Summary: Facebook account required for bicycle theft victims to see whether their bike was recovered by Brussels police

A bicycle was stolen in Brussels (one among many). The Brussels police shortly thereafter recovered 74 stolen bikes. Instead of announcing this on their official openly public website, the announcement was jailed in the exclusive private walled-garden of Facebook, where non-members are denied viewing access and where opening an account just to view the post is preconditioned on obtaining a mobile phone and then trusting Facebook with that number.

Does a theft victim have to go through all the hoops of patronising Facebook in order to find out if their property was recovered by police? The victim went to the police station to find out. The front desk officer said if the serial number is still on the bike and also previously reported stolen, and the report also included the serial number, then there's no problem because the database of stolen bikes is accessible to all police nationwide. They can query the serial number of the recovered bike and see if it matches any report in the country.

"Does a bicycle theft victim in Brussels have to compromise their ethics, dance for Facebook and attempt to solve the Google CAPTCHA just to see if their property was recovered?"But what if the serial number had been removed? This is where everything falls apart. In some cases, it's simply a sticker. Descriptions and/or pics of recovered bikes are only accessible in the city the bike was recovered in. So if someone steals a bike in Brussels and they go to Antwerp, and the they get raided in Antwerp, Brussels police have no access to the inventory of recovered bikes in Antwerp.

The Brussels front desk officer had no idea about the 74 recovered bikes, and suggested the recovery must have been in a city other than Brussels. Yet we know the article said the recovery was in Brussels, but non-Facebook members are blocked from even viewing the Facebook page.

Does a bicycle theft victim in Brussels have to compromise their ethics, dance for Facebook and attempt to solve the Google CAPTCHA just to see if their property was recovered?

This story was censored

This story was originally posted in Reddit but was censored by “Octave”, the moderator of r/Brussels. ⬆