Tap and Go causes crime: duh

Ken Lay says that in the last year in Victoria, 11500 extra crimes caused by Tap and Go cards have meant that the crime rate in Victoria has gone up (5%) rather than down.  These additional “crimes of deception” and are apparently tying up police.

It’s slack. Totally slack. There’s no control over it. And what are we finding? There’s been a huge spike in different offences committed to facilitate it; cars being broken into, mail stolen, handbags grabbed, purely because of industry introducing a new practice without any regard to security.

We have taken the view we should be taking on industry over this because our concern is they’ve introduced new practices with no regard to the implications on security and there’s no prevention measures, which is at times bogging down our members in work and time that could be better spent on some really serious type of investigations or responding to critical issues.

Assistant Commissioner Stephen Fontana

And the ABA says “no ways!” and says that dollar value of fraud is down since chip-in-card (neglecting that this isn’t about that) but allowing that losses following theft are up 35% (to only $20m/year).  And ignores all the crime that would be associated with obtaining the cards.