A Query About Heist Vans

[Zeppelin Kapitan Fritz]

     So I watched "Ocean's 11" last night and then I started thinking about criminal heist movies and the tropes associated with them.

     In almost all of these movies, the protagonists have a panel van of some sort. Fair enough, as having a large vehicle to move around equipment and personnel actually makes some sense, and it also makes sense that the back of the van would have no windows since you definately don't want people to see what you're up to. However, the van is almost always unmarked and with a plain solid black or white (and it's always either black or white) color. This just screams "suspicious". They don't even bother to paint "So & So's Cleaners" or something similar (Plumbing, Electrical, etc. all uses vans) on the side of the van.

     Furthermore, when a van is depicted doing surveillance work, it always has to park right next to the building and stays there for hours. If I saw an unmarked (or even a "So & So's Cleaners/ Plumbing/ Electrical/ etc.) van belonging to people I don't know and never asked for in front of my home, I would be a little concerned. Apparently the people wiretapping have to park right in front of the building to get a signal, a parking lot a block or so away doesn't work. May I suggest they get some longer ranged wiretapping equipment (if it doesn't exist it ought to exist)?

     On the other side of the coin, if I owned a casino, bank, or art museum, I definately wouldn't keep all the money in one location. This makes no sense whatsoever. Also, I would have the security beams in the vaults be 3-dimensional, rather than just covering the floor (I might even put various deathtraps in the airvents, although this is such a cliche that it is rarely done anymore).

[Zeppelin Kapitan Fritz]

     Or, better yet, I could simply switch the signs that say airvents and garbage disposal.

[Alexis Voltaire]

[snip]

     Furthermore, when a van is depicted doing surveillance work, it always has to park right next to the building and stays there for hours. If I saw an unmarked (or even a "So & So's Cleaners/ Plumbing/ Electrical/ etc.) van belonging to people I don't know and never asked for in front of my home, I would be a little concerned. Apparently the people wiretapping have to park right in front of the building to get a signal, a parking lot a block or so away doesn't work. May I suggest they get some longer ranged wiretapping equipment (if it doesn't exist it ought to exist)? 

I think this has to do with giving the audience an obvious visual in movies. A lot of the challenge in writing good dialogue and scenes for movies (speaking purely as an observer here) seems to be letting the audience know what's going on without making it so blatant that it becomes stupid.

Also, with heist and spy movies set in the modern times, it makes sense not to show how real-life security works.

[Zeppelin Kapitan Fritz]

     I've been considering becoming a screenwriter some time in the distant future, probably for comedy show, as so far that seems to be the only genre I am convinced I can write. All my attempts at more serious works come off as just plain bad to me, whereas both myself and others have laughed when I try to be funny.

[Drew P]

One of my past jobs was building/out-fitting vehicles for law enforcement agencies and those images always made me laugh.
Without a doubt,no matter what type of vehicle it is,no matter what condition it is in-it could be and will be used by the Police,ATF,etc.
I've built "work" vans fully loaded with surveillance gear,vehicles with dents,bondo showing,different hubcaps on each wheel for the ATF,US Marshals,etc. The ladder racks are actually antennas for the mobile radios and so forth. Even the interiors were disguised so that "buys/deals" could be made in the vehicle itself.
Damn,I liked doing that stuff.

I think now anything is possible in this scenario.

[Siliconous Skumins]

Part of the reason for the way things are shown in movies, is that people have come to expect it to be that way.

I spent a little time in the hacker comunity (forget everything you think you know about "hackers" stealing your ID, money etc. - that's not a hacker, that is a high tech criminal...), so I have pretty decent grasp of how the real world of security works. Some things ARE like the movies, but for the most part, it's pretty dull stuff.   The only time a stakeout van would be parked close to a building is if you are trying to eyeball / video a person or event, nothing more. Everything else is pretty much done remotely.

As for burglar alarms, mostly they are not "hacked" or bypassed in anyway. Usually the bell box (usually a siren actually) is simply silenced by drilling a hole in the box, and filling it with a can of expanding foam. Silent or monitored alarm systems use the telephone lines, so these are simply snipped (which will trigger the tamper fault on the alarm - not a problem is the bell box is gooed up...) OR use a simple device that provides the expected line voltage into to the telephone line (then snip the line going back to the the exchange) to prevent the alarm panel detecting a tamper condition, and disabling the dial out when triggered.  Common alarm sensors like PIR motion detectors can be easily defeated if you have the time - just move VERY slowly! pressure pads / plates are more difficult but not imposable to detect and defeat. LASER beam break detectors USED to be easy, but now they are fairly complex bits of kit with a lot of safeguards and detection circuits. but they are not impossible to defeat if you know what is being used. It may be very difficult though.

