Subject: Very helpful Parisians (Was: Cautionary tale: Paris pickpockets)

From: "Steven M. Bellovin" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 02 Aug 2005 13:02:27 -0400

There's been a lot of discussion about petty crime in Paris -- I posted 
my own story (and if you need to know how to get an emergency passport 
in Paris, talk to me offline).  Let me follow up on my own posting.

To recap, my wife's purse was stolen at a restaurant very close to the 
hotel.  Two Parisians found it under a scooter about 1 km from here.  
They went to a fair amount of trouble to locate me -- my wife and I 
don't have the same last name, but they found a minor card in the purse 
that mentioned my name -- and delivered the purse to me here at the 
hotel.

Yes, the money was gone, as was her phone.  The credit cards and 
passports were still there, though of course they'd been canceled.  
(Obviously, our threat model was too great....)  The less-critical 
stuff -- but still a nuisance to replace -- was there.  A set of keys 
was there.  (We did not assume a trans-Atlantic burglary ring.  And if 
the opposition really was that competent, they'd have copied the keys, 
or at least the critical data about them, before discarding them.  Not 
in my threat model....)

There certainly is a petty crime problem in Paris.  See 'CRIME' in
http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/cis/cis_1116.html for the U.S. 
consulate's opinion.  Frankly, though, I'm overwhelmed at the efforts 
of two people who owed me exactly nothing.

Yes, there are good people in the word.

		--Steven M. Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb

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