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Stolen Laptop Calls In! - Will Police Act?
broswell asks: "We rent computer equipment and occasionally our equipment gets stolen. I wrote a little VBS script that calls our webserver every hour (script below) and installed it on our laptops. Sure enough, some laptops went missing. One of the stolen laptops is now calling in from a Verizon Internet account which appears to be in a neighboring town. The Baltimore City Police grudgingly filled out a police report 'so we could collect insurance' but don't seem willing to subpoena Verizon, find the address of the end user, recover tha laptop and prosecute the thief. They seem clueless. The Maryland State police has a computer crimes unit. The have a clue, but they claim they don't have jurisdiction. It is not about the money (our customer signed for the computers and will pay for the stolen items), we just want justice." With all of the necessary information in hand of the proper authorities, how likely is it that the stolen laptop will be recovered?
For those interested, here is the script the laptop used to report itself back to its owners:
Set objShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
Set objScriptExec = objShell.Exec("ipconfig /all")
strIpConfig = objScriptExec.StdOut.ReadAll
myvar = "send=" + strIpConfig
do until 0=1
on error resume next
a=HTTPPost("http://www.yourtrackinghost.com/cgi-bin/locator.pl",myvar)
WScript.Sleep 3600000
LOOP
Function HTTPPost(sUrl, sRequest)
set oHTTP = CreateObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP")
oHTTP.open "POST", sUrl,false
oHTTP.setRequestHeader "Content-Type", "application/x-www-form-urlencoded"
oHTTP.setRequestHeader "Content-Length", Len(sRequest)
oHTTP.send sRequest
HTTPPost = oHTTP.responseText
End Function
For those interested, here is the script the laptop used to report itself back to its owners:
Set objShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
Set objScriptExec = objShell.Exec("ipconfig /all")
strIpConfig = objScriptExec.StdOut.ReadAll
myvar = "send=" + strIpConfig
do until 0=1
on error resume next
a=HTTPPost("http://www.yourtrackinghost.com/cgi-bin/locator.pl",myvar)
WScript.Sleep 3600000
LOOP
Function HTTPPost(sUrl, sRequest)
set oHTTP = CreateObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP")
oHTTP.open "POST", sUrl,false
oHTTP.setRequestHeader "Content-Type", "application/x-www-form-urlencoded"
oHTTP.setRequestHeader "Content-Length", Len(sRequest)
oHTTP.send sRequest
HTTPPost = oHTTP.responseText
End Function
If the police won't do anything, call the local press.
Your best hope is that now that you have the IP you can hack into the laptop and install a BT server with lots of nice pop music and videos. Then report the sharing site to the RIAA and watch them take this sucka down.
"They seem clueless. "
Yeah. Seems like it. Now try seeing it from their POV.
For instance, in this case:
http://www.laptopical.com/lojack-for-laptop.html
"Proof-positive of LoJack's power comes from such stories as the one out of William Penn University in Iowa. A student there had a college laptop stolen. Absolute Software was promptly notified. And their recovery experts there soon tracked the laptop down to the phone line that the notebook was hooked into the Internet on. The Des Moines Police Department was notified, and officers promptly put down their donuts and coffee and swooped in on the missing PC."
The lojack program seems to do the exact thing yours does, but then again, perhaps because it is "official", the police may take the information more seriously.
I had a laptop and 2 desktops stolen from my van in the parking lot next to the police station in downtown KC. One of my side windows as well as the windows of 3 other vehicles were broken out. The police department couldnt even be bothered to walk downstairs to file a report and told me I would need to phone it in, I called and the detective said I wasnt likely to get it back but he would get back to me. Later that night after I was home my work aim account logged itself online. I got the IP called the police department with the info, was called back the next day and reprimanded for "interfering in police work". Anyway I stopped interfering, 2 years later and I guess they are still busy doing "police work" because I have never heard back from them. I guess I learned my lesson, dont bother. Now when I have to be downtown I just leave the doors unlocked, its alot cheaper than replacing the windows. I've actually managed to make a game out of it, I no longer have to take old computers to the salvage place, I just load them in the van and take them downtown.
Think they understood the VBS? Now I know that you didn't directly throw that VB at them, but still.
Explain that your computers connect to the work network and log in, and you noticed that there was a computer trying to "hack in" from another town. Your security people found that the computer was your own computer, one that had been reported stolen.
Spin it in a way they'll understand.
What language is that? And why assume the thief won't just install or reinstall the OS?
Start a blog. Link to it from /. (just post a comment). Get worldwide exposure. Post the IP address and whatever information you can find on the user (without resorting to illegal means). Get people interested in your cause, and get your local paper to publish something. It may piss the police off, but they'll actually do something by then, hopefully.
"Better to be vulgar than non-existent" -Bev Henson
Yes it costs money to employ police officers and to have specially trained computer crimes units.
... "they'll get a nice new replacement anyway, why bother tracking the crooks, it's only one laptop".
But, here's the kicker, we already paid for such things.
So, what this amounts to is some police officer saying
Of course the problem is probably one of short-termism in that tax-payers won't (or aren't perceived to) value more money spent on law enforcement now and so long term even more needs to be spent as crooks continue to thieve and without any come back more crooks get in on the game, hey and someone stole my full-stop
grand theft, although it contains the word 'grand' means more substantial theft than 1000, and the value is extremely variable on a per community basis..
o 7=&o5=&o1=1&o6=&o4=&o3=&s=grand%20theft
http://wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?o2=&o0=1&
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Lets assume the laptop got stolen and the os remained still there is a problem with the script, if the laptop is connected inside a private network (most of the time these days many house holds are in a nated environment.
ipconfig will only give you the private IP information,
you will need to modify the server side script to store SERVER['REMOTE_HOST'] to get the proper outside IP. and if thats the case why bother with all the form post and ip configs, just call a preconfigured url with just GET let the server track the REMOTE_HOST
http://iesucks.org
The Police seem to be somewhat arbitrary on what they will and won't investigate. A recent anecdote from my part of the world (took place in Kelowna BC, Canada) is interesting: A guy goes to a filling station, pumps $100 in gas, and drives away. The gas station has the guy's face, and his license plates clear as day on security video. They phone the police and get told by the RCMP that they will not follow up this seemingly open and shut case, the reason? The RCMP says it is "too much work" to investigate every pump-and-run, and it is the gas station's fault anyway because they don't require payment up front.
Support the mob or mysteriously disappear.
do until 0=1
on error resume next
Yikes.
That'll get there attention. Any local police would love the chance at seeing themselves in the headlines as having caught a terrorist.
Shit...they'll call in every resource they can lay their hands on.
Or it may be all of the paper work. It may be the same amount of it for one laptop as it is for 100 of them.
You could always call the FBI and have them charged for breaking into secured computer systems, being:
1. The laptop
2. The server
We had a sort of similar case... Our credit card info was stolen. We called the credit card company and the companies through which merchandise was ordered. We got the IP address that things were ordered through. The IP address matched up between various merchants. We then whois'd that IP address and it was for a hotel in the Bahamas. Well, we told the secret service (who are the ones responsible for wire fraud) and they said 'well, thanks but we won't do anything about it because it just isn't enough damage.' Thanks a million! Our tax dollars at work. I know it was the Bahamas but isn't that technically part of the US?
with its built-in camera... mug shot? no we don't need that, we have a printscreen. lets go get him.
Now when will they put a GPS in these things?
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
First, try and verify that the police department isn't doing anything about it. Talk to a supervisor in a day or two and see where this case is going. Then, if nothing is being done, consult an attorney and ask what your options are. I know that most police forms have complain forms to fill out if you want to start making a stink. Work your way up the ladder, their IS a chain of accountability and if you're persistant and cause enough pain, someone will make the phone call to Verizon or whomever and get the name and address on the account.
If that fails to produce justice, follow up with the attorney and file civil suit against the police agency. You handed them about 3/4 of the case when you produced an IP address, they should have been willing and capable of filling in the missing paperwork and whatnot.
- Sometimes you're the pidgeon, sometimes you're the statue.
The only way you will get you laptop back is if the people responsible are caught speeding while wardriving.
Police departments these days are mainly interested in are catching speeders to meet 'quotas'.
Sadly, most cops today are assigned the role of 'stealth tax collectors' that generate additional revenue streams for local and city governments.
I had my car stolen when I was in school. 12 year old Honda Accord. Didn't think anyone would bother to steal the POS so I didn't insure against theft (money saving student). After it got stolen I called the cops and the first thing they asked me was whether the car was insured against theft. Since it wasn't, they wouldn't even take a report! Can you believe that? Anyway, I found the car a couple of days later 5 parking spots away from where I left it. The steering column was busted. There was a pair of size 9 rollerblades in the trunk (thief with size 9 feet?) and six jugs of bleach (???).
This was in local papers: a woman here in town (Ottawa, ON) had her house repeatedly broken into. After reporting to the cops and complaining that she has to buy a new lock each time they told her to leave the door unlocked!
..from the cops POV: "hey we can use x-money from our budget to go get some stupid civvies laptop, OR, we can get these new shiny black boots from acme police supply and some of the new 150,000 watt tasers! And with every sale they are throwing in a nifty black badge cover!"
Yep, I know some cops, that's how they think and act. They *don't care* for the most part, especially on small amounts of stolen items. No promotion potential, no newspaper "tough on terrorism/narcotics" coverage, etc. There's little profit in it for them, just boring drudge work, and they are really lazy guys for the most part. I mean lazy. wired, but lazy when it comes to anything like real work..
The police business is a growing profitable industry, the big money is in protecting the establishment (the mayor's or chief's laptop would be recovered immediately for example, or if it was personal like one of their own's relatives), and in large drug cases and other high profile cases of that nature. They don't like or want to deal with "little crime" for the most part.
In Ohio currently, below five hundred dollars is petty theft...