Hacking a common alarm panel is actually usually very easy - manufacturers usually have a built-in method to "crash" the system, thus restoring the factory defaults. This is usually something as simple as shorting out specific connections... Most panels are protected by an internal tamper switch that detects if the cover is removed - there are easy ways around this.

Telephone lines can be tapped into at any point along the line between the handset to the local exchange, there is no need to be across the street and up a pole with a linemans handset for this...

Remote monitoring of computers is more than possible - even a machine that is not connected to the net in any way, or has any form of radio communication device (WIFI, Bluetooth etc.). All electronic devices emit radio waves at various frequencies. Some of these are usefull enough to be able to read the data from a keyboard from several meters away, read information flowing through the CPU, and data being sent to the screen (van eck phreaking) More info see TEMPEST: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TEMPEST

The film Sneakers (a good classic movie    ) is quite correct on certain aspects, such as the point in the movie when the blind character Whistler can detect an emergency exit when scoping out the playtronics building, when asked how he knows, he replies " I can hear the emergency floodlight batteries recharging".  While hearing electrons in a battery seems impossible, it is very easy to detect an emergency flood light as they simply have a 12V transformer connected to a lead acid battery - the transformer hums at 50 / 60 Hz mains frequency and the battery may fizzle slightly as gas forms on the plates... 

Sneakers (1992): Accessing Playtronics - Video

There's loads more, but this post is long enough as is. 

SS

[Zeppelin Kapitan Fritz]

Part of the reason for the way things are shown in movies, is that people have come to expect it to be that way.

I spent a little time in the hacker comunity (forget everything you think you know about "hackers" stealing your ID, money etc. - that's not a hacker, that is a high tech criminal...), so I have pretty decent grasp of how the real world of security works. Some things ARE like the movies, but for the most part, it's pretty dull stuff.   The only time a stakeout van would be parked close to a building is if you are trying to eyeball / video a person or event, nothing more. Everything else is pretty much done remotely.

As for burglar alarms, mostly they are not "hacked" or bypassed in anyway. Usually the bell box (usually a siren actually) is simply silenced by drilling a hole in the box, and filling it with a can of expanding foam. Silent or monitored alarm systems use the telephone lines, so these are simply snipped (which will trigger the tamper fault on the alarm - not a problem is the bell box is gooed up...) OR use a simple device that provides the expected line voltage into to the telephone line (then snip the line going back to the the exchange) to prevent the alarm panel detecting a tamper condition, and disabling the dial out when triggered.  Common alarm sensors like PIR motion detectors can be easily defeated if you have the time - just move VERY slowly! pressure pads / plates are more difficult but not imposable to detect and defeat. LASER beam break detectors USED to be easy, but now they are fairly complex bits of kit with a lot of safeguards and detection circuits. but they are not impossible to defeat if you know what is being used. It may be very difficult though.

Hacking a common alarm panel is actually usually very easy - manufacturers usually have a built-in method to "crash" the system, thus restoring the factory defaults. This is usually something as simple as shorting out specific connections... Most panels are protected by an internal tamper switch that detects if the cover is removed - there are easy ways around this.

Telephone lines can be tapped into at any point along the line between the handset to the local exchange, there is no need to be across the street and up a pole with a linemans handset for this...

Remote monitoring of computers is more than possible - even a machine that is not connected to the net in any way, or has any form of radio communication device (WIFI, Bluetooth etc.). All electronic devices emit radio waves at various frequencies. Some of these are usefull enough to be able to read the data from a keyboard from several meters away, read information flowing through the CPU, and data being sent to the screen (van eck phreaking) More info see TEMPEST: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TEMPEST

The film Sneakers (a good classic movie    ) is quite correct on certain aspects, such as the point in the movie when the blind character Whistler can detect an emergency exit when scoping out the playtronics building, when asked how he knows, he replies " I can hear the emergency floodlight batteries recharging".  While hearing electrons in a battery seems impossible, it is very easy to detect an emergency flood light as they simply have a 12V transformer connected to a lead acid battery - the transformer hums at 50 / 60 Hz mains frequency and the battery may fizzle slightly as gas forms on the plates... 

Sneakers (1992): Accessing Playtronics - Video


There's loads more, but this post is long enough as is. 

SS

     I have no idea what you are talking about and am not sure if I even want to know. I do hope you realize that this thread was humorously intended and I have no plans of actually trying to pull off a heist (this just reinforces the already strong idea in my mind that doing so would actually be extremely boring).

[bicyclebuilder]

[snip]

     Furthermore, when a van is depicted doing surveillance work, it always has to park right next to the building and stays there for hours. If I saw an unmarked (or even a "So & So's Cleaners/ Plumbing/ Electrical/ etc.) van belonging to people I don't know and never asked for in front of my home, I would be a little concerned. Apparently the people wiretapping have to park right in front of the building to get a signal, a parking lot a block or so away doesn't work. May I suggest they get some longer ranged wiretapping equipment (if it doesn't exist it ought to exist)? 

