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!"

Comments

Hate to say it...

[Richard_at_work]

But the best moment for you to take action is long gone - when you had your laptop in your possession.

Let this be a lesson readers, do something to secure your possessions now, install something to allow for ease of tracking and identification now, not as an afterthought when it gets nicked.

To the op, can't you just log in with LogMeIn and set a script running which takes a photo every minute or so?

Re:Be Proactive

[PPH]

i bet you wear a fanny pack, huh? i'm quite sick of this metrosexuality fad.

Huh?

The majority of fanny packs I've seen (including mine) are holsters. I wasn't aware that carrying a Glock around was the new trendy fad.

Lazy police

[www.sorehands.com]

It sounds like the police just don't want to bother. If it was the MPAA, RIAA, or Apple asking, they would have a SWAT team there in under 5 minutes.

The IP address with location may not be sufficient for a conviction, but it does support probably cause. Why not see if you can go to the location, and then h

Don't you have sshd enabled on your mac with an appropriate 50 character password? Just use ssh to remotely do it.

Doesn't LogMeIn allow you to remotely control the machine? Use (ssh is preferred) that to set up a script that takes the picture, make several copies in several locations, copies the file via scp, and ftp to a couple of different locations. Then wait for him to log into different web sites so you can have his user ids, then have the computer take pictures.

Re:Lazy police

[Chucky_M]

He could introduce himself as Professor Doblisnski from the Kiev University where he teaches advanced Nuclear Weapons programmes. Happily explain that your Mac contained an unfortunate amount of technical details on how to make and deploy a warhead using only kitchen supplies but was stolen by a Mulslim looking guy who has this IP address as tracked by your embassy security services. You could follow on with, my Embassy told me not to come here and inform you but as a human being I thought you should at least be warned, sorry cant stay on the phone I am leaving the area as all non essential embassy staff have been evacuated etc...

Ok you might not get the Macbook back but it will be the last one that particular guy steals and I am just guessing, but that IP law might not apply :)

Prey project

[feranick]

... I know it's too late for you now. But, you should consider prey project. It does now what you are asking.

Really?

[SuricouRaven]

"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."

Translation: You're a nobody, and we're not going to spend our precious resources tracking down and prosecuting a small-time thief. Come back when you've got a friend in politics or the media.

If an IP address alone is enough evidence to file civil suit against someone for copyright infringement, and under the new proposals enough to have them disconnected without so much as a trial, I find it hard to believe that it can't be enough to be at least reasonable suspicion and thus grounds for a warrant.

Re:Really?

[otaku244]

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?

Re:Violence

[kaizokuace]

smashing his face in whilst yelling "IM A PC MUTHAFUCKA!"