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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."
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.
A man notices that burglars are trying to break into his garage. He calls the police who tells him that they don't have any police officers available at the moment.
A few minutes later he calls the police and says that they don't need to bother because he just shot the burglars. The telephone operator is horrified and several police cars quickly arrive at the man's home and they catch the unharmed burglars red handed.
"Didn't you say that you shot the burglars?" one police officer asked.
"Didn't you say that you didn't have any police officers available?" the man retorted...
In Holland, like in most of the civilized world, people don't have pistols in their nightstand.
And then you wonder why you get your iPads stolen.
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/
In Holland, like in most of the civilized world, people don't have pistols in their nightstand.
Really? I never realized that nightstands were so scarce.
You never really know how close to the edge you can go until you fall off.
Looks like those guns are doing a great job of protecting you. It's almost as if a culture that regards force as a valid solution to disputes encourages crime...
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Imagine how many thefts and assults there would be if people did not have guns?
We have cities that imposed weapons bans within city limits, it did not reduce crime at all. In fact some of those cities have HIGHER rates of crimes and higher rates of murder and crimes committed with guns. The thiefs know that there is a very strong chance the potential victim will not have a gun.
Good one. :-)
Of course the next thing that would happen is the police arrest the homeowner for filing a false report, or abusing 911 resources, or wasting police officers' time on a crime of low priority. Or maybe just "disturbing the peace" which is the standard catch-all to arrest someone who did nothing wrong (like Professor Gates).
interestingness - disturbing the peace is NOT an arrestable offence (in the UK) once the act is over with unless the disturbance is 1) on going, or 2) likely to reoccur.
The police officer that tried to arrest me for such didn't like it when I pointed this out to him, but he checked and found that I was correct.
It's almost as if you don't know how statistics work. ("burglaries per 100,000 people").
If you want to keep chanting "we're #1", then please stop justifying gun ownership on the basis that you have lots of poor people.
Since the figures are per 100,000 people, I see no reason not to compare them. Holland has a much greater population density giving greater opportunities for burglary. The two countries have very similar average incomes, though spread differently.I think the comparison is as reasonable as any country-to-country comparison.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
Statistics for burglaries per 100,000 people, using the most recent figures I could find (2006):
Looks like those guns are doing a great job of protecting you. It's almost as if a culture that regards force as a valid solution to disputes encourages crime...
On the other hand, in the UK whith some of the strictest gun laws in the world, there were 1,157.7 burglaries per 100,000 people (also, conveniently, in 2006 statistics). It's almost as if two data points are insufficient to establish a causative or even correlative relation of any kind.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
No, the 100,000 people in the USA weigh 67.34% more.
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.
But burglary is only one crime parameter. If you look at a broader range of crime statistics the picture is less clear cut. Rape is for example twice as prevalent in Holland as in the US. Overall victimization is also higher in Holland. But other crime statistics show less crime in Holland.
http://www.nationmaster.com/compare/Netherlands/United-States/Crime
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.
This is a really old joke. It was very funny to me at first, but in reality by making that false 911 call you're buying yourself a free ticket to be arrested and jailed for the night. And for good reason.
Why is that a good reason? If cops would actually do what they're "supposed" to do and catch a robber, that wouldn't have been necessary. Instead they were probably more concerned with sitting on the side of the road raising revenue or harassing some pot smokers.
I think your absolutely right, if a class 1 felony is not important enough to get the cops off their ass they should be fired. No prosecutor would prosecute you for doing something like this, for starters they would look like a fool at trial and it would bring to light the neglagince of the police. Committing a crime to stop a more grievous crime is also a complete defense, provided it's not excessive (n-1 is generally acceptable). If they were stupid enough to charge you with a crime you would have them by the balls and hypothetically if it got all the way to a trial you could just testify that you shot them with your camera.
No, it's almost as if a culture with a huge population of poor people encourages crime. It's cute to compare tiny little Holland to the US though.
Don't forget retarded people, because it's the only country I know that doesn't understand concepts like "per person", "per square kilometer" or other forms of normalization.
"Guns in nightstands protect against crime" "Here's some crime figures per 100,000 inhabitants" "Cute, but you can't compare a big and small country" "???"
"We can't build fast Internet in the US, the population is too thin." "Uh but this country does with a lower population density than yours (people/km^2)" "Cute, but you can't compare a big and small country" "???"
"We're not so bad polluters, China emits more CO2 than us" "Yes but China is 1.33 billion people and you're 300 million, per person you emit more than triple what a Chinese person does." "Hurr durr, I ignore what you said and China is worse". "???"
Arguing here I get enough stupid from both posters and moderators to make me want to tear my hair out and then I remember this is supposed to be the intelligentsia of the US, the nerds. I guess that's true when I see the support a guy like Santorum has, but you're over a hurdle about two inches high. Could someone please teach Slashdot some remedial math classes so my intelligence stops being insulted? Believe it or not, it is possible to compare the US to other countries even if they have different sizes and populations. Everywhere else this is accepted but here I sometimes feel like I just preached evolution in a southern baptist church group.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The point is that America is big, like our penises.