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Stolen iPad's Reported Location Not Enough To Warrant Search, Say Dutch Police
lbalbalba writes "A location message sent from a stolen iPad by an anti-theft application turns out to be insufficient evidence to issue a search warrant for the Dutch authorities. A Dutch man reported his iPad as stolen to the Dutch authorities last month. Despite the fact that the rightful owner was able to locate his iPad within hours of the theft, thanks to the anti-theft application he had installed, the Dutch authorities did not issue a warrant to perform a search. According to the prosecutors, a search warrant is 'a very heavy measure,' that should only be used when there is 'sufficient suspicion.' The theft report by the owner was viewed as 'no objective evidence' in the case."
That is when you grab the pistol out of the nightstand, take a cab over to the criminals house, break down the door and take justice into your own hands. At least you tried the legal way first.
And once again we find that it's only true to a government if their own agencies or personnel tell them it's so. A private citizen should be able to produce evidence and have it considered with the same weight as something produced by a policing force. Providing obtaining that evidence didn't violate the law in any way.
You can bet that if it had been the police that can up with that GPS location they would have a warrant in hand tight now.
Careful what you say around me.. I will assume you mean it.
Police are just there to "stop" drugs, "stop" prostitution, and beat protesters. They don't actually care about crime that affects the average person. I've had a gun pointed at my head for trying to ask directions, but when I get robbed, they won't even take a report because "the phone system is down and you have to drive 40 minutes to make the report in person". But oh, you'll make me turn my marijuana-legalization-themed shirt inside out at my sister's public high school graduation under threat of arrest. It's good that we have our fucking priorities straight.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
This is the way it should be. Any Joe Programmer can make an app that makes it look like stolen goods are behind that closed door. Taking evidence from theft prevention and tracking apps is the exact same as taking the victim's word for it.
That's not what this is about at all. The Netherlands is a country that takes its fundamental privacy-from-the-police assurances more seriously than the US does.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
...they seemed to think it was enough when the iPhone 4 prototype was stolen.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
Liability. It always comes down to liability. Lojack stands behind their product and their training. That's why police departments trust it. It's the same with OnStar calling an ambulance on your behalf or your ability to prove that a car belongs to your by showing matching photo ID and vehicle registration. These are well funded systems with throngs of support people, very high risk, and thus very high insurance for their products and actions.
When liability is externalized and the PD can point to another entity to say, "Hey, it's their system. If they're wrong and we do wrong by trusting them, they will hold the liability." When they can't, they don't trust the external identification system.
If you want the PD to trust Apple's Find My Phone or similar programs, they have to start a relationship with various PDs, give them training, and have massive insurance themselves. Then the cost of such programs will go up and actually start to match the value of the service (just like Lojack).
You have to consider what the other possibilities are.
I see a guy put an iPad in the trunk of his car. I call the police and say that my iPad was stolen, and describe the car and the license place number. So what do they do? Arrest the guy with the iPad, and let you walk with it?
Your evidence is shaky at best. So you put some tracking software on his device? You fabricated some evidence? It's not unreasonable to believe that you may spend a few minutes fabricating evidence to steal a $500 toy.
If it were something like a stolen car, you'd have a better chance with it, because the car is registered with the state. If you've identified him, file a civil charge against him.
We had an incident in California, where a friends store was shot up in the middle of the night. We compiled video evidence from the surveillance cameras. He circled the building once before shooting out the front windows. There were distinguishing marks on the vehicle. A couple store employees recognized the vehicle, and identified who the owner was. We went to the guys house, and I shot video of the distinguishing marks on the vehicle and license plate number. I wrote an affidavit stating the evidence discovered, the purpose of making the video of the vehicle, when and where the videos were made, and other details that I personally knew and discovered.
We provided the videos and affidavit to the police. It got stuck in a pile and ignored. It took about 2 weeks, and multiple calls from the owner of the store to finally get a detective to look at it. When he did review it, he thanked us for handing him the case on a silver platter.
They cross referenced it with other cases, and found the same caliber weapon was used in other incidents in that area, on the same night.
With this evidence, they got a search warrant for the guys vehicle and house. When they arrived, he told them everything. He was drunk, and pissed off, so he shot at businesses that he thought had wronged him. He told them where to find the gun, which was under the seat of his vehicle.
Video evidence of the crime. Identification of the person involved, and vehicle involved, with a few affidavits stating the facts. That's evidence.
If I just said "Hey, my iPad is in the trunk of his car, go arrest him" isn't evidence. Sure, they could ask him. What's he going to say? "No, that's my iPad." It falls into "unreasonable search and seizure" if they search his car anyways.
Consider the opposite.
I know you have an iPad. So I call the police and say you stole my iPad, because I can show the IP belongs to the same provider that yours does, or the GPS signal was last seen in the vicinity of your house. You'd be very upset to have the police knocking on your door, demanding to search the premises for a stolen iPad, and even more so if they seized *your* iPad with some schmuck saying "nope, that's mine".
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Had he not reported the stolen shotgun and the thief got caught shooting someone with it, they'll assume he sold the firearm to a convicted felon and arrested him.
Yes, if the thief is the victim of an attack, he'll certainly be a "person of interest" but do you rally think a criminal is going to call the cops because somebody beat the shit out of him? The thief won't even call the cops if your friend broke the thief's trunk open and got his phone and gun back.
Thieves generally avoid the police whenever they can.
Free Martian Whores!
The thing is, all of that detective work is completely and utterly inadmissible in court. They need to do it, otherwise the chain of custody is broken and they can't prove it wasn't tampered.
I honestly don't know why they can't use that as a reason to investigate (i.e. go search the guy's house), since they'd then have proof that he was in possession of stolen goods, but that first bit is their logic.
Having a tracking software on your device is means next to nothing, as there is no way you can prove the police that it really is your device and it really is there. The only thing they have is your word, or maybe isn't even that, because you don't have control over the device anymore: the thief could just as well submit fake data. If this was enough for a search there would be hundreds of ways to misuse it to cause harm to someone, and people here would cry fascism and police brutality. But when there is a shiny Apple device at stake, civil liberties doesn't seem to be that important all of a sudden.
i-devices have unique serial numbers, sim numbers, etc. These are registered with service providers. It should be a very simple matter to identify the true owner of a device by making a single phone call.
To put this in a slightly different context, raiding an address because of the location prodived by an app doesn't always work out:
It then goes on to quote an academic as saying:
So yeah, just because apps are handy doesn't mean they'll always provide enough evidence to raid somewhere on.
There's a huge difference between USA == BAD and "hey, here's some other country that is doing better at something than we are, maybe we should take a closer look at what's going on so maybe we can improve our own situation."
But it's tough to point that out to the USA #1! crowd. To them, any acknowledgment that we aren't the bestest at absolutely everything is an attack on the US itself.
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal