Actually he does have a good point, why should any poor programmer use the GPL if they can't make money from it?
What do you mean, how would they be more likely to make money from BSD code? They're giving their code away no matter what.
Oh, wait, do you mean other people's GPL code? Well, yes, of course they're less able to make money from that. That's the way it was intended. But you can hardly complain when you're using someone else's code, which you got for free, that you can't resell it and make money from it.
I'm a lot more of an opponent to microsoft than the typical linux zealot here, I'm actually making a new BSD with brand new things to make it simple to run. First thing I'm doing is putting a MS office compatible group of apps in the GUI, this should make it worthwhile to switch because most people want to work with MS office files.
Good for you, though I'm not exactly sure what you mean by 'a new BSD'. Perhaps you should use one of the existing ones and simply add a frontend to it? Then you don't have to worry about keeping your base software current.
But do whatever makes sense to you.
Sure, my software is free [as in choice], not free as in [I let you freeload off a poor kiwi]. The sooner you people stop insisting that programmers mustn't earn money for their work, the better.
Oh, you're making a commercial BSD. I'm finding it fairly ironic in own breathe you say you're that you're using BSD, and in the next you say you have the right to 'earn money for your work', but go ahead. Good thing for you the people at Berkley didn't think like you, and in fact decided to let you freeload off them. Actually, you're making money off them, which is a step beyond freeloading.
I don't mind freeloaders, I so make free software. I don't like people making money off my work without giving anything back, so I make GPL software.
And you know, I see a lot more people claiming everyone is saying all software should be GPLd than people actually saying that. Can you point to any person in the community who actually says all software should be GPL software? And trolls don't count.
I know I'm going to get modded down by some free as in beer geek, but I think it's only fair to be paid for work you do & anything else is freeloading.
It's comments like this that baffle me. How on earth is it freeloading to do work for free? How is it freeloading to give work away for free? It's really the exact opposite of 'freeloading', isn't it?
And weren't you just talking about using software partially written in the university system of Califormia by students for free, and selling it to people?
Oh, jamming incoming rather than outgoing? I thought he meant jamming the signal or whatever that the car was sending out of it's location. Jamming GPS is just a silly idea.
I would hope the car would be clever enough to killswitch itself if you started jamming it. (Not blocking the signals, actively jamming it. Blocking the signals could mean tunnel, but random crap on GPS frequencies only means one thing.)
Probably not, though.
And I have to suggest that a GPS jammer that covers the entire car (Hopefully, the thieves do not know where the GPS is, because they could just disable it.) would be findable if you managed to get within a few hundred feet or so. It's not something police are set up to currently do, but it's really not that hard.
Well, I'm not a zealot but for about £50 you can buy SuSE Linux Professional which gives you not only an OS but pretty much every piece of software you could ever want.
While I'm the last person to defend MS, all those prices listed above total $89, which is about £61.
And there are a lot of upgrades in there. You can buy W2K Pro and the XP upgrade, ignore the Mac products and the 2K upgrade, and spend only $70 dollars, which is £48, and be completely up-to-date software-wise.
Of course, I don't know why you'd spend that much money on SuSE, seems somewhat silly to me.
Well, the main reason is that it's not illegal to pick up a 20 dollar bill laying on the ground. You could be turning it into the local lost and found, you could be picking it up because it's litter, you might think you dropped it, you might think you know who dropped it, etc.
Not to mention theft (theft by conversion, that is) of 20 dollars is a much less serious crime than GTA, I doubt it's more than a misdemeanor, with a 25-50 dollar fine, and those aren't really worth setting up elaborate sting operation for.
Car thief is much easier to prove, happens much more often, causes a lot more harm, and, in this case, uses less manpower, because of automatic sensors in the car vs. someone standing around watching the money.
Not to mention it's not as clearly not entrapment. This car was locked, just like all the other cars. There was nothing about the situtation that would create criminals out of nothing, it was not a unique situtation. Whereas a 20 on the sidewalk is not common at all, and an obviously created temptation by the police. Hence, it might be considered entrapment.
