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Publicly Shaming Laptop Thieves Catches Bystanders in the Crossfire
nonprofiteer writes "Embarrassing thieves by exposing them using laptop recovery software makes for fun tech stories, but what about a case of a person being literally exposed after cops and a software company got their hands on naked photos she exchanged with her long-distance boyfriend, not realizing the machine was stolen? (She bought it for $60 so she should have known, but still). The case is going to trial in Ohio in September. The plaintiffs argue that the software company had the right to get the computer's location in order to recover it, but that it should not have intercepted the nude photos and shared those with the cops. Seems like a legitimate complaint and the plaintiffs are especially sympathetic in not realizing the device was stolen."
Pics or it didn't happen.
You buy electronics at crackhead prices, don't be surprised if you get burned. About as dumb as people who download hacking binaries.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
I thought everyone knew by now that if you send a nude photo of yourself to someone else in electronic form, it will inevitably end up on the internet.
"If it's real, then it gets more interesting the closer you examine it. If it's not real, just the opposite is true." -
Seriously, since the actual owners authorized the monitoring company to have that form of access to the computer, anybody who steals it and uses it afterwards (knowingly or not) really has no legal dispute with the rightful owner and any company the owner authorized to snap screencaps and whatnot.
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The 4th amendment only stops the *state* (and police acting on their behalf) from snooping.
If someone else does the snooping you don't need a warrant.
Mind you that the police cannot *ask* someone to snoop for them, otherwise you create an agency relation that causes 4th amendment immunity to apply against whoever does the snooping.
At most the security company that peeked was guilty of invasion of privacy. Sharing it with the police, however, was not a crime, and if it turns out said photos implicate someone in a crime, the 4th amendment does not apply since the security company was not acting as an agent of the police.
According to the Forbes article, one of the arresting police officers was "prudish" and found her naked pics "disgusting". The proper retort to this: keep your thoughts to yourself, dude. It's none of your business whether her photos are disgusting to you or not. She did nothing illegal by taking naked pics of herself. End of story. Sigh.
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Not really, if she genuinely didn't know that the laptop was stolen, then there's no crime so long as she returns the goods when notified. Granted it's stupid to buy a laptop for $60 from a boyfriend.
The photos themselves are evidence of illegal wiretapping, so they ultimately should have been provided to the police, so that the police could prosecute the company for the illegal wiretap.
Apparently the cops on the scene didn't buy her "I didn't realize it was stolen" line for a second.
I read the internet for the articles.
I am surprised that so many people are saying the low price of the laptop matters. I have bought both laptop and desktop computers legitimately for that price. I've sold people old computers of mine for less. Hell, I've *given* people computers I don't use. I of course did not RTFA and maybe this is a top of the line laptop bought in a dark alley, but $60 does not cry "obviously stolen" to me.
They did use it. This was a separate lawsuit that was filed by the woman who bought the laptop from the thief. The thief was arrested and charged as you would expect. The woman however, did not know it was stolen and she in turn had explicit video conferences with her boyfriend using the stolen laptop (again unbeknownst to her that it was stolen). Because of this, she was deemed to have a reasonable and objective expectation of privacy. They found that although the company tracking the laptop had the right to obtain such information as IP address and geographical location, they went too far in collecting the contents of the private communications between the girlfriend and her boyfriend.
From TFA:
That's not true, while the 4th amendment only prevents the government from doing it, every state in the union has its own wiretap law on the books which bars this sort of covert surveillance.
It's questionable to me as to why precisely the company isn't being prosecuted for that violation.
Doesn't matter, it's still a violation of her rights. Just because the original owner authorized it, does not mean that they have the right to violate the wiretap laws involved. And in a case like this, the employees that opted to obtain the extra images ought to be prosecuted for doing the illegal wiretapping. Had they just stopped with the location of the device, they would be fine legally.
I realize that people don't understand that, but this isn't any different than if a landlord puts a secret camera in an apartment. Just because it's your property doesn't mean that you get to wiretap it all you like.
