptops.
If you do not want the pubic to use the outlet, then make it not usable by the public.
Fuck that. They are paying customers. Let them charge their phones.
It's a news reporting technique where they captivate more readers with something familiar. An article that reads, "Owner saves labrador retriever from fire." Will draw not only the doglover crowd, but will get a bigger emotional impact from the lab owners for no extra effort. In the case of the iPhone, it happens to have the largest userbase for the article to tap into.
You have a 60 watt phone charger?
You can plug 200 chargers into one outlet? That must be a big power strip you carry around with you.
Tinkering with my electricity involves coming onto my property and hooking up to my shit. My property is not for public use, so approaching and standing near the power socket is trespassing; I don't want people hanging around my yard, peeking into all my shit, tromping my gardens, etc.
Tinkering with the electricity in a public space involves little more than being somewhere you're expected to be. All these people will be in the mall, on a train, or whatnot; the only nitpick is that they plug in to the socket. We've now moved from "I don't want people using my electricity because I don't want them flocking like birds on my porch and in my back yard" to "I don't want people using my electricity because I don't like it." The cost to charge smart phones is almost zero; if one million people charged their smart phones every day, the cost would be $10,000*. The cost of labeling, monitoring, and enforcement is higher, so this is a risk you accept, avoiding all other risks (costs of enforcement, bad PR, etc.) or converting it to an opportunity (good PR).
* Charging an iPhone 6 costs 47 cents per year. You might get 10% charge from one particular casual source--the Starbucks or train outlet--and even then, 5 out of 7 days per year. That's about 3 cents per year per person.
does that mean i can walk into a government building and grab some paper or just start using the photocopiers?
The cost of photocopies and copy paper is, of course, higher. Likewise, the expectation of people crowding around the copiers is lower, and drawing crowds by providing public copying may impede regular business. You can, in fact, walk into a government building and drink from the public water fountain, use the toilet, and so forth; the cost for the water is, again, low, compared to the cost of people showing up to snag a $5 ream of printer paper (charging an iPhone 6 costs 47 cents per year on average; water costs $1.50 per 1000 gallons, or 0.225 cents per toilet flush).
This is why pens are, typically, only considered property to merchants selling pens: people will walk out of your business with one of your pens all the god damn time, and it's cheapest to just keep a hundred Bic pens on the desk and not worry about it. Many businesses have their business name and trade printed on their pens so the lost supply becomes free advertising (converting a risk--casual loss of pens--to an opportunity). Other businesses--particularly banks--chain the pen to their desk (if you haven't seen this, I'm being absolutely serious).
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1. They are for the cleaners, hence the sign
2. There are emergency phones & alarms for contacting help, which are preferred as they allow for easier relaying of location, and always work (unlike spotty cellphone reception)