The price is less than that. Any university worth it's salt has a T1 and they can just download the thing, spending a total of 25 cents for the bandwidth and the CD-R.
But it gets cheaper than that. Any good college university has some Linux books. Almost every Linux book has Linux with it, so they probably already have a copy of Linux.
So the price isn't basically zero, it literally is zero.
Well, like I said, errors made in your favor, whether or not it's illegal to keep the money or not, are one the hardest moral test, because you can get away with it. Even if you get caught, you just made the same mistake they did, or you assumed they did it right. (Not in this case, but in the case of someone giving you change for a 20 when you gave them a 10, etc.)
And, of course, there comes a point where it's just silly to fix the error. We had a few incompetant people working at a local Taco Bell, and I've been given an extra dime twice at a drive through window. It would have cost me more than ten cents to drive back around though the line and give it back to them. I've been given the wrong food, demanded the right food, got it, and driven off, then realized they billed me for the wrong food, which cost less than what I ordered and received.
And, of course, no one, no matter how ethical, even attempts to return anything less than a dollar they find laying on the ground or in a change return. It's just not worth it.
Anyway, in most cases, it's not illegal to not report errors in your favor, at least none less than 100 dollars or so. So it's not really a good example of 'People being lured into breaking the law.'.
From the description given, it sounded to me like the role the girl cop was playing was that of pissed-off girlfriend who didn't mind if the car was stolen because it was her boyfriend's car and she was mad at him. Now, any sensible thief would see that as a golden opportunity.
She didn't say she wanted the car stolen, or that she didn't mind if it was stolen. If she had said that, sure, it would be entrapment.
But she didn't give anyone the idea of stealing the car who wouldn't have stolen a car with the keys in it anyway, if they had seen the keys in it. She just made sure everyone nearby saw the keys were in it.
Or, in your words, she was being a bad victim, and thus, voila, entrapment because a good viction would not be encouraging people to steal her boyfriend's car because she was mad at her boyfriend.
No, she was being a perfect victim. She was being irreponsible and careless because she was angry, which is exactly the kinds of victims that criminals like.
In this case, it's pretty safe to assume that someone who steals the bait car has stolen cars before. But this is not always the case when police bait for crimes. Say a cop approaches someone who has never bought drugs in his life, and offers him some. If the sale is made, that cop has just created a criminal for the purpose of busting him.
Which, of course, is why that's illegal. The person, whether it's a drug buying bust, a prostitution bust, no matter whether they're buying or selling, the non-cop has to request to illegal thing. The cop cannot offer, or attempt to buy, anything. They just stand around, waiting for someone to solict them to do an illegal activity.
You are also grouping humanity into two categories: "criminals" and "non-criminals". I assume you classify yourself as a non-criminal. Yet the world isn't this black and white. Ever coasted through a stop sign? Ever bought a used car and declared less than it's value when paying the tax? We have all done _something_ that's against the law. So when you say the police's job is to go out and "catch criminals" you may be asking for them to catch you, too.
I didn't ask for anyone to catch anyone. I said it was their job. And, yes, it's the cop's job to catch me when I speed, or run a stop sign, and heaven knows I haven't paid all the taxes I should have. But I'm not an idiot, I know it's the cop's job to catch me.
The mere fact that I personally don't want to be caught has no bearing on their job description, or what they are spending money for.
Of course, I hope they're spending money based on the harm the crime causes society. Me treating a stop sign like a yield sign doesn't cause any noticable harm to society, and stealing cars, like I said, causes a lot more harm, it's one of the most serious non-violent crimes out there. And once you ignore all the silly things that have been given harsh penalties for political purposes, like drug laws, it's one of the most seriously punished, too.
So if the police have 10,000 dollars and can either catch ten jaywalkers or one car thief, I want them to catch the car thief.
But that's not really relevant, I don't make those decisions, the police do. Usually various department's budgets reflect the harm of the crimes, and sometimes they start getting random and the government has to go in and fix them.
If you feel it's not worth the amount of money spent to catch the car thieves, and you live in a community where the cops are doing this, go ahead and complain, see if you can change their mind. But saying 'I break the law too.' is not a useful objection to catching car thieves.