Via copyright. It has been established that the person taking the photos holds the copyright on those photos. Not the person who owns the camera, or the bought the resources (film, storage, etc), but the person who took the pictures. So if she took the pictures... she could fight to get the images taken down the site, but copyright isn't well respected among many online users (or so I'm told *looks around*). If somebody got the images and redistributed them, it would be very hard to shut them all down.
But yes, she is guilty of owning stolen property and due to the legal issues that may bring.
(not a lawyer here, but recall the whole "Dr. Laura" scandal, and how she lost that case).
if (it != oneThing) it = another;
If you read the story, the person who bought the laptop, bought it from a student at her school. The problem was, the school was "alternative education" school, which in many cases is for young criminals and delinquents. If it is as I suspect, the teacher should have EXPECTED it to be stolen, and reported it. Secondly, the teacher should NEVER have bought the laptop from a student, as that is a breach of propriety and proper boundaries between student and teachers.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Low end laptops often go on sale for $250-$300. It's completely possible that someone would sell a 2-3 year old low end laptop that requires repairs for $60.
Actually, this specific case is like someone believing they bought your house for $600 and then complaining your security camera caught them having sex in the pool.
And while we're here...
That's not true, while the 4th amendment only prevents the government from doing it, every state in the union has its own wiretap law on the books which bars this sort of covert surveillance.
The 4th Amendment, like the rest of the Bill of Rights, preserves the rights of citizens by limiting the power of the federal government. There is nothing in the 4th Amendment that says I cannot take steps to monitor my property to ensure it's return if/when stolen.
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Seriously, since the actual owners authorized the monitoring company to have that form of access to the computer, anybody who steals it and uses it afterwards (knowingly or not) really has no legal dispute with the rightful owner and any company the owner authorized to snap screencaps and whatnot.
I think your argument sounds a bit too much like the legal owner can do anything. That alone would be like that school that had spycam software installed on pupil's laptops, even if they're the legal owner of the laptop they or their authorized company don't have legal permission to covertly bring it into people's homes and take pictures of whatever they want. If it had been her boyfriend's pictures or co-inhabitants in the background, they might have a case. But in this case she's operating a stolen computer, it's like complaining of being photographed driving a stolen car. Secondly, securing evidence for the police is a legitimate cause, if they found this in some camera tech's private stash I might think very differently about the case. You could easily argue that nude photos could include tattoos, birthmarks or other identifying markers that may help identification. I think she's got a really bad case.
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Naked/nude photos are mentioned twice in the summary but there aren't any in the linked articles. How did this story make it to the front page?
Shouldn't she be suing the thief that sold her the laptop instead of a software manufacturer?
Pretty much came here to say the same thing. There is no way a reasonable person would think that there wasn't something fishy about buying a working laptop from one of their students for $60. Especially when you work at an "alternative high school". That's feel-good code for a school that has a student body made up of juvenile delinquents. I know a few teachers in that career path and none of them would be dumb enough to buy anything at all from their students. If one of them tried, they'd say, "Dude, don't bring your stolen shit to school. Do it again and we'll be having a talk with your PO."
Either she was trying to take advantage of the student by purchasing a laptop at 1/4 to 1/3 of its actual value (I'm guessing it was one of those $250 specials or a couple years old) or she assumed she was a step or two removed from the actual theft. Or she's too naive to be working with a bunch of little thugs.
If only there was a way to ascertain the details of the article being discussed...
Have you ever bought second hand stuff?
How do you know that second hand stuff wasn't stolen?
In fact, you can't even know for sure in shops.
Large part of the issue here is whether the school teacher could be reasonably expected to know the laptop was stolen given the low $60 price she paid for it.
I feel no pity for criminals, but punishing somebody innocent is worse than not punishing somebody guilty.
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Have you ever bought second hand stuff? How do you know that second hand stuff wasn't stolen? In fact, you can't even know for sure in shops.
Large part of the issue here is whether the school teacher could be reasonably expected to know the laptop was stolen given the low $60 price she paid for it.
I feel no pity for criminals, but punishing somebody innocent is worse than not punishing somebody guilty.
I feel no pity for criminals, but punishing somebody innocent is worse than not punishing somebody guilty.