1-499 = petty theft = misdemeanor
500-4,999 = theft = fifth degree felony
5,000-99,999 = grand theft = fourth degree felony
100,000-499,999 = aggravated theft of the third degree = (you guessed it) third degree felony
500,000-999,999 = aggravated theft of the second degree = second degree felony
999,999 and up = aggravated theft of the first degess = first degree felony
First off, nice job with the script. Now, take it a few steps further. Let that script connect as it is, but let the server return a status indicator as to whether or not the machine is stolen. If it is - let the script modify IE, Opera, and Firefox configuration settings to use a proxy installed on a server you own. Preferably a proxy that can be set to log EVERYTHING. Just wait for them to log into something with clear text username/password, like most e-mail accounts from major providers use. Shouldn't be much of a leap to get enough info on him/her to pinpoint their street address.
It's urban legend but I'm sure similar things happen in real life:
:).
Disgruntled soon-to-be-ex-wife sells husband's car or other stuff for pennies on the dollar.
Unless you are a pawn shop owner or otherwise "knowledgable," the fact you bought it cheap is not evidence you "knowingly" received stolen goods. However, you are still in possession of them and that's usually a misdemeanor. At best, you will be out whatever you paid the real crooks.
BTW, I've received working electronic goods for a very small fraction of their street value, usually because the owner wanted to do me a favor or he just wanted to get rid of the stuff. Now only if I could get a $1,000 laptop for 80% off
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
"So, what this amounts to is some police officer saying ... "they'll get a nice new replacement anyway, why bother tracking the crooks, it's only one laptop"."
One of the first things I learned in primary school was that most people in places of authority don't care about dispensing justice unless the incident directly affects them. They'll always rationalize their way out of having to do anything. If you want anything done, you have to call them out in front of a crowd so it makes them look like an asshole if they try to ignore you.
Someone broke in my home, stole my laptop, TV and an 80 pound safe. It was painful to see my AIM messagener come up saying someone just logged on under my account. All I could do is just change the passwords.
Few days latter, it looked like they got my checking account out of my safe and used it to pay the electric bill. Close to 800 bucks. I got the money back from the bank, but the cops did nothing with it.
People wonder why apathy and cynicism is chronic in our society.
If they had any brains, they'd have first taken the laptop to Anchorhead to have its memory erased, and that'd be the end of it.
Isn't Verison one of the companies that turned over customer records to the DoJ WITHOUT a warrant? And now they won't cooperate with a theft case... ...I say screw them. Call the local papers, call air america radio (Rachel Maddow and Rhandy Rhodes will snap this up), and get some SPOTLIGHT on this example of corporate hypocrisy! If Verison's stock tanks because of it...GOOD! The company MUST be held accountable for it's actions.
"Give Verizon a chance to be the good guy. Call their publicity department first. If they make excuses, then call local media."
Hi. I'm not sure which country you hail from, but here in the United States we have something called "due process". Verizon has to receive a supoena before disclosing that type of information. Does not matter how much a company wants to be the "good guy".
If they don't, they end up on the front page of the NY Times....
Rollerskates and 6 jugs of bleach???
:(
Sounds like a body with size 9 feet was disposed of to me.
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
You just better hope that they don't read slashdot.
-Michael, AKA Frankie.
net send IP_ADDR "Would you please return the laptop you stole? Please?"
:wq
He's running for Governor after all... might be good press to see this resolved !
http://www.martinomalley.com/content/26/contact-u
"Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech."--Benjamin Franklin
Nice script dude! Thanks for posting it on Slashdot... I might have missed it!
*deletes script from laptop hard drive*
So sad but true.
The space unintentionally left unblank.
As sad as it might be, the phone companies never release any information about a phone number, internet connection, or anything else without a search warrant. There are too many lawsuits and too much risk involved for the phone companies to give out information like this, even to law enforcement, without the appropriate legal paperwork to cover themselves.
For those of us who don't know what to do with a snippet of VBScript but would like to use this, how would one go about installing this? I presume it would be installed as a service so that it would run even if nobody logs in using one of the existing accounts on the machine? But how?
That cops are friggin useless. Just shoot whomever pisses you off, far more effective.
Or, tell them you have a new PCMCIA plugin card in it and it is supposed to report nitrogen levels in the atmosphere back to a server as hobby. Only now it's picking up lots of nitrates like the thief is handling lots and lots of bags of the stuff.
You might get your laptop back full of submachine gun holes, but at least the perp will get what he's due.
The cops won't help you recover a laptop, but when one goes missing from the Veterans Administration it becomes national news. You should have told them it had a ton of personal information about a large number of customers, or something.
Here's another double standard for you. The cops won't help you get your laptop back, but if you managed to track it down yourself, went to the guy's house, took it back and laid a beating on him, they couldn't arrest you fast enough for that.
I say get a lawyer and file a civil suit against John Doe, the person using that IP address at that time. Then you can subpoena Verizon's records yourself. Hey, if it's good enough for the RIAA...
Also, call your local news station and tell them about how the cops blew you off, and generally raise a stink until the police are forced to get off their fat asses and do their jobs.
If the cops won't help, see the tort of conversion. File a "john doe" civil suit. Once filed, your attorney would have subpoena power -- use it with Verizon to get the name, address, and phone number of the user associated with the IP. Verizon will have an entire department devoted to processing these types of requests -- you'll have no problem except figuring out what their number is. If you represent yourself, you may have to ask the court to issue the subpoena on your behalf. Once you have the identifier, amend your suit to name that party (probably keep the "john does" at least till you're certain you have all the people involved). Also check your states statutes, there may be something specifically related to your situation. The statutes are certainly available online free -- start at your state's homepage (somewhere burried of course).
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
That may be part of the problem. The police in the neighboring town get credit for the arrest. Your local police just get paperwork.
The neighboring town, meanwhile, doesn't have jurisdiction over the theft.
Aren't organizational boundaries fun?
You could try reporting a posession-of-stolen-property case at the neighboring town. If you have a lawyer on salary (don't try this by the hour) you could ask about filing a "John Doe" lawsuit for "conversion" and issuing the subpoena yourself. (That's not advice, I'm not a lawyer, all I said was to ask a real attorney).
Have you recieved any payout from an insurance company? If so, tell them you have information about the items. They may want to persue it themselves (they have their own lawyers on staff). Anything that can be recovered reduces their loss even if you keep the payout.
In the USA, in general...
You can't take shelter in the title to stolen goods, even if you bought the goods in good faith. (The title is void.) The real owner can come and take it back and leave you with nothing. Your course of action is then to sue the thief (if you can still find them) for the money you paid (if they are still solvent).
The law favors the real (true) owner in such cases.
(And before anyone says anything, yes, this is true only in cases of theft. Fraud is an entirely different crime; you give the good up willingly, even if you are misled. In that case, a good faith purchasor buying from the fraudster can acquire good title, even over the original owner.)
A preposition is a terrible thing to end a sentence with.
Unlike illegal Sandbaging for Speeders, solving property crimes don't make the City/State/etc any money, it cost money to investigate... Don't you know the police are nothing more then another source of revenue for the government??
I hate to be a hater, but... you're in Maryland, what'd you expect? Maryland cops are almost as bad as the DC cops in terms of inneptitude and corruption. Between the high violent crime rates in both DC and Maryland, the police haven't got the time or motivation to deal with a seemingly petty offence - in comparision - like a stolen laptop from a company.
No, it's not right. But it's the way it is. You should fight it, though - but you won't likely get results. Still, trying to get a response is akin to helping someone when they're being raped - it might be against your interests of self-preservation, but you couldn't live with yourself if you stood by and let the injustice and abuse of power go unquestioned.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
First you should make a video that explains in layman terms how the phone home feature works, and your efforts to find the guy, try making it look like it could potentially be broadcasted to large number of people. When filing the crime report, give them the video too.
©God
My current situation: http://www.tronster.com/missing/
My friend's 3 kids was "kidnapped" yesterday by their father here in Baltimore, their location is unknown.
After a 4 day custody trial, which ended Friday, he was orded to turn them over at a Police station at 8pm on 8/18/06. He neve showed.
I've spent the day riding with her to and from multiple Police stations as well as the Towson commissioner's office. Everywhere we go we hear the same thing, "Without a bench warrant our hands are tied."
Today I learned 2 things:
1. It's nearly impossible to get a hold of a judge on a Saturday
2. Commissioner's can be downright cruel and unhelpful
While working with the Baltimore police, most all have been very friendly (many have agreed with us about Commissioner's!) but none of them are able to do more than write down what we say. We're quickly losing hope; and even if an amber alert goes out... it may be too late if he has left the country. I have almost no faith in the Baltimore legal system and how it interacts with the police is non-existant. (Note: I blame this interaction between the two, not the Police themselves.)
Regardless, I wanted to tred on the border of being on topic as the Baltimore police and their inability to act on this may cause us to lose 3 children to an unstable man. If any Slashdoter's have 5 seconds, please click on the web-page below I made, and let me know if you see him or the kids.
With luck and more leg work, we'll get the amber alert up ASAP.
http://www.tronster.com/missing/
Don't use microsoft products, idiot.
We rent computer equipment and occasionally our equipment gets stolen. I wrote a little VBS script that calls our webserver every hour (script below) and installed it on our laptops. Sure enough, some laptops went missing.
Was the laptop stolen from your office, or from a client? Are the laptops set to automatically log in a user account, or do you provide the username/password to the clients? Is the script set to run on startup or login?
If stolen from a client, and you give them username/password (on paper? with laptop?) then the thief took the info with the laptop. If you just verbally give the password, then the thief got the password from the client -- are they in cahoots?
My understanding is that the FBI tends to deal with computer thefts better then local police.
- Upload any non-trivial IP from the laptop to the server, since that's probably the last chance you have to keep it.