Stealing a dummy car whose only purpose is to get stolen, is a victimless crime.
Howso? the government bought that car, didn't they? They rigged it with a bunch of electronic equipment, didn't they? It's very valuable, probably about the same price as a police car.
The mere fact that you expect a crime to happen does not make it 'victimless'. I have left objects where I would not be surprised if they were stolen, and I would still be the victim if they were in fact stolen.
The mere fact that a criminal fails does not make it victimless, either. By that defination, all robberies that we solve are victimless, because the people usually get their money back. So we'd have to let the culprit go.
Victimless is when all parties consent. The police department is not consenting to have these vehicles stolen. They are expecting to have it stolen, but expectations are not the same as consent.
And next time you don't want police to ask passerbys which way you went, carry around a giant boom box and blare really really loud music from it so the police can't hear their answer.
Wait a minute...what's stopping the police from following the jamming?
Huh? We'll end up with less criminals. They may be smarter on average, but that's a rather wacky quantity to judge by.
Would you rather have five geniuses trying to kill you, or five dumb guys, five average guys, and the aforementioned five geniuses all trying to kill you?
I don't know about you, but for me, the fewer, the better.
As an added bonus, smart criminals tend to be less violent (A burglary is much easier to get away with than a robbery, etc.), and tend to orient toward very large targets, who can withstand losing 25% of their net worth a lot more than a poor person can stand having his Camry stolen.
I suppose not. But once you use your autopatch codes, anyone listening on the uplink knows them too.
Though I guess you could get sophisticated and rotate through some codes to authenticate yourself (a la SecurID).
Yeah, because my car often gets stolen repeatedly. I disable it, and here comes another bastard who comes along, un-disables it, and steals it again.;)
You could just come up with a new code each time, you know. Cars only actually get stolen once a day at most, and you hopefully will have it back in your possession before it's stolen again.;)
I think it would be funny if about half the cities started doing this, and about half the cities starting saying they were doing this, and the two categories had no relationship to each other whatsoever.
In other words, every city is eiter doing it and telling people they aren't, doing it and telling people they are, not doing it and telling people they are, or not doing it and telling people they aren't.
And, just to make it more interesting, have everyone change randomly each month.
But I think that along with myself, the (grand)parent poster is concerned with the tone of the Washington Post article. The focus is CLEARLY on "catching the perp" rather than "serving and protecting" which, if you take a realistic look at policework today, is exactly what cops are doing more and more.
How, exactly, do you "protect" without catching criminals? You ignore them, instead?
I am also personally against the practice of officers offering drugs for sale and posing as prostitutes--just my opinion of course. If your conscience permits you to lock people up without even a victim, hey it's your world--I just live in it.
What on earth does victimless crimes have to do with catching car thieves? Car theft is not a victimless crime, it's one of the most serious non-violent crimes you can commmit, and for a good reason.
I hate victimless acts being crimes. I also would hate for my car to be stolen. Stealing my car is not victimless.
I would ask cops whom my taxes pay to clean up real crimes, rather than providing criminals with more opportunities.
How exactlly did they provide criminals with more opportunities? There were 1,000 cars out there the criminal wanted to steal, now there are 1,001. While that looks like 'more', in reality they only steal one car at a time. They aren't going to walk outside, see no cars they want to steal, and come back later. They'll just look around till they find one.
They is no mathmatical way that more cars can get stolen using this method. Each thief will continue to steal X a day, but this way we'll start pulling them off the street at a rate directly propotional to the amount of cars they steal.
Oh, and, BTW, another job of the police is to deter crime, which this does nicely. Can you honestly say that at least one car thief, since this story has come out, hasn't decided to not steal a certain car, because it might be rigged?
Nonsense. The theft is not victimless in the mind of the thief, because he doesn't know that the car is 'bait'.
Close, but it's not victimless at all. It's a fucking car theft, and cars have owners, and, hence, victims. Sure, it's the city's car, but the city can certainly be the victim of crimes. Or did it suddenly become okay to steal police cars and firetrucks?
