Loot ‘n scoot: Through my police friends, I learned of another devious M.O. resulting in theft from hotel rooms. The thief simply poses as a guest. Wearing pool attire, she enters a hotel room that has a housekeeping cart at the door, as if she’s just returning to her own room from the pool. She tells the maid that she forgot her key, starts looking for it, and dismisses the maid. I suppose her beach bag is big enough for all the goodies she grabs, and she scoots out in her swimsuit looking as innocent as can be.
Maid left hotel room open and empty.
In another version, a female thief gets a nearby housekeeper to open a hotel room door because she’s carrying a heavy load. She may or may not have spotters on the lookout for guests returning to that floor.
Hotel security
In both cases, the security of our belongings is in the hands of the maids. How well are they trained? How much discretion do they have? When should they break the rules in order to be nice? When should they bend the rules in anticipation of a nice gratuity? What about temporary workers during the hotel’s high season—do they receive as thorough training? How many of us have approached our room only to find that we forgot our key, or the key doesn’t work, and a nice service staff member volunteers to let us in?
Hotel policy is one thing; compliance is another. How do you react when you find that your key doesn’t work (for the third time), the front desk is far away (giant hotel), your feet hurt and your arms are full and you’re dead tired, and the maid with a master key says “I’m sorry. It’s for your own security.”?
The burglars described in the recent police bulletins were females of average height and weight, 50ish and blonde. Nicely generic. The maid may believe she’s seen the impostor; and perhaps she has. Should she risk offending the “guest”?
Perhaps the maid should be required to ask the name of the guest and match it to a list. Yeah, a list on a clipboard left on the cart, that the thief’s accomplice copped a glance at. Perhaps the maid should be required to snap a photo of the guest “for your security.”
As a very frequent hotel guest, I have many times returned to my room to find the door left open by housekeeping staff “just for a minute” while they run to do something else. This always infuriates me, as there’s usually a laptop or two left out, as in the photo here, not to mention other valuables. But this is simply housekeeping error, and with proper training, can be corrected. The impostors described above are skilled social engineers, harder to protect against.
Bruce Schneier is currently blogging from SHB09, the Second Interdisciplinary Workshop on Security and Human Behavior, at MIT. I doubt if discussions covered “tricking hotel maids,” but what a complicated and interesting subject. I would have liked to be a fly on the wall there. Instead, I can read articles by the presenters.
One view from Grand Hotel St. Bernardin in Portoroz, Slovenia
The Slovene driver sped along the autostrade, disco crackling on the radio, fast-chomping gum, taking and making phone calls as if he runs another business. Beautiful coastline, like Italy next door. Construction in progress everywhere. Violet lupine and red-orange poppies brilliant along grassy roadsides.
The driver dropped us at Grand Hotel St. Bernardin in Portoroz. Our suite overlooked the Adriatic from three balconies. I could almost see Venice—or where Venice should have been across the sea.
We were in Slovenia to perform and lecture at Microsoft’s industry conference introducing windows 7. Instead of the usual rushed “play-and-run” routine, we scheduled four days in Slovenia in order to do extra events there, for Microsoft and for ourselves.
As Mac users, we felt like peacocks in a flock of pigeons, but we were quickly proved wrong by many furtive glances of attendees and IT staffers as they peeked at iPhones partly pulled from their pockets.
Like a giant iPhone.
First was rehearsal for Bob’s keynote session, open to the conference’s 2,000 attendees. Here was a highlight of the trip for me: an uninterrupted opportunity to play with a Surface Table, aka Big-Ass Table, which sat on stage. Its smooth multi-touch interface allowed me to use both hands to draw and manipulate objects, while Bob and a couple of stage hands simultaneously played on the table.
I’ve been fascinated by the multi-touch user interface ever since I saw Jeff Han’s TED talk —the first TED talk I’d ever seen. (Now I try to watch one or two every night—at least once in a while. I go on binges.) It’s the same technology as CNN’s “Magic Wall,” and FoxNews’ “Bill Board;” like a giant Apple iPhone. Fun to play with.
The Surface table, with technology developed by Jeff Han.