She's not being punished; TFA clearly states the charges against her were dropped. She's now suing Absolute and the police for violation of privacy, which is crazy because those photos were taken with the authorization of the laptop's owner and they were legitimate evidence in a criminal case.
Well, having now read TFA, it looks mostly like the court found only that there wasn't enough evidence to grant the defendants summary judgement... which is a long way from saying that she definitely deserved the protections of a legitimate owner.
From a quick look now, I actually did find one thing interesting. The court based its opinion primarily on the idea that the communications were being intercepted. Whether the same court would have felt as strongly if the LoJack-for-Laptops crew had simply taken pictures with the webcam is an open question.
As to your line, "this isn't any different than if a landlord puts a secret camera in an apartment.", your argument is a straw man. It's a more accurate analogy ...
The term "straw man" refers to a logical fallacy, not an inaccurate analogy. In this particular case, whether the analogy proves accurate or not seems to be a matter of law, to be decided by the court.
Breakfast served all day!
But the students didn't steal the laptops, they signed an agreement. Though I agree the school shouldn't be allowed to do that, the situation isn't entirely the same.
All the world's a CPU, and all the men and women merely AI agents
She did not expect the authorities and 3rd party people she didn't authorize to see them.
Of course you people have no grasp of reality, practicality, or that other people besides yourself matters, so I don't actually expect you to see a grey area.
And your feeble conclusion regarding copyright of the pictures is, quite frankly, mind numbing stupid.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
She is being punished, her private pictures are being distributed around without her permission.
And they where not evidence in a criminal case. All they need was location.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Most comments have focused on the question of whether or not a reasonable person could consider $60 an appropriate price to pay for a used laptop, and whether the device was functional at the time of sale. Indeed, even the defendants raised this point. However, I think this is not really getting at the heart of the matter.
While I don't know how the legal system actually handles such cases, I think that the proper outcome is that the plaintiff (the woman) should win her case against law enforcement (but not the recovery company), and be entitled to damages. Then I think the recovery company and law enforcement should win the case against the thief who stole the laptop. But I also think they should win an additional claim against the thief for reselling a device with monitoring software on it, thereby exposing the woman to this situation. If there isn't a statute to cover this, there should be. It should go a bit like this:
1. If you steal an electronic device and resell it, you are 100% liable for any invasion of privacy that results from that sale due to attempts to track and recover the device, regardless of whether or not you are aware of any recovery software on the device.
2. If you own a device and resell it, you are 100% liable for any invasion of privacy that results from that sale if you installed tracking/monitoring/recovery software.
3. If you own a device and resell it, you are NOT liable if someone else has installed monitoring software without your knowledge.
The reasoning as to why we would want to (partly) indemnify parties using the remote tracking software in the course of recovering a device, is because they need to gather as much identifying information as possible, and that includes private, personal information. The tracking company in this case acted appropriately given the circumstances, because while the plaintiff didn't know the laptop was stolen, the company had every reasonable suspicion that she was the thief. Relaying whatever evidence they could find--including nude images--is the logical consequence of that investigation. What would be unreasonable is if the tracking company published the images on the internet as a way to shame the thief--to my understanding, this did not occur. The problem in this case is that law enforcement behaved inappropriately by commenting on those images.
They lied about having a warrant.
http://www.courthousenews.com/2009/03/03/Stolen_Laptop_Led_to_False_Arrest_Woman_Says.htm
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
She did not expect the authorities and 3rd party people she didn't authorize to see them. Of course you people have no grasp of reality,
Several years ago, many people started using these new-fangled things called "cell phones". For reasons I will never understand, people who were talking into a small box with an antenna on the top of it didn't grasp the concept of "radio", and that if their little box with an antenna on the top of it could receive and reproduce sounds from a distance there might be other little boxes that could receive and reproduce the same sounds. They did not expect anyone but the person whose phone number they had dialled into the little box to actually hear what they were saying.
This was back in the days when people still had other little boxes with antennas on the top that would reproduce sounds (and marvel of marvels, even pictures!) from a distance. It's not like "radio" should be a foreign concept to anyone. And yet, to these people, it was.
