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How To Catch a Laptop Thief?
First time accepted submitter otaku244 writes "I spent a day in Vancouver this week while working in Seattle. While I enjoyed the area, some Vancouver citizen decided to enjoy my Macbook Pro. Unfortunately, I didn't discover this until I was already back at my Seattle hotel. Needless to say, I am quite miffed at the whole experience. Fortunately, I have LogMeIn installed on that machine. I provided the IP address to the VPD, but they say that laws don't allow warrants solely on the physical address tied to an IP. It sounds like the silver bullet is to take a picture of the person using the laptop. The question becomes, how do I convince the guy to run a script that will take a picture of him and smtp it to me? I promise to post pics of the guy if this gets pulled off successfully!"
... I know it's too late for you now. But, you should consider prey project. It does now what you are asking.
Sorry for burring this update here, but I don't know how to update the article above.
I actually had my business partner on the hunt and we tracked it down to 4th District Vancouver. We also found out that the non-emergency VPD number takes you do a civilian call center. These guys seemed be misinformed about their own laws. So when we connected directly with 4th District, we got a call back from a detective who pulled the case. This happened on Friday. I had already submitted to Slashdot the night before.
Anyone know who to update the submission?
Mod me down, I shall become more off-topic than you could possibly imagine.