Right on!!
Thanks to everyone who has gone down there over the last few weeks and to Howard Kaplan for organizing the energy into useful methods yielding awesome results.
We gotta make sure the peeps at McDonalds are not alone. This article kinda makes you a target.
OK, let's slowly sort through some of the problems with the Tribune story. Not only is the McDonald's outed as the "nerve center" of stolen bike recovery efforts, but Howard and others are identified by name and thechainlink.org is revealed as the online community where these efforts were organized. For those who were paranoid early on about anyone monitoring the site for information, they now know exactly where to go to do so, and I would remind everyone that they can--among other information--easily get Howard's telephone number by doing so. It may be somewhat unlikely that any of the people stealing the bikes will see this article, but the vendors are not only likely to see it, they are also likely to have someone come up to them at the Swap and say "hey, I read about the stolen bike stuff in the Tribune." As much as this may be great press, it has also rendered what might have been an effective stealth operation completely transparent. I would advise that Howard delete any posts with his phone number at the very least, and consider making the task force group closed discussions.
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