What was the solution to the problem of people thinking that nobody else could hear them talking on a radio? Was it to ENCRYPT the radio signal so nobody could understand what was being said? Oh, no. The only solution was to make listening to their signals illegal, and to make it illegal for other radios to be able to receive those signals.
So today, when it is almost trivial to build wideband receivers to add functionality to radios, we have laws that force manufacturers to cut large sections out of the available coverage, even after the functions of those frequencies are changing.
What is the moral of that story? Stupid people have stupid expectations, and the stupid laws that result from bending reality to their stupid expectations are, well, stupid. Now, I will admit that giving these stupid people the legal expectation that their secret conversations were secret did improve the quality of listening that the rest of us pragmatists who already owned radios heard. When people think they cannot be overheard, they will say the darndest things.
But please, rant about "reality" a bit more.
(a) intentionally intercepts, endeavors to intercept, or procures any other person to intercept or endeavor to intercept, any wire, oral, or electronic communication;
Emphasis mine. I'm not sure how state wiretapping laws are written, but if they follow the federal example, electronic communication counts.
On the subject of cell phones and radios... a few years back [3ish?] I was trying to call somebody and ended up picking up somebody else's signal. Well. I was bored, so I pretty much sat there for half an hour during lunch, listening to some guy yell at his credit card company about unauthorized charges that happened a month ago.
Scary thing was that there was a particular spot in the building where I would consistently get other phone calls.
This sounds great if you're going on a fishing expedition. Heck, we don't know what kind of evidence you might have or if you'll dispose of it, so let's come kick your door in and search through your possessions. If you've done nothing wrong, you won't have anything to worry about, right?
There are specific rules for gathering evidence. The constitution may be tattered, but it still is the law of the land and it speaks to this particular issue.
I'm still trying to find a way to justify that "she only paid $60 so she knew it was stolen" stuff. If she'd paid less than $100 for a new HP TouchPad would that prove it was stolen? Did anyone consider the value of a used laptop in a buyer's market? $60 may have been the fair market value of that item, not proof that she knew it was stolen.
Maybe, just maybe - she bought that laptop in good faith at a reasonable price. The previous owner left some monitoring software on it and things went downhill from there. Now the monitoring company has been caught sharing her personal information with the public so they're going to toss up all the plausible deniability they can to escape legal liability for their acts. It's cheaper to pay off that previous owner to say what they want than to pay their lawyers, you know.
No, she's not being punished. There'd be a case there if her pictures were posted on the internet, but they weren't. They were acquired by a company acting with the authorization of the laptop owner, and given to the police. Good luck making the case that giving evidence of a crime to the police is itself a crime. Had the police recovered the laptop, they might well have analyzed the laptop to find out who had it and found the pictures themselves. Sorry, it's unfortunate for this woman that her pictures fell into hands she didn't intend, but the laptop owner didn't do anything wrong. She should sue the idiot student who sold her stolen property.
The police did, however, do something wrong. I don't see an issue with them getting the pictures, but they quite frankly need to stfu as far as their opinion on her sexual conduct goes. It's none of their concern, and they should respect her right to act any way she wishes with another consenting adult. I don't know if it's actionable or not, but I won't feel bad if the police get into hot water for it.
Nonsense. It's a fishing expedition if you search through my possessions looking for evidence of a crime without having any specific crime you're investigating. In other words, just pawing through my personal effects trying to find something to pin on me. That didn't happen at all in this case. This was a stolen item. The evidence specifically relates to where it is, and who has it.
Yes, there are, and they don't apply to private citizens UNLESS they are acting under color of law. Me paying a company to access my webcam when my laptop goes missing does not qualify.
The woman who bought the laptop is clearly a victim here, she's just not the victim of the laptop owner. She's the victim of her criminal student who sold her stolen property.
The security company can *NOT* be an agent of the police. They are absolutely *NOT* acting on behalf of the police. They could care less about the police and what the police will or won't do. The security company is acting on behalf of the rightful owner of the laptop. If the owner of the laptop said send me the information and I'll take care of the issue from here, then that is exactly what the security company would have done. I would bet that in fact is exactly what the security company did. The owner said track it, they did and then sent the laptop owner the results for him to take to the police or whatever he wanted to do. The police can't activate the Lo-Jack on a car without the owner's permission or a warrant. So they are not acting on behalf of the police. The same thing here. The police can't just call up and say hey tell me where this laptop is.