They aren't asking for the car to be stolen, they're not making it easy to steal, they're just parking in a bad area. To counteract this, they have had a very very very good cat alarms set up in the car.
The mere fact that no thief is going succeed in stealing this car and getting away with it does not make it any different than any other car theft. It's not a 'trick', it's actual car theft.
Entrapment is my promising to send you pictures of hot chicks, then sending you pictures of little kids, then arresting you for having them. You have been persuaded or coerced into committing a crime, whether you'd have committed it yourself later or not.
That's not entrapment, and it's not even illegal. Entrapment is if you started talking about how hot this 17 year old was, and would I like to see her pictures, etc. then I say yes and you arrest me. You encouraged me to commit the crime, and without you there would have been no crime at all.
But simply out of the blue sending people nude pictures of little kids does not make them guilty of any crime what-so-ever. (Assuming that you're a cop and you admit what you did. Otherwise, they might get conviced of a crime, but they still didn't really commit it, they were framed.)
Yeah, that's exactly why the police are waiting for the guy to start driving off, then triggering the kill switch.
Of course, it's probably illegal to break into a car, period, even if you honestly are just trying to turn the lights off, but it wouldn't be GTA. Moving a car that you have no permission to move is always GTA, AFAIK.
Which, of course, makes all janitors master thieves for picking up things people leave laying around.
Wait, no, that would be idiotic.
If it was truly as you suggested, why would police stations have written policies about 'lost and found' items? Wouldn't the mere existence of a lost and found encourage people to break the law by picking up other people's property?
A mistake in your favor is, yes, one of the hardest times to do the rigt thing, especially when the 'person' who was hurt is some large, nameless company that doubtless made just as many mistakes in the opposite direction and didn't do the right thing itself.
But I have to suggest your example, while a great test of morality, ins't that useful a test of legality. I can't see how it would be illegal to withdraw that money.
There are only three outcomes: Either that stock really existed, but it wasn't actually in your name, in which case they wouldn't give you your money, or the stock didn't really exist, in which case they certainly wouldn't give you your money. The last option is that the stock actually existed, and was actually in your name. In which case someone had, for some strange reason, bought stock for you, using someone else's money. And I have to suggest that, legally, they would be the one at fault, not you. You might end up having to give the money back, but you wouldn't get in legal trouble for it, and it's not really a good example of 'entrapment'.
Also, what are the odds that two identical cars parked in close proximity will also have keys which work for both...
My brother has had his Toyota Camry 'stolen' exactly this way. He left it parked, and a girl, that night, using her own key, got in his car, and drove across campus with it. No joke, her key fit both cars. (Later, they tested, and found out his key would unlock her doors, but not start her car.)
My brother gets out there in the morning, see his car is not there (The other Camry is obviously not his, it has someone else's junk in the back.), and calls the police.
The police are telling him to wait and see, etc, when the girl who drove off in his car gets back to where she parked 'her' car, and wonders where the hell it is. (The other Camry is obviously not hers, it has someone else's junk in the back, which she didn't notice in the darkness of the night before.)
She calls campus security.
Hilarity ensues.
Seriously, folks, it's not as impossible as you'd think.
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What do you mean, how would they be more likely to make money from BSD code? They're giving their code away no matter what.
Oh, wait, do you mean other people's GPL code? Well, yes, of course they're less able to make money from that. That's the way it was intended. But you can hardly complain when you're using someone else's code, which you got for free, that you can't resell it and make money from it.
I'm a lot more of an opponent to microsoft than the typical linux zealot here, I'm actually making a new BSD with brand new things to make it simple to run.
First thing I'm doing is putting a MS office compatible group of apps in the GUI, this should make it worthwhile to switch because most people want to work with MS office files.
Good for you, though I'm not exactly sure what you mean by 'a new BSD'. Perhaps you should use one of the existing ones and simply add a frontend to it? Then you don't have to worry about keeping your base software current.
But do whatever makes sense to you.
Sure, my software is free [as in choice], not free as in [I let you freeload off a poor kiwi]. The sooner you people stop insisting that programmers mustn't earn money for their work, the better.