The youngest IT staffer I spoke with, 19 years old, confided in me after chatting and playing on the table together.
“I’ve got such a headache,” he baited me.
“Why?”
“I had to load windows 7 on 32 netbooks this morning. Fifteen of them wouldn’t work. I had to take them all apart and replace cables and stuff, then put them back together and reinstall 7.”
Poor boy.
The keynote, scheduled to last two hours, ran an entire hour over. Bob (eventually) shared the stage with Slovene actor and comedian Džuro (somebody help me with his last name). Little video here.
When the whole hotel internet went down during the Microsoft conference, everyone wondered: server overload? hackers? Where’s the IT guy? Booths, demos, work, everything ground to a halt. Embarrassment all around.
30 journalists, Bob Arno, and Ed Gibson.
A long interview with the national paper, Dnevnik, resulted in a two-and-a-half page spread we’ve been told reads well. A google translation of the Slovenian turns up some hilarious lines: Reporter: “You can dance monkey dance? Bob: “Whatever Let it be loud and crazy.” Reporter: “Men in adjacent table…has bag at feet. You can steal now?” Bob: “Can.” [and he did] “in 15 seconds… embarrassment evident by redness of face.”
And Bob supposedly said “People like the sheep shearer,” and later: “Ah, no. Not like this, as we are now. You should fuck in you or something.”
Remember the children’s game of telephone, or operator? Well, call this translation. From Bob’s Swedish to his English, from the reporter’s English to his Slovenian, and finally through Google’s processor.
Microsoft had arranged for Bob to appear at a press conference with its chief security analyst, Ed Gibson. When asked about some of windows 7’s new security features, Gibson quipped: “I’d demonstrate for you, but we don’t have two hours for windows to boot up.” I wouldn’t repeat that had Mr. Gibson not said it to 30 journalists. Short videos here and better, here.
Campari aperitifs at Italian happy-hour.
Duties done, we drove to the Italian city of Trieste, just half an hour away, for sunset cocktails on the piazza. Campari aperitifs are de rigueur, as are cigarettes. (We stuck with just the cocktails.) We got a table before the joint became standing room only. Utterly pleasant, and time for passeggiata afterwards, in the right mood.
Piran: reminded me of Venice
Despite my sarcasm, I want to emphasize that Slovenia is a lovely destination. The country’s terrain is beautiful, as are it’s coastline and views. We walked to Piran, the nearby town, which resembled Venice without the canals, crowds, or cruise ship passengers, and possibly lacking a fraction of the charm.
We found our hotel’s massive restaurant dismal and oppressive with overly formal appointments and stuffy service. Heavy curtains and high window sills obstructed a gorgeous view; and given the glorious weather, the windows should have been open. Fake plants are a turn-off.
Fresh, simply-cooked bounty of Slovenian seafood.
But nearby Barka restaurant, on the harbor, was perfect in every way: patio, menu, views, quality, good Slovenian wine, and a casual-but-correct wait staff. Once we discovered it, we returned for every meal.
Leaving out of Trieste airport, a huge 20-minute-storm cancelled our flight. Waiting in the airport restaurant until an evening flight, we watched three armed policia step up to the bar for drinks.
At the end of this trip, having visited Italy, Slovenia, and Paris, we returned home with no stamps in our new passports. Perhaps these will last longer than the previous ones did.
When my friend, Stephen Kane, described what he witnessed on a recent afternoon in Buenos Aires, I begged him to write it down for me. Following is his account.
Bad action in Buenos Aires
Prior to my first visit to Buenos Aires I was warned about the mustard/ketchup gag. As you’re walking, carrying a shoulder bag, someone sneaks behind you and squirts mustard or ketchup on your back. The accomplice later offers to help you clean it off. You remove the bag from your shoulder to do that and then it disappears along with the thief. So I felt particularly foolish when it almost immediately happened to me. I noticed I had been squirted but just kept holding my bag tightly and walking until I was safely out of the area. I have been back to Argentina many times and, thankfully, have never been threatened with robbery again.
So I suppose I was due for one particularly eventful day. I wasn’t the victim but the witness of two different scenes.