- Taunt your local police. ("Hi, I'm sending this email from a stolen computer and i just wanted you to know that you're never going to catch me because you're all a bunch of fat lazy slobs. Crime does pay, bitches!")
- Taunt the theives' local police. ("Wanna buy a laptop? I got three more just like this one, ready to go, super cheap.")
- Install a key logger, get his credentials. Post things all over the internet with the theif's ID (e.g. his next MySpace diary entry will be "so my friends and I stole some computer gear last week...")
- Append random obscenities into every email that exits the computer ("P.S. I fucked your mom too.")
- Random pseudo-malware "attacks" on police station web servers - nothing that would bring the server down, but enough to take the IT department's attention. It is possible that their heads are so far up there asses that nothing can reach their brains, but I think there's a fair chance that their IT depeartment can still get through to them.
- To be continued...
Surely there is more to add to that list. Remember - you have plausible deniability. Your computer was stolen by an egomaniac hacker who loves to taunt police and do unspeakable things to sheep.However I do recommend against the P2P thing suggested earlier. That might just move your computer from the theif to an evidence locker while the RIAA does their paperwork. That sounds counterproductive.
Call in a tip to CrimeStoppers. Not only will the cops get to feel like they're playing detective and actually do something about it, but maybe you'll get a reward for it.
Unfortunately, not everyone's nearest news station is that local.
This crap is -so- common with local police departments.
:/
I had a guy break into my house after a) threatening to break into my house and b) stealing what he threatened to steal from my house (along with a ton of valuable electronics).
Did the police even knock on his door? Nope.
Sure makes you feel safe
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
Some punks broke in to my car and tried to steal it. They failed, which says they sucked because it was an old Jeep that was easy to hotwire. They rifled through all the shit I had in it, but decided none of it was worth stealing (they were correct). The police came and took finger prints from likely places. I think they were mine, probably, but they tried anyhow.
In some states, you can use a certain level of force (threatening to use it will likely be enough) to recover your stolen property. Find out all the details with a john doe lawsuit others speak of, and go armed and with company.
You'll at least get the justice of scaring the shit out of them.
of course, corporate exec types may not be thrilled with this approach.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
I actually have a copy of my county payroll database (name, position, salary, SSN...); I should copy it to all my computers, so if one of them gets stolen...
(well, it's kinda out of date data, from the late '90's; and yes, I had it for a legitimate reason, and yes, it's encrypted, but I'm not gonna track down that one file out of all my old backups)
The first thing to do would be to talk to your lawyer and find out if the police actually can do what you want in your jurisdiction. If so, file a complaint with the police department's Internal Affairs office. See what happens with that first. It's possible that some individual cops are just being lazy, and that might be all it takes to motivate them.
http://outcampaign.org/
Do move fast - if the thief sold it to somebody, it might stay there a while, but if they're just checking whether it works or seeing what they can find, they may fence it or pawn it.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Of course they have no interest in helping you. There's no profit in it. The US legal and law enforcement systems are about profit, politics and powertrips, not justice. If it's worth it to you, pay a lawyer to get the address from Verizon and then hire some bounty hunters to retrieve it. It probably isn't. A more cost effective form of justice would be to modify your script to hard format the media in case of theft, and would ensure your data is protected from abuse.
I would go to the DA's office for your area and try there first. I'm a cop and its possible that they dont believe theres a crime as opposed to a civil matter. If you willingly let that person take posession of the property it very well could be civil if they dont return it as opposed to criminal, in which case the police can't do a thing. With rental property the public and the police often have very different opinions as to what is what.
what media sources do you read that you think anyone else here believes guns have any relationship to this discussion? ...much less that the Democratic party is any different from the Republican party on the issue of gun control except for lip service... hint: neither bunch believes the Constitution or its Amendments are worth the paper their written on -- both are your enemy and you help those that are against you by singling out one over the other
Sorry to hear about your situation.
I've spent a few days riding along with cops on their shifts to see what things are like and I've seen this problem first hand. On one shift the cop I was hanging out with dealt with 3 seperate incidents of children not being handed over to the other parent of a divorced marriage when they were suppose to be.
Each time the officer had to explain that he had no power and that the mother/father would have to go to court to get the judge to issue a warrant for the delinquent parent's arrest.
He would do his best, call the offending parent and negotiate with them trying to get them to stick to the custody agreement, but if they refused, there was absolutely nothing he could do. And these parents had court documents saying that the child/children were supposed to be in their custody at such and such a time. It didn't seem to matter.
Now, all these incidents were either miscommunications or spiteful parents. But in the case of an actual kidnapping, if they left on a Friday afternoon they would have until Monday morning before anything would be done to them. And you're right, by then they'd be in Italy.
Next year in Mecca!
This is tooooo easy. Here's what you do:
Tell the police that if they don't act, you'll get a subpoena, a gun, and go in and personally repossess your stolen laptop yourself.
They'll be interested, all of a sudden like.
C//
Why not call the insurance company and tell them what has happened. Most likely, they would rather pressure the police to track down the theif rather than simply pay the claim.
I've been thinking about installing a phone-home system on my laptops myself. Last year I had two stolen from my home. I also had my car stolen and stripped a few months ago. Boston cops are not too helpful either. They just grunt, shrug and fill out forms as slowly as possible.
As opposed to Republicans who constantly reward their abysmal incompetence and flagrant negligence with more and more funding...
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
"Officer my computer says it's IP address is 192.168.1.10."
"So does mine. Does that mean I have your missing laptop?"
Wouldn't traceroute myserver.mycompany.tld provide better information?
Any other suggestions for improving the information from the script?
Do you really think Verizon's log data has any _legal_ value, it wasn't designed for that purpose and can easily be disproven to be of any legal value. I myself got the police after me because they thought log data was valid (it turned out to be complete gibberish). So just don't
A couple of years ago, a laptop (among other items) was stolen from my car. Didn't have any password protection on my user account (nothing good on there) and I had my MSN and ICQ accounts set to autosignin.
About a week after it was stolen, I came home from University to find that my desktop computer had been signed out of MSN cause someone else had signed in. Turns out someone with my laptop was coming on as me and being annoying to some of my friends. Got a webserver set up that I had access to the logs from, and put on a certain page that no-one else knew about. One of my friends dropped it into the conversation, and bam, laptop user clicks on it.
I made a couple of sworn statements to the police and took a long time convincing them that I had something useful. Took about 10 weeks for them to act on the information, and unfortunately I was away from home when they did. They traced the IP back to an account registered to some bloke a couple of hours away, and they had him under some suspicion of receiving stolen goods but never caught him with any. So, the police raided and got my laptop (and others) back. They also found a considerable qauntity of drugs, which I guess helps seal a conviction for something.
The person was aout the 4th or 5th person to handle my laptop within the week, and I believe the police have never nailed the people who originally stole it (over 2 years ago).
The person actually on MSN that we used to take the bait was this guy's 13 year old nephew. When I got the laptop back it still had all my files on it (although the used a black marker to try to fill in some engraving I had under the battery with my details) and they'd also set up their own user account. This kid had his MSN signin info, all his emails, yada yada yada. Never signed into MSN as him or looked at his stuff, I shoulda. Just reformatted it and started again - never know what shit they had on there.
So, yes, it can be done. But it takes A LOT of work to convince some low-level police grunt that an eye-pea address has some credibility (I was helped cause I had set my browser to return a really random useragent string, so we pretty much knew it was my laptop).
There's your solution! Tell the cops that the stolen computer was a vital part of the only donut-making machine in town.
Look, don't do a thing. Stay in the system. Don't take control of the computer using scripts, viruses or anything else. When you get outside the normal path of things you connect yourself to the spider web of laws that cover absolutely everything. Try to do anything to that computer over phone lines and, even though it makes sense that you can because you own the computer, Homeland Security or a myriad of anti-hacking laws may apply. You may find yourself in trouble for trying to disable your own computer. The law is an ass. Drop it. Keep your head down. Take the insurance check and move on. That's what the system expects. Do it.
The Good News is we located the location of your laptop by the current IP and MAC. The Bad News is that its currently connected on your own personal wireless router, dumbass. We'll send the police right over to pick both of you up.
A little while ago, a couple of employees at the company I work for as the sole IT person decided to strike out on their own in a competing business. At the time we had no non-comp agreements or things like that.
These employees were'nt able to take data directly from the CRM/ERM software, but what they were able to do was take screenshots and email them to their personal email accounts. Alas, we were naive and believed these employees when they said that them starting a competing business was baseless rumours so we didn't discover this until after the fact as I was searching through the employees archived email.
As a result of the email search, I had a small binder full of evidence complete with message headers of this as well as their discussions with various lawyers and accountants. Amazingly, even though they had hotmail accounts that they could access from work, they used their work-provided email for this purpose.
The local cops didn't return our calls and the district attorneys said that while a crime was comitted, it wasn't worth their time to prosecute.
Nice.
tinfoilmedia
Wow, you two sound like those pro-wrestling commentators/fans.
Supporting one side or the other, but always supporting the WWE.
Just brilliant. Really.
The only people the cops will really listen to are the ones who control their budget. Get in touch with your city council member (or whoever your representative is in whatever form your local government takes). It also doesn't hurt to take it to everyone else in elective office, so contact your mayor, member of Congress, your Senators, etc. As others have suggested, starting a blog would be a good idea. You can publish your correspondence with your elected officials (make sure they know you're doing that, since it adds to the pressure). Get anyone else you can find to write letters too. One letter from a constituent gets attention, but 20 or 50 gets a LOT of attention, particularly if they're all unique (i.e. not a form letter). A friend of mine orchestrated a letter-writing campaign on an issue (a complaint about the horrific architecture of a new library) to our local city council. Just a couple dozen letters got the council and mayor very worried that the public was about to revolt, and they called a hearing on the matter.