Oh, you're making a commercial BSD. I'm finding it fairly ironic in own breathe you say you're that you're using BSD, and in the next you say you have the right to 'earn money for your work', but go ahead. Good thing for you the people at Berkley didn't think like you, and in fact decided to let you freeload off them. Actually, you're making money off them, which is a step beyond freeloading.
I don't mind freeloaders, I so make free software. I don't like people making money off my work without giving anything back, so I make GPL software.
And you know, I see a lot more people claiming everyone is saying all software should be GPLd than people actually saying that. Can you point to any person in the community who actually says all software should be GPL software? And trolls don't count.
I know I'm going to get modded down by some free as in beer geek, but I think it's only fair to be paid for work you do & anything else is freeloading.
It's comments like this that baffle me. How on earth is it freeloading to do work for free? How is it freeloading to give work away for free? It's really the exact opposite of 'freeloading', isn't it?
And weren't you just talking about using software partially written in the university system of Califormia by students for free, and selling it to people?
I would hope the car would be clever enough to killswitch itself if you started jamming it. (Not blocking the signals, actively jamming it. Blocking the signals could mean tunnel, but random crap on GPS frequencies only means one thing.)
Probably not, though.
And I have to suggest that a GPS jammer that covers the entire car (Hopefully, the thieves do not know where the GPS is, because they could just disable it.) would be findable if you managed to get within a few hundred feet or so. It's not something police are set up to currently do, but it's really not that hard.
While I'm the last person to defend MS, all those prices listed above total $89, which is about £61.
And there are a lot of upgrades in there. You can buy W2K Pro and the XP upgrade, ignore the Mac products and the 2K upgrade, and spend only $70 dollars, which is £48, and be completely up-to-date software-wise.
Of course, I don't know why you'd spend that much money on SuSE, seems somewhat silly to me.
If you belong to this university, you pay this in addition to tuition, to cover the expenses of MS software. Hence it is a tax.
Now, that wasn't complicated, was it?
Not to mention theft (theft by conversion, that is) of 20 dollars is a much less serious crime than GTA, I doubt it's more than a misdemeanor, with a 25-50 dollar fine, and those aren't really worth setting up elaborate sting operation for.
Car thief is much easier to prove, happens much more often, causes a lot more harm, and, in this case, uses less manpower, because of automatic sensors in the car vs. someone standing around watching the money.
Not to mention it's not as clearly not entrapment. This car was locked, just like all the other cars. There was nothing about the situtation that would create criminals out of nothing, it was not a unique situtation. Whereas a 20 on the sidewalk is not common at all, and an obviously created temptation by the police. Hence, it might be considered entrapment.
But it gets cheaper than that. Any good college university has some Linux books. Almost every Linux book has Linux with it, so they probably already have a copy of Linux.
So the price isn't basically zero, it literally is zero.
They aren't actually going to provide the funds to buy the submarine, assuming it really did pass and get signed into law, which I doubt.
Well, like I said, errors made in your favor, whether or not it's illegal to keep the money or not, are one the hardest moral test, because you can get away with it. Even if you get caught, you just made the same mistake they did, or you assumed they did it right. (Not in this case, but in the case of someone giving you change for a 20 when you gave them a 10, etc.)
And, of course, there comes a point where it's just silly to fix the error. We had a few incompetant people working at a local Taco Bell, and I've been given an extra dime twice at a drive through window. It would have cost me more than ten cents to drive back around though the line and give it back to them. I've been given the wrong food, demanded the right food, got it, and driven off, then realized they billed me for the wrong food, which cost less than what I ordered and received.
And, of course, no one, no matter how ethical, even attempts to return anything less than a dollar they find laying on the ground or in a change return. It's just not worth it.
Anyway, in most cases, it's not illegal to not report errors in your favor, at least none less than 100 dollars or so. So it's not really a good example of 'People being lured into breaking the law.'.
She didn't say she wanted the car stolen, or that she didn't mind if it was stolen. If she had said that, sure, it would be entrapment.