I was having Saturday lunch in a cafe on the corner of Corrientes and Florida. I was sitting at the window and had a very clear view of the crowd of people and traffic at the intersection. If I hadn’t been looking in the right direction I’d have never seen it happen. It was much too fast; so fast that nobody nearby realized it had happened until it was over. A tall, beautifully dressed girl was standing with her boyfriend waiting for the light to change so they could cross the street. Mixed into the traffic speeding down Corrientes was a large motorcycle carrying two men. The cycle suddenly stopped right in front of her and the man on back jumped off. He grabbed the girl from behind, putting one of his hands over her mouth to keep her from screaming. With the other hand he grabbed her necklaces and purse. By the time she was able to even make a sound and alert her boyfriend the thief was back on the cycle with his accomplice and speeding away in escape. But the event wasn’t finished. Someone standing nearby actually did see the robbery and managed to capture a picture of the thieves on a cellphone camera. I watched as they all summoned a policeman and showed him the photo of the cyclists. Of course, during the discussion that followed, the victims were much more animated than the policeman. After pleading with him for several minutes they eventually gave up and went on their way. So did the crowd. So did the policeman.
Petter, a thief in Lima, told us that one member of his team always carries a knife.
After lunch I walked a few blocks down Florida and turned into a small, uncrowded side street. I noticed a commotion in Continue reading
From town, several glaciers are visible in the Kenai Mountains.
A travel snafu brought us to Homer, Alaska, where the best joint in town is the Bidarka Inn. Population 5,454; minus children, that would just about make up one audience for us. We generally enjoy these unexpected opportunities to explore places off the beaten track. As long as the unplanned stops don’t impact a commitment.
After a nippy walk back from lunch in town (the Cosmic Kitchen, good), a hot shower was in order. The shower was a hideous, putty-colored, fiberglass unit complete with one of those ingenious curved curtain rods. Amazing what an improvement the curtain material made, though. The top quarter of the fabric, from my shoulder level up, was sheer mesh, allowing me to see out the bathroom door and out the window, to watch the activities at the skateboard park in the foreground, Kachemak Bay behind it, the snowcapped Kenai Mountains, and the Grewingk, Portlock, and Dixon Glaciers just beyond the bay. The distant view is spectacular in person. Much wider and closer than my photo appears.
Such small details, like a clever shower curtain, improve life on the road. My shower, even in the hideous, putty-colored, fiberglass unit, was pleasant. I probably used too much water.
We flew from Anchorage to Homer on Alaska Airlines flight 4878, operated by ERA Aviation. No TSA. No screening; none at all. Liquids? Okay! Weapons? Whatever you want! Just check your large roll-ons and climb aboard, big boots ‘n all.. 20 seats. Open seating, open cockpit.
The moment Michael Griffith turned his back, his wife let out a bloodcurdling scream. He whipped around to see Nancy jumping up and down, crying, her face contorted with panic and disgust. They were at the immigration desk at Lagos airport with barely an hour left to suffer Nigeria.
Michael now knew for sure he shouldn’t have brought Nancy along on this short business trip. She’d been so warned, so exhorted, so horror-storied, that she was utterly paranoid and never even left the perceived safety of the hotel.
A few days earlier, as Nancy browsed the hotel gift shops, she’d had a brief conversation with another hotel guest.
“I hope you’re not leaving this god-forsaken country on Friday,” he’d told her.
“I don’t know for sure,” Nancy said with alarm. “Why?”
“They steal passports on Fridays,” the man explained. “Goddamned immigration officials at the airport.”
“Why on Fridays?”
“Because they know you’ll pay anything to get your passport back so you can get the hell out of Nigeria without waiting all weekend until Monday.”
When Michael returned to the hotel that evening, Nancy asked him what day they were leaving. Friday, Michael said. So Nancy related her newest tale of terror and, together, she and Michael came up with a plan. Nancy would carry their remaining cash in a flat leather pouch attached to her belt and slid inside her jeans. 100 nairas, the exact amount of departure tax for two, would be put into Michael’s shirt pocket. Nancy would tuck an American $20 bill into each of her two front jeans pockets in case bribes were necessary, and Michael would carry a 20 naira note in each of his two front pants pockets. Never let go of your passport at immigration, they’d been warned. Michael would hold onto their passports during examination and stamping.
