O'Reilly Author's Laptop Rescued By 'Twitter Posse' and Prey

An anonymous reader writes "Bad news: a Canadian who visited New York had his laptop stolen. Good news: it was outfitted with Prey, the open-source computer tracking application. Better news: a group in NYC made a 'geek squad intervention,' faced the culprit and retrieved the laptop safely. This case naturally raises the usual sorts of questions about the 'Twitter posse' culture." The victim-turned-victor is author and consultant Sean Power.

Comments

Re:If you steal a laptop

[XanC]

If you're smart enough to even pose these questions, you can probably do something better with your time than steal laptops.

Re:Let me get this straight...

[Anonymous Coward]

The police are unlikely to do anything.

RTFA

[ArchieBunker]

I read this story like a week ago when it hit Fark. The owner went to the police and they told him to piss off they can't do anything. So thats when vigilante justice took over and got shit done. However if the laptop was part of a drug investigation then no knock warrants and GPS surveillance would be in use that same day.

Re:RTFA

[phantomfive]

Don't know about that, looks like the guy wasn't particularly in a hurry to get the police help. According to the article:

Power tweeted that he had called police but said they told him they wouldn't pursue the case unless he filled out an incident report.

Maybe they wouldn't have done much even if he had filled out an incident report, but if you don't fill it out, you can't really complain (and Power doesn't complain).

Re:RTFA

[TechnoGrl]

Actually no. Power is very clear that he never filed a police report because "he did not have the time" - his words. His primary work machine was stolen along with his birth certificate, his Canadian Health card (both of which can be sold and/or used for identity theft) and a sum of money that was reported to be a thousand dollars. Yet Power didn't have the time to go to to the police? Hmmmmmm.

It was only 3 days after the theft , while Power was in the middle of his Twitter/Prey drama online did he claim to have contacted the New Your Police from his Canadian home 800 km away. Not surprisingly the police said there was little they could do aside from take a report. All this is from Power's own reports.

He lost all that and never "had time" to make a police report. Does that sound a bit strange to you? It does to me.

The "justice" that you described took place three days after the theft when Power "suddenly remembered" that he had installed Prey. Does it make sense to you that he would forget that for three days? The woman who recovered the laptop ("Purple Sarong Girl") remains a mystery as all reference to her was abruptly removed by Power and Reese a couple hours after this drama unfolded.

So no police report. No person who actually recovered the laptop. The only two people who verify this story remain Sean Power and Nick Reese, two SEO marketing men.

Re:If you steal a laptop

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't care about the data on my laptop. However I do care about my laptop.

Solution? I don't put any password or encryption on it, and any thief can instantly use it. They think "allright won't have to format it", and then Prey kicks them in the nuts.

Re:If you steal a laptop

[Hognoxious]

What the fuck has being able to multitask got to do with it? It's not like you can do a bit of burglary in the quiet moments where nobody's buying crack from you.

Re:A Cultural Solution to a Bureaucratic Problem

[Nidi62]

Kudos to those who helped, when the police bureaucracy let it fall through the cracks.

The police bureaucracy didn't let it fall through the cracks, he did when he declined to file an incident report.

Re:Let me get this straight...

[horza]

You have to turn off the television and get out more. Half the time the 'hardened criminal' is just a teenage kid being opportunist. Even a retired American lady I know here tried fighting off a mugger here last week, and the worst she got was a bruise backside when she was pushed over. I've stopped robberies, and had a number of people arrested. I'm still here, no bloodbath.

However you can be 99% certain that the person with the laptop the next day is not the thief. As soon as they steal it they sell it immediately no matter what the price. The last time I was robbed it was hell getting back my stuff as they'd sold it all within 10 minutes. My 250e shades they sold for 20e. The watch, phone, etc went for similar ridiculous prices. Just ask for the laptop back and the person in possession will give it straight away (as they did in this story). There might be a little initial bluster, to simulate indignation hence innocence, but they know perfectly well they bought a stolen laptop which is a criminal offence.

Just how little do these folks think their lives are worth?

With an attitude like that, you are one sad member of your society and I'm glad you don't live near me.

Phillip.

Story or SEO Brainstorm?

[TechnoGrl]

I've been seeing this story all over the web the past few days. Some people have brought out some very interesting points that seem to have got lost in the promotion of this story:

The author happens to be a Canadian SEO marketing person who published a few books on SEO techniques with O'Reilly

The author's completely random twitter contact,Nick Reese, who helped him turns out to be also an SEO marketing person. Interesting coincidence there.

The author claims to have lost his Canadian health card, his birth certificate and a significant sum of money along with the laptop that were all in his laptop bag yet he never reports this to the police at the time of the theft. Only several days afterwards in a twitter post does he claim to have contacted the police. Does this make sense?

A young woman that the author describes as "Purple Sarong Girl" was the one who actually recovered the laptop as twittered by Nick Reese. Yet both Power and Reese refuse to release Sarong Lady's name even though she was the one who actually recovered the laptop. Sarong Lady remains an unsolved mystery.

The author says he installed Prey but "completely forgot about it" untill several days after the "theft" after which he twitters about the Prey screen shots that re remembered to look at. If you installed Prey and your laptop was stolen do you think you would have forgotten about your primary recovery system for 3 days after the theft?

So a LOT of questions remain here as this story continues to be pushed out to all major tech sites around the world. Really good SEO technique wouldn't you say. In my mind the question remains whether Sean Power really had a theft here or is just demonstrating his use of marketing technique ("hey - look what we did for Prey in just a week !" ). It is probably very hard to determine one way or another but this story fails the "Does this make sense" test in so many ways that I have to question it's legitimacy.