But she didn't give anyone the idea of stealing the car who wouldn't have stolen a car with the keys in it anyway, if they had seen the keys in it. She just made sure everyone nearby saw the keys were in it.
Or, in your words, she was being a bad victim, and thus, voila, entrapment because a good viction would not be encouraging people to steal her boyfriend's car because she was mad at her boyfriend.
No, she was being a perfect victim. She was being irreponsible and careless because she was angry, which is exactly the kinds of victims that criminals like.
Which, of course, is why that's illegal. The person, whether it's a drug buying bust, a prostitution bust, no matter whether they're buying or selling, the non-cop has to request to illegal thing. The cop cannot offer, or attempt to buy, anything. They just stand around, waiting for someone to solict them to do an illegal activity.
You are also grouping humanity into two categories: "criminals" and "non-criminals". I assume you classify yourself as a non-criminal. Yet the world isn't this black and white. Ever coasted through a stop sign? Ever bought a used car and declared less than it's value when paying the tax? We have all done _something_ that's against the law. So when you say the police's job is to go out and "catch criminals" you may be asking for them to catch you, too.
I didn't ask for anyone to catch anyone. I said it was their job. And, yes, it's the cop's job to catch me when I speed, or run a stop sign, and heaven knows I haven't paid all the taxes I should have. But I'm not an idiot, I know it's the cop's job to catch me.
The mere fact that I personally don't want to be caught has no bearing on their job description, or what they are spending money for.
Of course, I hope they're spending money based on the harm the crime causes society. Me treating a stop sign like a yield sign doesn't cause any noticable harm to society, and stealing cars, like I said, causes a lot more harm, it's one of the most serious non-violent crimes out there. And once you ignore all the silly things that have been given harsh penalties for political purposes, like drug laws, it's one of the most seriously punished, too.
So if the police have 10,000 dollars and can either catch ten jaywalkers or one car thief, I want them to catch the car thief.
But that's not really relevant, I don't make those decisions, the police do. Usually various department's budgets reflect the harm of the crimes, and sometimes they start getting random and the government has to go in and fix them.
If you feel it's not worth the amount of money spent to catch the car thieves, and you live in a community where the cops are doing this, go ahead and complain, see if you can change their mind. But saying 'I break the law too.' is not a useful objection to catching car thieves.
Stealing a dummy car whose only purpose is to get stolen, is a victimless crime.
Howso? the government bought that car, didn't they? They rigged it with a bunch of electronic equipment, didn't they? It's very valuable, probably about the same price as a police car.
The mere fact that you expect a crime to happen does not make it 'victimless'. I have left objects where I would not be surprised if they were stolen, and I would still be the victim if they were in fact stolen.
The mere fact that a criminal fails does not make it victimless, either. By that defination, all robberies that we solve are victimless, because the people usually get their money back. So we'd have to let the culprit go.
Victimless is when all parties consent. The police department is not consenting to have these vehicles stolen. They are expecting to have it stolen, but expectations are not the same as consent.
Jerry doesn't want to make anyone stop, he just wants credit for inventing it.
Wait a minute...what's stopping the police from following the jamming?
Would you rather have five geniuses trying to kill you, or five dumb guys, five average guys, and the aforementioned five geniuses all trying to kill you?
I don't know about you, but for me, the fewer, the better.
As an added bonus, smart criminals tend to be less violent (A burglary is much easier to get away with than a robbery, etc.), and tend to orient toward very large targets, who can withstand losing 25% of their net worth a lot more than a poor person can stand having his Camry stolen.
Though I guess you could get sophisticated and rotate through some codes to authenticate yourself (a la SecurID).
Yeah, because my car often gets stolen repeatedly. I disable it, and here comes another bastard who comes along, un-disables it, and steals it again. ;)
You could just come up with a new code each time, you know. Cars only actually get stolen once a day at most, and you hopefully will have it back in your possession before it's stolen again. ;)
You could always leave a bunch of (unarmed) guns inside the car before they steal it.
In other words, every city is eiter doing it and telling people they aren't, doing it and telling people they are, not doing it and telling people they are, or not doing it and telling people they aren't.
And, just to make it more interesting, have everyone change randomly each month.