Attorney Michael Griffith
As a lawyer who represents Americans arrested abroad, Michael was no novice at foreign travel. He’d been to almost eighty countries, through hundreds of airports. It was his business to know the laws and procedures of other countries, their customs, and dangers. He’d been through the notorious Lagos airport many times before, but never with his tall, blond wife. Nancy, too, had traveled extensively. She had just retired from her career as a supermodel.
Nancy’s jitters came from the endless Nigerian nightmare experiences she’d heard and read about travel through Nigeria. Even the U.S. State Department considers it one of the most dangerous, corrupt, and unpredictable territories on Earth.
Nigerian nightmare
So it was not a pair of travel virgins who meticulously prepared themselves for
the perilous journey through Nigerian formalities. These were travel warriors. From New York. Michael, at least, thought he’d pretty much seen it all.
They approached the immigration desk as planned, Michael in the lead, Nancy dragging their wheely bag. It was not crowded, and they stepped right up to the official’s high desk.
“Airport tax fifty nairas each,” the government official demanded.
Michael reached into his shirt pocket and extracted the prepared cash, five
20-naira notes. As the officer’s fingers closed around the money, Nancy shrieked. She yelled with a shrillness and urgency Michael had never heard before, unlike her wail of frustration on the tennis court, her cry of anger occasionally directed toward him, or her extremely rare explosions of rage. In an instant, a heartbeat, a fraction of a moment, Michael heard intense terror and overpowering repulsion, desperation, and primeval fear. He felt it in the hollow of his chest. In his bones. On his skin.
He spun, already flushed and slick with instant sweat.
Nancy was screaming, but she was also jumping and twitching. And Michael
saw that she was covered with cockroaches.
Covered might be the wrong word. There were only twenty or thirty cockroaches. But they were huge, shiny as glass, and black as terror. They skittered up Nancy’s jeans, down her blouse, and along her bare arms. One had become entangled in her hair, and kicked frantically at her ear. A few dropped onto the floor, where Nancy crushed them as she leapt spasmodically.
A uniformed immigration officer strolled away from the hysteria, indifferent. At his side, he casually swung a large-mouthed jar of grimy glass. It was empty.
Michael, accustomed to extracting people from sticky situations, was at a loss. He’d pulled people out of South American prisons, choreographed an American’s escape from a Turkish jail, rescued the wrongly accused and the clearly guilty. Now, as he grabbed his delirious wife by her shoulders and tried to steady her, he saw the same overwhelmed eyes he saw in many of his clients. They bulged with a desperate plea for a savior, and of unspeakable horrors.
Michael swatted and kicked away most of the creatures. Then he opened the lower buttons of Nancy’s blouse and removed one more. He pulled one from her hair, and then removed the serrated legs that had remained stuck there. He asked her if there were any more. Then he held her.
“Let’s get out of here,” he whispered in her ear. “We’re almost home.”
He turned back to the immigration officer, still placid in her high booth.
“You only gave me four twenties,” she said. “I need one more.”
“Lady, I’m from New York,” Michael said dangerously, “and this is the best I’ve ever seen. You know and I know that I gave you a hundred nairas. You’re getting nothing more from me.”
The officer waved them through, expressionless.
Nancy, catatonic with shock, began to regain her composure when they arrived at the gate for their flight.
“If I ever get out of here, I’m going to kiss the ground of America,” she said with conviction.
And she did so, eighteen hours later at JFK airport, though it was technically not ground, but the dusty terrazzo floor thirty feet above it.
A U.S. Customs Officer must have seen Nancy bend to the floor in the busy baggage hall.
“Ma’am, you must be just back from Lagos!” he grinned. “Welcome to the U.S.A.! Welcome home!”
Should Have Left it in the Hotel—Gisela and Ludvig Horst checked into their Barcelona hotel and immediately got into an argument. Gisela did not feel comfortable leaving their valuables in the room, though Ludvig was insistent that they should. They’d just arrived from Germany for an Herbalife convention. With 30,000 international participants in town, each sporting big I-heart-Herbalife buttons, every Barcelona hotel was fully booked. The Horsts ended up in the same small, semi-seedy inn Bob and I had chosen for our semi-seedy research. We met them at breakfast the morning after.