The Maryland State police has a computer crimes unit.
I first read this (I'm not normally dyslexic) as "The Maryland police state..."
Om
If I see this blurry man with three blurry children, I'll call the police right away.
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
Since insurance companies are so good at preventing payouts, why not put all the evidence to them and state that you don't want to file a claim as the laptop is still recoverable, but that the police are unwilling to cooperate and that you'll need to file a claim within x weeks if the situation is unresolved. In a way it's too bad it's not a higher value item which might be cause for more action on each party's part. -Pete
Is this individual concerned with those that break other laws that he witnesses like speeding? I would bet no. So, leave the police work to the police. Consistancy helps build the case for character and mentioning that you want justice is dubious at best and does not mean that authorities have to do jack shit. There is a cost-benefit or ROI that all prosecutors and police must determine in what they are going to investigate. As it is, not all speeders are busted and I would guess it is much less than 0.1% that are busted for traffic related infractions like running a red light, a stop sign, incorrectly changing lanes, driving in the shoulder to get around traffic, etc. Aren't these type of situations more dangerous than a person that "stole" a laptop as these kinds of infractions lead to accidents with astronomical costs. Do you see the police monitoring all roadways to make sure traffic is completely safe so as to prevent something that can be both life threatening and cost much more money than a laptop that costs little less than $1000 before you buy it? Your laptop is a relic in 6 months at most.
A good question might be to ask your boss if he considers spending the company's money tracking down the laptop. I am guessing somewhere along the management line, they would rather have you write code than spending company resources doing crap like this. This is why your company made an agreement with the customer they loaned the equipment so that they will pay for the laptop if said laptop is lost.
Here's an email I just sent to questions@baltimorepolice.org:
2 0220
http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/08/20/0
Why won't the Baltimore Police Department recover this business's stolen property?
This is a black eye to Baltimore's reputation with business, especially small business. How can you attract tech savvy businesses and young professional taxpayers if you have a "who cares" attitude for simple solvable crimes?
Regards,
Sean O
My father is a blogger.
How do you know the laptop wasn't lost by said customer? I would be interested to know where the law lands with regards to finding a lost item that was carelessly left somewhere and something that is stolen. There seems to be a big difference, yet your presumption is that it was stolen. Was a police report filed for stolen goods and indeed a crime had taken place or did someone have the good fortune of stumbling across the hardware because of carelessness?
It is pretty amazing the presumptiousness in several parts on this board. One, people presume to understand the police department. Two, people are presumptious about their notion of justice. Three, people presume to know the details of how said computer was obtained which may or may not matter.
I had a similar problem years ago here in California, where a small-town police department did nothing when a roommate wiped my hard drive in retaliation for a stupid personal matter. After a bit of digging, I uncovered the relevant piece of the state's penal code that outlaws such action and reported it to the cops. They immediately jumped into action once they realized it was a criminal offense. Law enforcement doesn't necessarily have every law memorized.
I'll make it really simple for you. So simple, even a cop can understand it. 1. Laptop is stolen. 2. You have an address where the stolen property is. 3. Cop goes to retrieve stolen property. Whether or not the perp is charged with a crime, there is no excuse and no reason for the cops not to recover the stolen property for the victim.
Poster said the laptop in question is a rental. All the 'thief' did is fail to return it on time. Technically, he only owes money for the rent to cover the time it is in his possession.
I would ask if the company has an AUP that says something like "All equipment kept 30 days past the agreed end rental date shall be considered stolen and reported to proper authorities". Even with some half-arsed statement like that, MOST PDs will see the issue as a civil matter.
You might try the county sheriff if the local PD won't help. I once saw on the news (Chicago area) where a video store owner was trying to get some tapes back. The local PD blew him off, so he went to the sheriff who turned him on to some little used tactic where a citizen can approach a grand jury to get an arrest warrant. Well, the grand jury issued the warrant, and a beat faced man returned those tapes PDQ. IANAL, YMMV, YADDA, YADDA, YADDA.
This script aint no proof. You should try using a 3rd party service that do this job. New Dells have the ability to call back, and this program is in the Dell BIOS. However then you pay for a service that policy probably can trust.
You have no proof. You just have a claim that you have logs that some computer sent info to your webserver. Even my mother could fake that log.
Suggestion for your next version: Once the laptop is identified as missing, the website answers with a trigger that enables audio recording and keysniffing. Instead of simply checking in every hour, it starts uploading recorded data.
File a civil suit. Name defendants as both police jurisdictions, Verizon, and Does 1 to x where Doe 1 is the thief, Doe 2 is the person currently in possession, Doe 3 is the Verizon account holder, Doe 4 is the property owner, etc. Ask for an emergency seizure order to preserve evidence/prevent disclosure of trade secrets/avoid identity theft/etc. Any lawyer can whip up the papers in a few hours and you have enough evidence that a court should be able to assist. Of course, if a civil seizure reveals evidence of a crime, the local prosecutor(s) would have the option of filing charges too.
Even if police won't help, a civil tort is an official, sanctioned way of seeking redress for financial losses.
Apparently internet cookies help in the search also? I am unclear on how this works.
Your linked-to post is quite right, and worth a repost. IANAL but used to just about everything but appear in court working in a small law office in Maryland about 15 years ago. I believe specifically what this guy needs after getting a subpoena for the John Doe's ID is a "writ of replevin" in which the court may order the Sheriff to seize the property after an ex-parte pre-trial show-cause hearing.l /dccv04br.html - for specific MD instructions and http://www.courts.state.md.us/district/forms/civil /dccv04.pdf - the form.
See:
http://www.courts.state.md.us/district/forms/civi
If you are not in MD you may make a federal case out of it; the U.S. Marshals serve these writs, too. You might find that has drawbacks - you really need a lawyer's advice, not Slashdot's.
>>anagama (611277) Sunday August 20, @01:07AM (#15943034) wrote:
If the cops won't help, see the tort of conversion [wikipedia.org]. File a "john doe" civil suit. Once filed, your attorney would have subpoena power -- use it with Verizon to get the name, address, and phone number of the user associated with the IP. Verizon will have an entire department devoted to processing these types of requests -- you'll have no problem except figuring out what their number is. If you represent yourself, you may have to ask the court to issue the subpoena on your behalf. Once you have the identifier, amend your suit to name that party (probably keep the "john does" at least till you're certain you have all the people involved). Also check your states statutes, there may be something specifically related to your situation. The statutes are certainly available online free -- start at your state's homepage (somewhere burried of course).
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
If you have a unix machine just setup a cron job that runs the command: wget http://www.yourtrackinghost.com/cgi-bin/locator.pl
I have all my computers (and my print server) registered with dyndns. In case of theft, dyndns.org will have the latest IP address. Moreover, all the PCs run vnc server and the Unix ones run sshd, so in case of theft I'll be able to get in, snoop, install keyloggers, etc. (I'll have to check how legal it is to snoop on a thief that uses one's hardware).
We recently discovered a burning pile of personal effects next to the dumpster at the office. The items included a purse, wallet with some ID, personal mail, make-up and work clothing and name badge (from a local restaurant). Naturally, we called the police. The officer arrived, poked around a little bit with his foot, then turned around to get back into his car and leave. Incredulous, we asked what he was doing and why he wasn't collecting what was obviously evidence of some kind of criminal activity and he told us that "the detectives wouldn't like it he brought the material back to the station because it would get the other evidence dirty."
slashdot broke my sig
Fucking pigs won't do anything about a stolen car for fuck's sake. Wait a minute, I forgot, they'll tell you to "call your insurance company." What the hell makes you think they're going to bust down a door to retrieve your damn laptop?
It's all about money, you see. If the person inside the house where the laptop was "phoning home" from had a half-dozen or so cannabis plants, then they could seize the property through civil forfeiture, so they would go balls to the wall. They'd roll up in their armored personnel carriers wearing their jackboots and Nazi bucket helmets and armed to the teeth with machine guns. "We gets to bust us a grow ahp! We ah'll gits bigger gunz! SIEG HEIL MEIN BUSH!!!"
But your laptop, the one that contains all of your data and that you worked so hard to get? Gone. Forget it. "Sorry, we just don't have the manpower." Well, they have the goddamn manpower to line the street with cops after every professional sporting event. Oh, and to have "emphasis patrols" out there to pull over anyone who's had a drink or two or might be going two miles an hour over the limit. But for something that will actually help someone? No way.
For some reason most cops, I've noticed, will take your complain much more seriously if you're a large male, especially if you've got a thick push-broom moustache.
one can expect the cops to put the common civilian on the lowest priority.
Profits before people.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
All the cops have seen The Matrix. They saw what happened to the cops in the first few minutes:
"No, Lieutenant. Your men are already dead."
The problem here is unfortunate to start off with, but in all honesty, i see some one doing all of the 'thinking' work for me would be fantastic if i was a police officer. but alas, this is not a perfect world. but there are a few alternative things to think about if these police were actually dedicated to solving a computer crime. more than likely you took away their mojo (for lack of a better word). you solved the case for them, you can provide them with all the details (as much as you can in legal avenues) that you are able to get. case solved pretty much. To be honest, it really annoys me that when it comes to a type of computer crime, the majority of times people see them being solved is on a TV show, and most of the time what they talk about is a bunch of bs in the first place. All in all, tell the cops youll take it to the public for letting criminals run free under their jurisdiction, and see what they do, but like many others, alerting the media would definately be a bit of a problem if the thief pays attention to local news. Finally, the simple answer could be that they just snubbed you for a fresh pot of coffee and some doughnuts /sarcasm
good luck on tracking it down, would love to hear how this goes in the future, keep us updated!