How, exactly, do you "protect" without catching criminals? You ignore them, instead?
I am also personally against the practice of officers offering drugs for sale and posing as prostitutes--just my opinion of course. If your conscience permits you to lock people up without even a victim, hey it's your world--I just live in it.
What on earth does victimless crimes have to do with catching car thieves? Car theft is not a victimless crime, it's one of the most serious non-violent crimes you can commmit, and for a good reason.
I hate victimless acts being crimes. I also would hate for my car to be stolen. Stealing my car is not victimless.
I would ask cops whom my taxes pay to clean up real crimes, rather than providing criminals with more opportunities.
How exactlly did they provide criminals with more opportunities? There were 1,000 cars out there the criminal wanted to steal, now there are 1,001. While that looks like 'more', in reality they only steal one car at a time. They aren't going to walk outside, see no cars they want to steal, and come back later. They'll just look around till they find one.
They is no mathmatical way that more cars can get stolen using this method. Each thief will continue to steal X a day, but this way we'll start pulling them off the street at a rate directly propotional to the amount of cars they steal.
Oh, and, BTW, another job of the police is to deter crime, which this does nicely. Can you honestly say that at least one car thief, since this story has come out, hasn't decided to not steal a certain car, because it might be rigged?
Close, but it's not victimless at all. It's a fucking car theft, and cars have owners, and, hence, victims. Sure, it's the city's car, but the city can certainly be the victim of crimes. Or did it suddenly become okay to steal police cars and firetrucks?
They aren't asking for the car to be stolen, they're not making it easy to steal, they're just parking in a bad area. To counteract this, they have had a very very very good cat alarms set up in the car.
The mere fact that no thief is going succeed in stealing this car and getting away with it does not make it any different than any other car theft. It's not a 'trick', it's actual car theft.
That's not entrapment, and it's not even illegal. Entrapment is if you started talking about how hot this 17 year old was, and would I like to see her pictures, etc. then I say yes and you arrest me. You encouraged me to commit the crime, and without you there would have been no crime at all.
But simply out of the blue sending people nude pictures of little kids does not make them guilty of any crime what-so-ever. (Assuming that you're a cop and you admit what you did. Otherwise, they might get conviced of a crime, but they still didn't really commit it, they were framed.)
And only dangerous booby traps are illegal.
Of course, it's probably illegal to break into a car, period, even if you honestly are just trying to turn the lights off, but it wouldn't be GTA. Moving a car that you have no permission to move is always GTA, AFAIK.
Wait, no, that would be idiotic.
If it was truly as you suggested, why would police stations have written policies about 'lost and found' items? Wouldn't the mere existence of a lost and found encourage people to break the law by picking up other people's property?
But I have to suggest your example, while a great test of morality, ins't that useful a test of legality. I can't see how it would be illegal to withdraw that money.
There are only three outcomes: Either that stock really existed, but it wasn't actually in your name, in which case they wouldn't give you your money, or the stock didn't really exist, in which case they certainly wouldn't give you your money. The last option is that the stock actually existed, and was actually in your name. In which case someone had, for some strange reason, bought stock for you, using someone else's money. And I have to suggest that, legally, they would be the one at fault, not you. You might end up having to give the money back, but you wouldn't get in legal trouble for it, and it's not really a good example of 'entrapment'.
They didn't 'might' steal a car, they did steal a car.
My brother has had his Toyota Camry 'stolen' exactly this way. He left it parked, and a girl, that night, using her own key, got in his car, and drove across campus with it. No joke, her key fit both cars. (Later, they tested, and found out his key would unlock her doors, but not start her car.)
My brother gets out there in the morning, see his car is not there (The other Camry is obviously not his, it has someone else's junk in the back.), and calls the police.
The police are telling him to wait and see, etc, when the girl who drove off in his car gets back to where she parked 'her' car, and wonders where the hell it is. (The other Camry is obviously not hers, it has someone else's junk in the back, which she didn't notice in the darkness of the night before.)
She calls campus security.
Hilarity ensues.
Seriously, folks, it's not as impossible as you'd think.