"On a sunny morning on October 19 2025, four men allegedly walked into the world's most-visited museum and left, minutes later, with crown jewels worth 88 million euros ($101 million). The theft from Paris' Louvre Museum-one of the world's most surveilled cultural institutions-took just under eight minutes. Visitors kept browsing. Security didn't react (until alarms were triggered). The men disappeared into the city's traffic before anyone realized what had happened."
"Investigators later revealed that the thieves wore hi-vis vests, disguising themselves as construction workers. They arrived with a furniture lift, a common sight in Paris's narrow streets, and used it to reach a balcony overlooking the Seine. Dressed as workers, they looked as if they belonged. This strategy worked because we don't see the world objectively. We see it through categories-through what we expect to see. The thieves understood the social categories that we perceive as "normal" and exploited them to avoid suspicion."
On October 19, 2025, four men entered the Louvre and left within eight minutes with crown jewels worth 88 million euros while visitors continued browsing and security initially failed to respond. The men wore hi-vis vests, used a furniture lift to access a balcony, and relied on appearing as construction workers to avoid suspicion. The performance of normality allowed their actions to slip from notice by leveraging everyday categories. AI systems for facial recognition and suspicious-activity detection similarly rely on learned patterns rather than objective reality, absorbing cultural categories and biases that create exploitable surveillance blind spots.
Read at Ars Technica
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