Contact the FBU. Technically speaking they have commited a cycbe crime at they have gained illegla access to a computer i.e. logged in under false creditials etc. Besides it carries a far stiffer penalty than just simple theft.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
How do you know the cops are not corrupt. Maybe they are but the bribery entry level is much higher than you want to approach. Maybe to bribe them you have to bribe the mayor or the chief with a million dollars or so to make it worth their while. Otherwise you just get the procedures claptrap. Hey the crooks are well financed and to them crime is a career so they do this on the wholesale level. You are a dumb-ass retailer. You have beer money so no one will drop a donut for you.
Next time, write a VBscript that downloads illegal music onto the laptop and then if stolen contact the RIAA and say, "ZOMG Help me find this guy." They will be all over him with their ex-SWAT agents with "RIAA" on their black riot gear.
Ask the Feds to take over and the little guys to stop bitching over jurisdictions. It's the same country for dBsfdkjh sake...
If you already have the person's signature, address, name, etc. Then why do you need Verizon to track the guy for you? If he's paying for the laptops then I assume you require a credit card in case this stuff happens. The police might subpoena a credit institution for the info if they won't talk to the ISP. It's worth a shot.
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
Call Microsoft and tell them there's a stolen copy of their OS being used.
A friend of mine had her laptop stolen from her home here in Portland Oregon. She managed to find the laptop listed on E-bay with images of the serial number in plain view. I managed to look in the directory of the webserver the guy was using to host images and found images of lots of stolen goods and the thief himself. She bid on her own laptop got the guys address and called the police. She gave them all of this, his address, the image of the thief, the image of the serial number on ebay, and images of all the other stolen goods, and copies of the original receipts from gateway with the serial number on them. They took a week and a half to get back to her and then said that they didn't get some of the evidence because they couldn't figure out how to check their email...
Eventually (couple of more weeks) after countless phone calls and visits to the police station they did go and repossess her laptop, no charges were ever filed.
Good luck getting police to follow through on anything more complicated than "some culered feller hanging around lookin 'spicous"
They simply lack the capacity to understand technology and the desire to solve any actual crimes.
I've been in a similar situation... and am about to face it again.
The story I was given was that since the child was with a parent, they weren't in danger, and therefore nothing could be done until there was an arrest warrant.
The Sleep function sucks. This way you have the script engine running all the time, and you have to load the script at start-up. Putting this into the scheduler would be far more efficient, and while somebody might think to check the registry Run lines or other common places for stashing startup stuff, few people pay any attention to the scheduler. Or you could whip up a simple Service and name it something misleading and innocent-sounding, and practically guarantee nobody would mess with it. Plus that would give you access to far more interesting and useful information than you can grab with VBS, and depending on how the machines are administrated, you could lock it down quite a bit more aggressively.
/. at all lately, but I would have thought *somebody* would have responded to the details of the script by now.
I'm disappointed. I haven't been reading
Slashdot quality declines as the number of hot grits posts decreases. - Provolt's Law, Apr-09-2005
My home was broken into three times, three days in a row. It was neighborhood kids.
I wasn't getting anywhere with the police. First the cop would take a report then a detective would come out and look around. I could tell by their tone that they weren't going to do anything about it. Not, that is, until the third time. Do you know what changed their mind?
While the detectives were there trying to make it look like they were doing something I faked a call to work and pretended to leave a message that I wasn't coming in the next day. Then I faked a call to a friend asking if I could borrow his "weapon" and that I needed it that night. I turned to the cops and said, they've come in three times, three days in a row, and they're coming back. It's my right and I'm going to protect my property.
On their way out they were visibly upset. They were convinced there was going to be a blood bath the next day. I got a call 4 hours later that they caught and arrested the boys responsible. 4 hours. And that was after they were already booked and in custody. The arrests had to have been at least and hour or two earlier.
The detective kept telling me I could go to work after all, blah, blah. It really was the thought of me hiding in ambush that got these police to do their job. It took all but 2-3 hours for them to find and arrest these boys. It took me lying and convincing them I was going to shoot the next person who walked through my door to get them to do it.
This is one of those bluffs that probably only works once in a lifetime but it worked.
He really knows how to present your case. (Ya gotta watch the video version to get the full impact.)
That's bullshit. If this was a case of just an overdue rental, they'd know who has the laptop and be able to act. This guy's trying to get a name from an IP address, which implies just the opposite.
hmmmm... maybe just run a service that updates a dynamic DNS service like dyndns.org. Combine this with something like an sshd or remote desktop service. Now, if your laptop is stolen, you have a lot more power than you would have with just a pre-installed script.
www.DIYTVAntennas.com
Preferably one that's a retired cop. We've had to do this from time to time and they can cut through the PD bureaucracy and get things done. Even if you're the one doing most of the leg work it goes down better if an ex-cop is fronting for you. Police don't like uppity citizens fending for themselves.
Consider upgrading your phone-home technique slightly. Install keystroke loggers on all the laptops which are disabled, and then upgrade your phone-home script so the server can signal it to enable to keystroke logger.
To get around any legal issues, configure Windows to state that the machine is the property of Xyz Corporation and any use will be monitored.
You then might be able to hand a lawyer a load of information the thief, or buyer, typed into the laptop.
That'll get them to open up quick...
F**K the 8th amendment argument. The U.S. Supreme Court has held that "actual innocence" is no bar to execution given a procedurally proper trial and appeal. Clemency is the only escape. If you can be killed while innocent and not offend the "cruel and unusual" 8th Amendment bar you can certainly have a lesser criminal penalty. However, we are not talking about Criminal Sanctions - we are talking about a Civil Remedy - an injunction issued by the Federal Judge that is reparative in nature.
/or beat Filevault - but assuming that somebody did steal the laptop and managed to gain access to the data then hundreds of my clients' private information would be compromised; if they could break the Keychain password(s) then they could have access to my bank accounts, retirement funds and credit card accounts - as well as my federal court login ID and Passwords to several of the circuits and to PACER (pay-for-access to all federal court filings that are open for access). What would be a proper punishment for the individual who compromised that list of sensitive data? In a civil suit I'd ask for millions; in a criminal prosecution I'd hope for life without parole and 30 days in the electric chair.
Turning to lifetime ban on access to computers and the Internet - I think it is well past time that we started excluding the bad actors from this community. I accomplished the same in the first action I brought in 1993. Two teens are barred from the Internet for life and when and if it ever comes out that they have accessed the internet again, I'll file a contempt action and have their worthless butts locked up - where they can dance with a large man named Bubba.
Felons, and make no mistake about it - if the Title 18 action is picked up by the US Attorney, the holder of that stolen laptop will be a felon - lose the right to vote, own a weapon, be bonded, hold most government jobs and a ton of private sector jobs.
Where you have a civil violation of Title 18 - injunctive relief can include an Order barring computer use and Internet access. Why would you (or, anybody) argue for a lesser punishment? The individual has demonstrated their inability to conform to the most rudimentary social norm - don't take things that aren't yours - so why not exclude them forever?
You don't NEED a computer to make a living in the US. You don't NEED Internet Access in order to make a living in the US: Bar the sucker. If it happens that s/he is an IT professional - even better - let them move to Canada or India where the US bar won't apply.
As for the rest of the potential business world - my heart bleeds, positively bleeds that the holder of that stolen laptop might have to spend his/her life explaining to their employers that they can't touch a computer or else they risk civil or criminal contempt charges. I've looked carefully at the employees associated with trash-trucks, ditch-diggers, Salmon trawlers, cannery workers, migrant farm workers and the like and I've noticed that they really don't make any use of a computer when they pick up my bagged trash and sling it into the back of the garbage truck (etc.). It's not so bad a punishment - they can live and think about their bad acts every day they live the hard physical life.
Exactly why are you so concerned about the scope of the remedy? I'd love to hear some good reason NOT to make it far, far worse...
If my laptop were stolen (a mac G4 al Powerbook) the thief would have to get past the login (18 characters) and
Fuck You, you shit covered Ass Wipe
Si vis pacem, para bellum! For evil to succeed good men need only do nothing!
If somebody were to steal your princess phone, I imagine you'd sue and ask for the judge to prohibit them from ever using a phone too?
Yes, people can make a living without computers. The Amish seem to do OK, for example. But it wouldn't surprise me if your garbage man example can't really avoid them entirely. After all, there may be a computer in the garbage truck that keeps track of people who need extra billing (around here, if you put out extra trash, you get billed extra.) Or perhaps he has to use a timeclock, but his timeclock is computerized? My car has a computer in it too ...
Perhaps part of the probation/parole system that the criminal has to use involves logging into a computer somehow?
(In the post I originally responded to, you explicitly said ban them from INTERNET ACCESS, but in this post, you seem to be going for `ban them from using computers at all'.)
Like it or not, computers (and to a lesser degree, the Internet) are pretty much now ubiquious, and I don't see the judge prohibiting somebody from using one for life just because they stole something once. And if a judge did, I can see it getting overturned on appeal.
And I'd say that the odds are good that they have myspace pages right nowBut if not, congratulations! You've personally helped make the Internet better for everybody, by reducing the number of myspace pages by two!
So what did these two teens do, anyways? Stealing a laptop would be the logical guess, but it's just a guess ...
Lesson learned: From now on you should start adding GPS in the laptop too. When the laptop phones home, it'll tell you exactly where it is. :)
No, I will not work for your startup
You seemed to miss the fact that the 8th amendment dosn't apply in this case (civil - not criminal - you are punished in a criminal case - you pay damages and may have injunctive relief in a civil case) and your argument that it does is unsupported by case law.
/. - how many email address filters and other types of protective code run along with the slash code just to stop the malware / hacks / harvesters? What is the % of wasted p
The use of telephones has been barred by the courts where the defendant uses the telephone to harass or threaten people. That happens all of the time. People are barred from driving for life after the 2nd or 3rd DUI. People obtain ex parte restraining orders banning all contact with certain people - Margaret Mary Ray the David Letterman Stalker is a perfect example.