So no the security company absolutely is *NOT* an agent of the police. An agent of police could be told hey go do this by the police and they would, without a court order. That is the nature and whole point of being an agent of the police, the person isn't acting under court order but simply the authority of the police. No security company is going to do anything simply because the police tell them to do it, not without a court order, and then they are not an agent of the police, but rather complying with a lawful court order.
I don't see how there is going to be a Constitutional violation here at all. Exactly which amendment of the Constitution was violated and by whom? Unlawful search and seizure? Well the police didn't do the search and seizure of the laptop, the security company did. The laptop wasn't her's so it wasn't unlawful. So exactly where is the unlawful part? Was her privacy violated? Maybe, but I don't think so since everything was done in an attempt to find out who was using the laptop, to make sure they got the right person, and where the laptop was. Only the security company's people (maybe 1-2 people), maybe the owner (1 person), and the police and prosecuting attorney who got the warrant and the judge (maybe) saw the pictures. Doesn't seem like a lot of people to me, and all of them but the owner are professionals so I don't see the problem here.
I absolutely do not think that any kind of ruling should be done that removes rights from the rightful owner to trackdown and recover their stolen property. Why didn't she register the laptop with the manufacturer in case the laptop was recalled for product defects and safety issues? The fact that she didn't, I suspect is because she knew it was sold to her cheaper than the market is for it. I always register my used equipment with the manufacturer to make sure I know about product recalls or whatever. If I get a stolen used item then I will know instantly when I register it with the manufacturer.
It would have to be a pretty old laptop to be realistically worth only $60. Why the kid couldn't just reinstall the OS to fix the problem himself should tell you a lot about the fact it was probably a stolen laptop. I don't feel sorry for her one bit.
She is being punished, her private pictures are being distributed around without her permission.
She is not being punished, she is just another victim of the original criminal who stole the laptop (assuming that she genuinely thought there was nothing wrong with a $60 laptop!). Rather than sue the police and software company - who had the authorization of the legal owner to access the laptop - she ought to be suing the person who stole it in the first place because his criminal act caused her to wrongly believe the laptop was her property and therefore to give her a false expectation of privacy.
Effectively she stored naked photos of herself on some random stranger's laptop. In these circumstances there can be no expectation of privacy. The reason she did this was because she was deceived by a criminal: nobody else has done anything at all unreasonable.
There's really no part of your post that is accurate.
1. She was a substitute teacher. Nothing at all says that this is the type of school or the type of student she typically deals with.
2. The laptop was not working. The article does not go into detail about what was wrong with it, but it does explicitly state she was told it was "messed up" and then "got it fixed." The second article states it was "non-functioning."
3. You state that you "guess it was one of those $250 specials or a couple years old," but don't seem to entertain the possibility that it is a couple years old version of one of those $250 specials. That would make $60 a good price but hardly enough to trigger "boy, I bet this is stolen!" in reasonable peoples' heads. Combine that with the fact that something about it was broken and needed repair and suddenly it's not unreasonable at all.
The specific legal merits of her case are, to quote the attorney for the respondents, "fascinating," and one he is (and I am) am eager to see a jury decide on. But all these people jumping up and down on this woman for buying a $60 laptop without even having the facts are getting disgusting.
It's a stolen laptop. "I didn't know it was stolen" is not a valid defense according to US law anymore than "I didn't know the speed limit". If she's somehow wins based on "I didn't know it was stolen" then that will make the "I didn't know" defense valid and suddenly anyone can claim "I didn't know" and get off.
She's going to lose the case. Sure the judge allowed her to proceed, but "I didn't know" is not an excuse to break the law. Besides her story doesn't really add up, buying a $60 laptop from a student and having it "fixed up" but never finding the tracking software? Somehow she was savvy enough to fix it but not smart enough to find the tracking software really doesn't add up, even if she hired someone to fix it they should have found the software.
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