Thinking back, Gisela remembered a middle-aged man seated alone at a table behind them. Was it him? She also sensed the bulk of a man moving behind her and had assumed it was a waiter. Without warning, her bag was snatched right off her lap.
The Horsts lost everything. Besides the tremendous paperwork hassle, the mood of their trip was ruined and Gisela was badly traumatized. She blamed herself and lost confidence in her judgment, though she was hardly at fault.
Personal security is an art, not a science. Information and awareness are everything. In the Horsts’ situation, I may have done exactly as Gisela did, had I been lacking a suitable suitcase to use as a safe. However, I’d try to split up my goodies, and put as much as possible on my body instead of in a grabbable bag.
So you’ve made it through security. Does that mean you’re in a secure area? Not secure enough to relax your attention. Thieves have been known to buy multi-leg plane tickets and work the gate areas in each airport, never needing to pass security after their initial entry into carefree-land.
You wouldn’t look twice at the couple sitting back-to-back with you in the departure hall. Smartly dressed, stylish bags, composed manner: they look like frequent international travelers—and they are. The troupe arrested in Paris’ Charles de Gaulle Airport were not French, but South American. They, and other sophisticated gangs of thieves take the same international flights as their victims, stay in the same hotels, and attend the same trade shows, sporting events, and operas. “They’re clever, don’t take chances, and do a lot of damage,” a French police officer said. “They keep the cash and sell off everything else—credit cards, passports.”
“These gangs systematically comb all major international airports on both sides of customs,” said an undercover police officer at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport. “They often fly between five or six airports on round-trip tickets,” explained the crime prevention coordinator for the military police there.
A presumption of safety prevails past security.
Many airports around the world have installed camera surveillance, which has cut theft of bags and theft from bags. In Cape Town, for example, while an inbound visitor stood at a car rental counter with his luggage behind him on a trolley, a thief simply lifted one of his bags, popped into a men’s room, changed clothes, and walked out with the stolen property. After leaving it in a waiting car, he returned to the baggage hall to scout for more goodies. It was all caught on tape.
Trains between concourses are another area where personal property goes missing. On these, as well as in airport shops and restaurants, one must maintain vigilance. This is especially difficult for people who don’t travel often and live in small towns where safety is almost a given. Thieves home in on relaxed attitudes like heat-seeking missiles.
What works: keep physical contact with your property.
Mala Mala, South Africa— Our mischievous rangers convinced some in our safari group of an old “African tradition” while out walking in the bush. It is a competition to see who can spit impala droppings the farthest. I was horrified to see first one sister,
then another,
select a hard bead of deer doodoo from the ground and place it on her tongue. Who cares how far they spit it? Two of my sisters voluntarily put animal dung in their mouths! Granted, it was hard and dry, but it was on the ground! These two squeamish ones are the type who avoid touching banisters and public doorknobs.
Meanwhile, we all ate caterpillar droppings,
which seasoned our alfresco breakfasts, lunches, and dinners. The stuff fell so steadily from the trees it was useless to fight it. It lodged in hair, tickled down shirts, filled pockets, and sunk to the bottom of our coffee.
“It’s just digested leaves,” our entomologist uncle soothed. Look at the dung beetle: it lives on pre-digested food. Here it works hard to roll perfect balls of fresh elephant dung for later consumption.
Johannesburg, South Africa— I spent a day in Alexandra Township last month, where half a million people live in organized squalor in three square miles. Everyone seemed happy to see outsiders come to visit them. Our guide said it meant that we cared enough to bother.
Some teens danced for us at Joe’s Butchery, where we had lunch. Kids walking home from school crowded around the perimeter to watch.
All day, kids jumped into pictures, then crowded around the camera display to see themselves. They couldn’t get enough of it.
A street-side butcher (through a rainy window). Possibly the source of our lunch?
The people of Alexandra live in extreme poverty. My group was traveling in extreme luxury, what my late brother-in-law used to call “wretched excess.” The dichotomy made me queasy.