Where felons are barred from voting, owning a weapon, obtaining a bond, working in the federal sector and many private sector positions - for life - what makes you think that a federal judge wouldn't give an injunction barring the Title 18 civil defenant from the Internet and computer use?
I still haven't heard a good reason from you that argues for a lesser civil remedy. Your arguments that ancillary computer use (timeclocks, etc) would breach the ban are inopposite: they don't apply. What the ban means is that the individual(s) responsible don't have the "personal" right to own or use a computer with Internet access - for the rest of their worthless lives (and, yes I would agree that this should not apply to a minor under 16). That doesn't mean that they can't work at McDonald's where the dummies behind the counter punch pictures of the food on the "computerized" cash register...
As for the 1993 case: the kids hacked the major ISP for Kansas City, Missouri - got Root and were kind enough to use their own names, phone numbers and addresses applying for rights with warez traders on IRC. They also had a nice collection of kiddie porn (*consider that it is never legal to possess the stuff - I had to obtain a Court Order to copy and transfer the images to the defense counsel to avoid liability attaching to my client and to me for transferring the evidence!*) cracked programs and had created a Trojan help screen that shuttled some users off to a "ssl" encrypted credit card verification page - snatched from the client's own server(s). They were detected within 48 hrs - but they did cause quite a bit of harm.
We tried to tell the parents - the parents didn't listen. The parents and the kids were sued - and the parents were charged with providing the teens with a dangerous instrumentality - a computer and Internet access. They were served Christmas week. I liked that. I liked that a lot - because I personally called each of the kid's parents and they all denied that their kid could be involved - without so much as a: "would you mind giving me your number and I'll call you back once I've talked with little Cartman & Kyle" - nope, they just acted like idiots and for their stupidity they received a 60+ page federal complaint. I would not doubt that each family paid more than $50,000.00 in defense fees before we settled. Sweet. I hope that it cost all of little Kyle & Cartman's college fund. (NO their names are not South Park names)
Do they have myspace pages? I doubt it. Why?
I keep a Copernic search looking for their names and have had it updating the search weekly ever since Copernic came out.
Why do I want them toasted if they ever violate the settlement? Because one of the repositories of their porn was in a hidden directory under an account of mine: It's personal. I'd just as soon have gone medieval on their a**es and send over a couple of guys to work on the boys and their parents with a pair of pliers and a blow torch.
If anything, we are way to passive whhen dealing with the people who are intent on destroying the Internet. The fun and financial benefit from misuse of the Internet must be eliminated or we will be gone. Look at
Two years ago, my desktop machine was stolen from my house. This particular machine was used to host a small personal webserver that I used to test/demonstrate webpages. As part of the webserver, I had a nice little utility (no-ip) which associated my most recent IP with a URL.
Right after my computer was stolen, I started watching that URL like a hawk. Eventually, the IP changed to a new provider and I logged the time/date/IP address each time I noticed a change. While I didn't have conclusive evidence that the IP provided was actually being used by the thief at that point in time, with some 30 logged IP addresses, and the dates/times given, I had enough to help the detective out.
Trying to explain that I knew where my computer was was the biggest pain in the rear. The first officer I talked to seemed to give me the standard treatment that a lot of people here are complaining about. (That, and it was interesting trying to explain the concept of an IP address to someone who was not computer savvy). Once I got in touch with the detective though, things went fairly smoothly. He obtained a warrant, contacted the ISP to get access to their records, and was able to come up with a list of accounts, with the thief's account appearing a number of times on that list.
However, because not every one of those IP addresses resolved to the thief's account, it wasn't as easy to obtain a search warrant. I showed them a picture of my computer, with its somewhat unique case, and they paid the thief a visit. I had my computer back within a month (but not before buying a new one...)
This occurred in London, Ontario. The "thief" (actually a purchaser covering up their source) ended up with 1 year probation. I should have pursued other legal actions, but I was a student at the time.
The IP address he came up with is worth crap since there is no way of knowing that's .. which I doubt for obvious reasons.
untampered evidence pointing to an actual perp and he's not just getting back at his
former girlfriend or has some other score to settle. The way I see it, this guy might
even be in deep shit for outfitting the laptop with the location device in the first
place unless he's telling his customers about it
Oh look at that! We've been served another 2/3 of a 3/4 of a case here and we could get this
guy's home address, kick in the doors and haul all adult household members to the precinct
because ummmh like we need to ask them questions like. Tell you what, we wont. If he is legit
and I would certainly want to see at least two attorneys and hear their take on the
hidden location bug then he can come back and are they going to be happy to see him
again and hear him whine about justice because that's apparently all he once being reimbursed
by whoever he lent the laptop to. I guess this guy just wants to divert watts of attention
to the fact that we just can't go after every little crook and hood on the planet.
I guess that sucks, but yes the long reach of arm of the law does not extend into the littered,
smelly bedroom where that guy is probably laying on the bed right now and playing with his
little dickey while looking at porn on the laptop you have probably already received payment for.
If anyone should be upset it's the guy who had the laptop stolen from him in the first place,
I wonder whether he even bothered to come and file.
Tech crime is the new frontier, so take the old frontier approach -- hire a bounty hunter. Post the IP address to a hacker newsgroup and a bounty amount you're willing to pay for the perp's ID and address (upon conviction, of course). Ask your insurance company if they'd be willing to add to the bounty. Heck, they may even be willing to give up the retrieved laptop, for the positive press alone. Go Web 2.0. If someone can sell a million pixels or trade up a paperclip, surely you can generate some kind of cult interest. Ohmaar
You are correct...and Monday a warrant was issued.
The one that is currently out is for the children to be returned (and so the police can now act on this), but not to arrest the father. The judge is hoping that this will provide him incentive to bring them back on his own accord.
With a warrant you can also get local media involved... a friend of mine (camera geek) who works for Fox 45 might be able to get their pictures up on the news tonight.
Last thing that I've learned about this who thing... to get the FBI involved in a case regarding kidnapping (and possibly stolen property?) is that there must be proof that the offender has left the state where the crime was committed.
Thanks for the comments, and I appreciate those who have taken the time to glance at the photos.
I was thinking you could hack the laptop to popup a web form telling them they just won some cool prize, and all they have to do is fill in their name, address, phone, SSN,... Better yet, maybe pop up a window that looks like an IM from a customer service rep at a well known on-line retailer that asks for shipping address confirmation for the even better laptop that the previous owner had "ordered"....
MAC addresses can be easily changed nowadays, even for the lowly Broadcomm gigabit NIC I have in my 15£ MSI planar.
I'm not entirely sure about the CPU-ID tho.
The good part is that in my fatherland cops are always too happy to step on other people's toes. Unless they are really rich toes, I mean.
So wait here now,
Back in 1993, before most people even KNEW what the internet was, some kids hacked an ISP (which were rare enough themselves back in 1993), had porn of (presumably) others their own age (the horror! Most people don't want to look at naked pictures of someone twice their age....), and were smart enough to do that much damage in that little time.
Their parents did not believe their children could have done that much damage, so few people even KNEW about the internet back then, and you call up the parents and tell them that their children have porn (most parents are not going to believe you right there!), and are hacking ("hey isn't that something you do with a axe?") in to machines and got root ("Why is he now talking about trees??") access and used it to steal credit card numbers ("Credit card numbers? What is he talking about, little Johnny plays games and writes book reports on the computer...")
Ethics training might have been a more appropriate course of action. You know, take some young prodigies and TRAIN them in the traditions and ethics of the technology professions, and about using one's skills for the betterment of all?
Oh, and why did your system have such crappy security that a bunch of kids managed to break into it?
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"Ethics Training?" What do you do, live in Wonderland with Alice?
1 .html/ or this: http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0928051delay1 .html/ and tell me all about the "ethics" of our leaders.
The President and FEMA - nearly a year ago to the day - let thousands of people die when they had five (5) days notice that Katrina was headed into the Gulf. We have Tom Delay and Duke Cunningham as sterling examples of thieves in government (with Duke in the Stir and The Hammer soon to follow)....
Tell me where those "ethics training" courses are held? And don't tell me "Church" because All OF THE TOP LEADERS of the US Government vigorously claim that they are "true believers." And I haven't noticed a waive of ethics washing over the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches. (Go see this: http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0121051judge
You can't teach what you don't know.
Turning to the porn issue: yeah, I'd agree most people want to see images close to their ages - from about 16 - 28; but, after they get older and flabby most people are interested in pictures of the hard bodies of 18-28 year olds. BUT, that wasn't the case here - this was material that was ILLEGAL TO POSSESS and that was the lure. The porn was for trading for other goods.
Now, you talk about training prodigies - in the traditions and ethics of the technology professions???! What are you talking about? Wiretapping was invented as soon as Bell had a network up (and the telegraph was constantly intercepted from the day that lines were strung where access could be had without a witness).
Are you perhaps talking about the traditions of the munitions-makers? Alfred Nobel, the inventor of a stable nitroglycerine (Dynamite), donated a vast fortune made from the deaths of untold thousands - to create the Nobel Prize in the fervent hope that he could atone for the misery and suffering that his invention brought to the victims - while making him rich....HE COULD HAVE STOPPED PRODUCTION - but didn't. Was that the tradition that you refer to?
How about the Physicians in the US who left untreated Syphilis in black males from 1932 through 1972! See, http://www.cdc.gov/nchstp/od/tuskegee/time.htm/
As for the skills these kids brought, hmm, is a willingness to invade the private data and personal financial records of as many people as they could a skill that transfers well to modern society? How about trafficking in WAREZ? And, trafficking in illicit pornography? Yep, regular little "G-Men" - ready and willing to set to work for the Homeland Security wiretapping party.
