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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.
Whatever you do,
whatever happens:
Don't call the police.
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
A friend of mine in California had his house broken into. His iPad and a shotgun were stolen. He tracked the phone to the trunk of a car, told the police, and they did nothing.
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.
The Dutch police doesn't even enter an house when there are two of them and they literally hear someone get tortured to death. I'm not making this up; this actually happened. The officers in front of the house could hear screams and moans and did absolutely nothing.
Want more? Neighbors heard a woman cry and scream for help and it sounded so distressful that they called the police. The police came, rang the doorbell an after a small talk they left, never to bother with his again. 3 months later it turned out that the woman in question was being held by her will, prostituted, treated in extreme inhumane ways and well... "The police thinks they may have made a mistake by not entering the premices".
And the list goes on and on.
On the positive side. If you manage to speed a little on the Dutch highways (you know, reckless driving where you dare to drive 85 - 86 km/hr instead of the allowed 80 km/hr) then chances are very high that you will get a speeding ticket. That's where the Dutch police truly excels.
So quite frankly, within this context this can hardly come as a surprise.
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?
Reality is, cops generally don't want citizens "interfering" in the law enforcement process,in any way, shape or form. That's why you regularly hear stories of individuals getting arrested for chasing down a criminal who broke into their home, etc. etc. The typical line? "Leave that work to the police!"
Sure, they want you to call them and make the initial report (as long as they consider it something serious enough to be worthy of their time and energy -- which varies wildly by department and what they've got on their plate). But they don't want you to do any "detective work" for them.
A friend of mine had his truck broken into, right in front of my house, some years back. They stoke his new Alpine stereo head-unit, his cellphone and his wallet, which he had under the seat. He called the cops and besides dusting for fingerprints on his truck's door, they didn't do much of anything but take an initial report.
He got the idea to try calling his cellphone, and the thief actually answered the phone! He got the guy to agree to meet him in a public parking lot at a certain time, by promising him he'd pay him some cash just to get back his wallet with drivers' license and other info in it (and told him he could keep the stereo). He called the cops to tell them what he managed to arrange, and you know what their response was? They didn't have the time or resources to go out there and wait around for the thief to show up!
After that, he realized he was able to log into his cellphone provider's website and get a detailed call log of everywhere the thief called using his phone. The guy had been using it to call girlfriends, buddies, etc. etc. The log was 3 or 4 pages long with local calls the guy was making! He printed that out and gave it to the cops. Guess what? They still couldn't manage to do anything with it!
He wound up better off just claiming all the losses on his insurance and getting all new stuff .... but it just goes to show? Cops completely disregard any detective work done by anything other then their own people, even if it's really GOOD work that would make an arrest a piece of cake for them.
Something I don't understand --
> 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."
So, what *would* be considered objective evidence? Does a law enforcement offer actually have to witness a crime before the authorities will pursue it? So, for instance, I'm robbed on the street, but there's no objective evidence that it happened because the crime was not observed? How does that work in The Netherlands?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
You don't need a search warrant to ring the bloody doorbell and ASK about the stolen property. But even that was too much bother. Funny though, the police had absolutely no problems breaking into my house simply because my downstairs neighbor told the police I was away for a week and my cats were left on their own. I actually was away for 2 days and my parents fed them.
Anyone can use facts.
Do some work like the others, just base your opinions on how goood they make you feel.
Facts are for loser's and boring people.
No brain, no pain.
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.
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.
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 would think that he could get the paperwork showing the serial number of THAT device matches the deivce he purchased, Images of HIM/friends on the phone, etc.
Sadly, this "too much" effort isn't just for things like this. A few years ago, I had someone illegally use my CC # and make charges. I got the money back but I also had contacted every company where an illegal purchase was made, and finally tracked one that could correlate my home addy to the theif's order. I got their Name, Address, phone, etc.
When I filed the police report (per my Bank's orders), NOTHING happened. As far as I can tell, this person didn't get arrested and whatever had been shipped to him, he got to keep. (The only good thing was the companies he'd bought from flagged his name if he ordered again).
UPS Sucks
For those playing at home: network tracking and identification isn't enough to even grant a search warrant for theft of physical property, but it's enough evidence to convict in a case of "theft" of intellectual property.
Double standards much?
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