I think this has to do with giving the audience an obvious visual in movies. A lot of the challenge in writing good dialogue and scenes for movies (speaking purely as an observer here) seems to be letting the audience know what's going on without making it so blatant that it becomes stupid.

Also, with heist and spy movies set in the modern times, it makes sense not to show how real-life security works.

I think you are right.
Why was "the A-team" always taken prison in a room filled with welding gear and machines? Why could MacGyver whip up a way to escape using household material that containes a small amount of the chemicals actually needed? Why (and this is a really weird one) are the bad girls and/or loose women usually called Amber?
Why does the informer has to keep the villain on the phone for more than 1 minute? Does it actually take 1 minute to find out the whereabouts of the villain? Or does this allow the villain to have a monologue?
Thanks to programms like "mythbusters" a lot of these myths have been tested.
With movies (and I guess the same goes for story writing) it's all about planting small clues of what is going to happen. You want the element of surprise, but not the WTF-experience. In hindsight you should have know what would happen.
You also want the story to be believable, but not 100% acurate. This would only help wrong-doers in their plan. The same reason why whenever there is a phonenumber in a movie, the digits always start with 555. Imaginairy phonenumbers to prevent idiots to actually call the number.

[Siliconous Skumins]

     I have no idea what you are talking about and am not sure if I even want to know. I do hope you realize that this thread was humorously intended and I have no plans of actually trying to pull off a heist (this just reinforces the already strong idea in my mind that doing so would actually be extremely boring).

Heh, read it again. Glossal is firmly implanted into the buccae area. 

SS

[akumabito]

     On the other side of the coin, if I owned a casino, bank, or art museum, I definately wouldn't keep all the money in one location.

I'd put all my money in a competitor's vault. If the place gets robbed, it's their reputation that gets destroyed, plus my money would be insured. In fact, in true movie-villain style, I'd probably orchestrate the robbery myself..

[von Corax]

[snip]

     Furthermore, when a van is depicted doing surveillance work, it always has to park right next to the building and stays there for hours. If I saw an unmarked (or even a "So & So's Cleaners/ Plumbing/ Electrical/ etc.) van belonging to people I don't know and never asked for in front of my home, I would be a little concerned. Apparently the people wiretapping have to park right in front of the building to get a signal, a parking lot a block or so away doesn't work. May I suggest they get some longer ranged wiretapping equipment (if it doesn't exist it ought to exist)? 

I think this has to do with giving the audience an obvious visual in movies. A lot of the challenge in writing good dialogue and scenes for movies (speaking purely as an observer here) seems to be letting the audience know what's going on without making it so blatant that it becomes stupid.

Also, with heist and spy movies set in the modern times, it makes sense not to show how real-life security works.

I think you are right.
Why was "the A-team" always taken prison in a room filled with welding gear and machines? Why could MacGyver whip up a way to escape using household material that containes a small amount of the chemicals actually needed? Why (and this is a really weird one) are the bad girls and/or loose women usually called Amber?
Why does the informer has to keep the villain on the phone for more than 1 minute? Does it actually take 1 minute to find out the whereabouts of the villain? Or does this allow the villain to have a monologue?
Thanks to programms like "mythbusters" a lot of these myths have been tested.
With movies (and I guess the same goes for story writing) it's all about planting small clues of what is going to happen. You want the element of surprise, but not the WTF-experience. In hindsight you should have know what would happen.
You also want the story to be believable, but not 100% acurate. This would only help wrong-doers in their plan. The same reason why whenever there is a phonenumber in a movie, the digits always start with 555. Imaginairy phonenumbers to prevent idiots to actually call the number.

If you haven't already, read The Loo Sanction by Trevanian (aka. Rodney William Whitaker), which is widely regarded as a classic of airport-paperback badass-assassin-spy literature (although it was actually meant as a spoof of Trevanian's earlier The Eiger Sanction, itself intended as a spoof of the entire genre.) The reason I mention it here is that The Loo Sanction contains a detailed depiction of an art-gallery burglary, and shortly after the Italian edition was released, Milan police questioned Mr. Whitaker in connection with an art theft which followed the exact method he had described. Mr. Whitaker apparently made a point of including less detail in subsequent novels.

[Birdnest]

Part of the reason for the way things are shown in movies, is that people have come to expect it to be that way.

I spent a little time in the hacker comunity ... << snip >>

Simply fascinating!   

Nothing beats a slightly psychotic dog that'll bark at everything (including the basic beef steak).  Now I know what chihuahuas are for!