As for Mom and Pop - well, they had a polite call from a polite attorney and they were just to damn stupid to bother to go look at little Cartman's computer. I know that my clients and I cost them a small fortune in attorney's fees. Damn shame that they didn't get to have their parental rights terminated and thrown in the slammer for the rest of their reproductive years.
Where do you think the botnet creators came from but idiotic parents who didn't monitor their kids.
I'm still running my Copernic Searches for their names..... If you are one of the two guys, speak up - I know a nice prison or two....
For the record, I had an ISDN line in my home in 1993. The Well had a substantial presence as did Byte Magazine through the (mostly UNIX command line) community BIX - and it was dumped in 1993 when McGraw Hill sold it off.... There was a heck of a lot out there in 1993 - try looking at the WAYBACK MACHINE.....
Finally, when you have been screwed a few more times by nasty little shits - you will adopt my "take no prisoners" viewpoint. OR, tell me how you will solve the SPAM problem with peace, love and understanding? Ball's in your court....
Accredited Computer Science curriculums for one...
/. all the time, and is constantly debated by (for the most part) grown adults. Indeed, just a few days ago /. posted survey results showing that the majority of teenagers thought there was nothing wrong with copying a music CD they had bought and giving it to a friend, and this is after years of RIAA advertising telling us how wrong pirating is. You expected teenagers back in 1993 to have come to conclusions that both teenagers and adults still cannot all agree on today?
Aside from that, you have to realize, at that young of an age, telling someone "Hey do this and you get paid money!!!" is really a hard lure. How ethical where YOU back when you were 13? Would you have thought that typing commands into a computer to copy electronic signals from point a to point b would constitute theft?
Hell, the qustion STILL comes up here at
Notice those are all called lapses in ethics. Or when not being so politically correct about it unethical f*ckups.
I didn't ask you to turn them over to the government, I have no doubt that in such cases they would continue to follow right on down the path they were already on.
Heck, I wouldn't trust turning my DOG over to the government.
I linketh to the jargon file: The Story of Mel.
THOSE kinds of traditions. Honoring others work and truthfullness in ones actions.
The pursuit of perfection in what one does, taking pride in one's work.
Old fashion things like that.
How about Marie Curie who literally died from her contributions to science? Who donated the metal her nobel prizes to the war effort of the Allies?
How about Richard Stallman, who forgave the "work until 35, retire a millionaire" life that geniuses of his caliber so often obtain, and instead has chosen to devote his entire life to a cause that he believes will help the world?
How about the tradition of countless technicians who, unpaid, off company time, explain computers and technology to people all around them, solely so that others can gain a better understanding of computers? Heck if I (or almost any other technically minded person!) was paid the same as motivational speakers for the work we do trying to get people over their fear of technology, I could go out and buy a new sports car right now.
But you know what? We don't demand that kind of payment. For the same reason we troll newsgroups, discussion groups, and other forums. Because there is an innate feeling, and innate need, telling us that we have been given this "gift" as it where of understanding technology (never mind that it involved hard work and hours of screwing things up then having to fix them!), and that we have a responsibility to help others achieve at least some part of that understanding.
That is either religion, or a set of ethics. And with the decline of the
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These were sub-16 year olds and they knew exactly what they were doing. They offered bandwidh (stolen) and offered WAREZ at GIGABYTE volume (13 years ago when a 200 meg drive was $7,000) in their application to join the IRC group in cleartext, completE with their full names, addresses....
Will they put their names out there? Well, they should have been in college by 1997 - at the latest (perhaps their parents' college fund went to their defense attorneys?) and most colleges require some variation on your name for the school email system. By 2001-2 they might have entered graduate school... Still no names....
BUT, until and unless they petition the Court for a modification of the injunction - sonething that they ought to try - they are still barred. Yes, they may be slipping through the cracks - or, they may be in Iraq - or dead after serving in Iraq - or dead from other reasons (like a car accident).
They were too young to attend college - so your "solution" does not apply.
You are anti-government. You are a self admitted thief - your MP3 collection.
Where I stand - you have exactly "ZERO" ethical standing and your arguments are grossly self-serving - you want a way out of being held liable for your acts.
If I had a client that had a problem with you I'd drag you into court and through "discovery" expose your strange and unethical view of the law and how it applies to you.
You should step back from the Regan world where Governments are viewed as bad and start thinking for yourself. Look around - this very medium exists because of Government. If Governments are all bad - go off line and join the people living off the grid and on the land. I reccomend Alaska. That state tolerates all sorts of people who want to rugged individualists. Good luck.
For the rest of us - the Government is US. We decide what laws get passed and who is elected. If you and your ilk support criminals because they are just kids experimenting - well, that is the road to anarchy.
Anarchy didn't create the Internet. Anarchy didn't cure Polio and turn AIDS into a chronic, but still deadly disease.
Neo-Cons have created a pattern of criminality that says the boys at the top pay for nothing and the rest of us must serve them....if you get caught stealing where the RIAA is involved - you are toast, but if you "win" a no-bid contract from the boys in charge - you will not have to complete the contract - just take the money and run.
The US is a disaster, in no small part because of your values. Some things are simple: don't take things that aren't yours.
If we do away with governments and Anarchy becomes the norm - I'd expect that sooner or later somebody will get mad at you and you won't have the Courts and Government to turn to to resolve your dispute.
FWIW - what was the first city in the US to institute Gun Control? Dodge City, Kansas - more than 100 years ago. Why? Because guys off of the cattle drives tended to shoot up the town. The rule was check your guns at the city limits. Now Kansas has passed concealed-carry as well as put Intelligent Design loonies on their state school board (the battle continues) - Anarchy is on the way.....
Finally - I was 13 in the 1960's and I was marching against the War in Viet Nam, supporting George McGovern for president through my membership in the Hudson Independent Democrats (Just received a box of books from my 80 year-old mother that shows I was a poll watcher in the '72 election). I didn't smoke pot - I did obtain a 1st Radiotelephone License and my General Ticket as an amateur radio operator by the age of 16. I also learned how to fly on the Cessna $25/lesson program out of Teaneck, NJ. I went on to pass the NY Regents exam and entered Columbia at 17. I hold three Baccalaureate degrees - Biology, Chemistry and Art History (triple major) completed by age 20. I don't think that I was the slightest bit "unethical" as a 13 year old.
I am the son of a physician and an attorney. You can be
If you can get to the laptop you can install a keylogger and probably obtain their identity. Or if you just start serving up mp3 torrents and send taunting emails to the RIAA knuckleheads. Justice may come in the form of a $10K lawsuit.
Never ascribe to malice what can be adequately attributed to ignorance. -Napoleon
Read again: My MP3 collection is legal. I have PAID for all my songs.
You are the one who started spouting off about how evil the government is. I have a tendency to agree, that is aside the point here. Our founding fathers warned us about the evils of politicians, I just happened to listen.
You mean like my helping people for free, or assisting people in learning when ever possible?
Like how I years ago deleted all my illegal software and replaced it with legal copies?
Wow, some discovery there!
"Your honor, I am afraid that this young man, at sometime in his life, acquired a moral conscience. This is a horrible thing, we must have him jailed immediatly. We cannot let him continue to pay for products he uses."
That'd go over great I'm sure...
I live in America, a country where the government is ALWAYS considered suspect. I am not saying that they don't do good things. Letting a bunch of college students define half the protocols that run the internet was one good thing they did. This medium exists because of smart teenagers and young adults who got together to build something great. The government provided the funding, and was smart enough to step aside for the most part after that.
The government is run by a bunch of idiots up on capitol hill who claim to fear God while somehow bringing blasphomy to His name with almost every action that they take.
I think that what you DID was overreact to economic damage and cause far GREATER economic damage to this country by not nuturing intelligence, which is a valuable comodity that this country (and all countries) are in dire need of.
Not recognizing misguided intelligence is the road to a bunch of stupid mindless sheep walking around doing exactly what they are told to do.
I am not saying that they were RIGHT, indeed they did screw up. But to put it bluntly, you where a major dickhead to not at least TRY and see if maybe the teenagers could have the basics of ethics explained the them. Your "sue now, worry never" approach is great for your clients, and crappy for society. It creates a nice happy "Gee we sure screwed those guys over!!" feeling for your clients, but doesn't really help improve the situation on a social scale any.
No, an open to discussion Request For Comments process created the internet, which originally consisted of a group of researches typing up some papers and asking for comments on them, and eventually evolved into a bunch of college students typing up papers, passing them around, discussin them, and coming to a consensus on how things should be done.
Was in anarchy? Well that depends on who you ask. If you ask the gover
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I have really, really bad news for you. There is no "ethics" system out there. There are laws. Sometimes the laws work!
My first computer was a PDP 11 - my (private) highschool had one. I learned to program long before the ALTAIR came out. I ran Batch Jobs on the IBM 360 (FORTRAN coded keypunch on Hollerith cards.... don't drop your deck!) in my freshman year in college. I had a TRS -80 in 1976 and switched to the Apple II in 1977. Bought (and still own) a LISA and a 128k Mac shortly thereafter. I also had a few dedicated word processors like the WANG - I bought the IBM PC-XT the week it was released. 1200 Baud Hayes Modem, 10 Meg drive and 640k or RAM.... Don't assume that I don't know about computing or networks.
OH, you live in Seattle. Nice place. I spent a summer on Vashon Island and taught computer law / complex federal litigation at the UW School of Law in the summer of 1999. I like Kings County - but the County Courthouse is the pits. As far as "different" in Seattle - you are wrong. Look around - there are many people who are quite poor - and they are NOT Bill's neighbors on Lake Washington. Nope, they are shuttled into skid row around the Space Needle and out into the edges of town. By the way - I-5 sucks. Damn shame that you let the Mariner's stadium get imploded - at taxpayer's expense.
You seem to think that my client and I have some duty to rehabilitate a couple of young jerks. We don't.
You will shortly find out how nasty the workplace can be - and you will find out what a strong lawyer can do to assist you in that workplace.
Something that you simply haven't grasped yet is that the law is not like coding or science. The Law depends upon so many factors - tangible and intangible as well as real and imagined. The law with regards to these kids was what was known as a "case of first impression" and their actions were not that swift - they simply got root on one Sun Sparc server: after that they simply telnetted in and created hidden directories. They installed a copy of "Security Administrator Tool for Analyzing Networks" a/k/a SATAN and they were little more than script kiddies except for the fact that they were fetching large volumes of data from other servers using my client's frame relay (and, they were saturating 1/4 - 1/2 of the available bandwidth - one reason that they were quickly identified).
Now, when a Frame Relay - at the time T-3 and upwards bandwidth - cobbled together out of SAVVIS and SPRINT backbone access was saturated by these two kids and clients had their data stolen or overwritten and had their bandwidth choked due to the illegal access these two had - well, the lost revenue amounted to more than $75,000/day in 1993!
We attempted to work with the parents. I've said that more than once. If I had wanted to be a prick I could just have sued them for my client. Instead - the parents were jerks: Really hostile and nasty jerks. They didn't like lawyers and they didn't want to hear that little Cartman & Stan could be getting into real trouble.
That was more warning than most litigants ever get.
SO, if I'm a hard ass - you are about to experience a very different world when you get out of school. Trust me - I'm a sweetheart when it comes to bright kids.
Let me ask you a little question: My first job out of law school involved a criminal prosecution of an ATF violation. A 13 year-old young black boy was arrested while acting as a guard at a Crack House. He had a "Street Sweeper" as the weapon he was to use to "protect" the "product" and the "profits." A Street Sweeper is a machine-gun shotgun developed in South Africa for killing Black people. (I find this ironic as hell.) The ATF SWAT team had no prior training with that special weapon and so the team leader asked the kid, "How do you unload it?" To which the young boy responded, "Easy. Pull the trigger and wait."
What would you do where a 13-year old has a shotgun machinegun and is ready to use it against anybody he is told to
This is an inane statement. If it were true, people would be incapable of action in regards to matters on which they had not had legal council.
:) )
Since I don't have to get legal counsel every time I fart outside, I am pretty damn sure I, and most people who are not psychopaths, have an internal system of ethics in place.
Indeed, do lawyers not have a code of ethics which they must abide to? Many professions have ethical codes of which members sign contracts agreeing to adhere to. These contracts are legal only in so far that any contract is legal, the 'law' doesn't care if the ethics contract requires someone to piss on a potted houseplant every day or pay a $1,000 fine to the group.
(in so far as someone does not go and urinate on a potted houseplant that belongs to another party without consent!
Saying people do not have "ethics" is ridicules. That right there would lead to anarchy far faster than the downfall of the government!
Knowledge and culture are two different things. I know many people who can program a computer, but do not understand the community that surrounds technology.
People recycle more, there is a strong social urge towards being environmentally friendly. I am not saying it is something that is "absolute", indeed unlike the "law", no one with a gun goes around and forces people to throw paper into the recycle bin rather than into the trash can.
The glares from surrounding citizens and jabs in the side from friends sure help though.
Yah the government here is corrupt. No illusions about that one. Actually they are both STUPID and corrupt, which is really a shame, since it means that even if they do try to do something good once in a while, they will in all likelihood mess it up anyway.
Your right: you don't.
That is what separates ethics from law. Legally I can go drink, smoke, and have sex with as many women as I want.
Ethically I can't.
Do I have a responsibility NOT to partake of those actions?
Legally, nope.
Ethically, yah, I do. My own personal ethical standard requires that I do not behave in such a fashion. The fact that I am not drunk, smoking a cigarett, or involved in an orgy right now seems to refute your earlier point that systems of ethics do not exist.
Have you kept up with modern software engineering practices? Coding is not an exact science. We have to take many factors into account, many of which cannot be measured. Factors such as a customer's request versus what a customer really expects, or what they will be requested tomorrow. The unpredictable changing arena of both hardware and the marketplace overall. Java was a language originally intended for a market that seemed like it was ready to explode at any point, but in reality did not even materialize until eight years after Java was created! (Various set top cable boxes, not even going to go into the fail
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Well, we agree. You said hat ethics come from within - not from society.
In the US you are correct... In the Scandinavian countries I think that you will find that the social order is quite just and people like Jon Johannsen can, and do fit in. Marriage has declined.
You know far too little about the technology - Monitors and video cards could show far more detail than 256 colors to an 8 bit depth in 1993. Go lookup ATI's cards.... Then think about TIFF and JPEG - both in existance (along with GIF, PNG and dozens of others) - the image quality was just fine.
You have avoided dealing with the ethics of harm to many weighed against harm to a few. By any ethical system the harm to the greatest number should bring the strongest response. You simply dropped the ball on that one.
Answer the question: shouldn't economic criminals who harm milions suffer a vastly greater penalty than the criminal who harms only a few others?
Seattle is far, far from the nicest place I've lived. (And, you didn't mention I-5 - you must not attend UW or Pacific Lutheran - because you would be stuck in that traffic jam today.)
Anyplace that has weather reports that include "sunbreaks" leaves a bit to be desired, climate-wise.
Been to Toronto? Oslo? If clean streets are what you want then Singapore is your wet dream....but don't chew gum there.
Want a little real world experience:
Here is part of what I"ve been working on today:
6. EMPLOYER employed CLAIMANT as an over-the-road driver wherein Employer directed CLAIMANT to present himself at point "A" to collect a vehicle subject to a contract made between EMPLOYER and the holder of the commercial vehicle - for delivery of same at point "B".
7. CLAIMANT was directed to pick up the commercial vehicle at a specific time and place, was directed by EMPLOYER to deliver the commercial Vehicle to point "B" by a date and time certain.
8. EMPLOYER required CLAIMANT to provide daily reports of the progress of the transport - at or before noon central time, and required CLAIMANT to use EMPLOYER's COMDATA fuel credit card to obtain diesel fuel and, where no vendor would accept the EMPLOYER's fuel card, the CLAIMANT was required to pay for the fuel out of his own pocket - for which he was not reimbursed.
10. EMPLOYER required CLAIMANT to abide by all DOT regulations and CLAIMANT did keep and has kept the DOT logbook of his driving time for the entire time that CLAIMANT has been employed by EMPLOYER. Those records are available through CLAIMANT's COUNSEL
11. EMPLOYER paid for and did provide individual common carrier insurance for CLAIMANT and did require CLAIMANT to provide EMPLOYER with his DOT license and periodical DOT Medical Evaluations which, in turn, EMPLOYER provided to the Insurance Carrier and affirmatively represented CLAIMANT as an EMPLOYEE of EMPLOYER to obtain insurance coverage.
12. EMPLOYER has never paid FICA/FUTA or state, federal or local payroll taxes on CLAIMANT and has provided CLAIMANT with 1099 MISC forms alleging that CLAIMANT has earned (in the year 2005) nearly Seventy-Thousand ($70,000.00) dollars in gross wages - but EMPLOYER imputes the cost of fuel to the CLAMIANT as income when it is instead an "ordinary business expense" of EMPLOYER.
This client - a man in his 40's who has an Associate's Degree and 20 years as a Navy Corpsman, spent the last four (4) years being used by a company. He isn't stupid - but he actually earned only $3,200.00/yr WORKING 90-hour weeks 52 weeks a year! No overtime is available thanks to the Motor Carrier's Exception to the Fair Labor Standards Act - enacted during WWII and still on the books. - But the employer created a falsehood: they told the drivers tahtt hey were "independent contractors" and then padded the 1099 to shelter $60k per driver per year from tax. Meanwhile, the employer took the deduction for the fuel card fuel as an ordinary business expense and then took the deduction a second time by wrapping it into the 1099 "rep
Yes they could, but they were not common on consumer level home x86 PCs.
Most of the other platforms had better display technology, but I have seen consumer computers made in 1996 (or even 1997) that could only do 256 colors. I had a 32bit video card in 96, but they were by no means common.
This is a bad thing?
:) Not to mention that in order to maintain the standard of living that American's expect, it is almost a necessity now days to have dual incomes.
One could say marriage has declined in America is well, but there are too many tax benefits for people to stay unmarried for too long!
Indeed at work a week back, a single white male earning I would guess around 60k a year, was asking the rhetorical question "How is a man like me supposed to afford a house now days?"
To which I replied: "Get married."
Ah, but then we get into the more extremist and complicated matters. Check out my journal articles some time on economic justification for shooting everybody who drinks alchohal or does drugs.
Yes, in general. But I think that intent also has to be looked at. If someone does not have the basic skills necessary to even KNOW how much money they are costing others, and is immature enough to not realize the consequences of online actions... I think often times this is the case. People do not really realize that their actions DO have an effect online.
Indeed, the RIAA continuously claims economic justification for their actions, but their math seems horribly messed up to everybody else! (As my math likely seems messed up to everybody else as well...)
Yah, traffic sucks. We always start major road construction projects in the middle of budget slumps. The engineers come and tell us how many lanes we need, and we end up chopping the number way down. Like our ghetto express lane system. We couldn't afford to REALLY built a system express lanes, so instead we have half a system that goes south for part of the day and north for the other part of the day.
Or the West Seattle Freeway, that had to be built without time to gather proper funding because some drunken idiot ran into the old bridge. Doh.
The mayor right now is also an idiot. He wants to reduce the size of the viaduct and shove it underground. Everybody except for those who own property right where below where the viaduct sits, think this is the stupidest idea ever. We need a larger viaduct not a smaller one.
And of course we have the problem of a city bordered on two sides by water. We also have rather large rivalries between the various metropolitan areas here. The suburbs outside of Seattle don't want to pay for anything improvements to Seattle's traffic infrastructure (even though
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