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Ten Cops Can't Recover Police Chief's Son's iPhone
Hugh Pickens writes "The Oakland Tribune reports that when Berkeley police Chief Michael Meehan's son's cell phone was stolen from a school locker in January, ten police officers were sent to track down the stolen iPhone, with some working overtime at taxpayer expense. 'If your cell phone was stolen or my cell phone was stolen, I don't think any officer would be investigating it,' says Michael Sherman, vice chairman of the Berkeley Police Review Commission, a city watchdog group. 'They have more important things to do. We have crime in the streets.' But the kicker is that even with all those cops swarming around, looking for an iPhone equipped with the Find My iPhone tracking software, police were not able to locate the phone. 'If 10 cops who know a neighborhood can't find an iPhone that's broadcasting its location, that shouldn't give you a lot of confidence in your own vigilante recovery of a stolen iProduct,' writes Alexis Madrigal. 'Just saying. Consider this a PSA: just buy a new phone.'"
That's because the kid had photo's of his dad that he used to blackmail him into getting the iPhone in the first place.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
If that iPhone was downloading illegal music/movies I bet they would find it in no time.
Meanwhile, and where I live, the police did recover my brother's cheap-ass Nokia. The cop just sent a request for the phone's location to the mobile operator, along with my brother's signed statement on how he had lost his phone, identified a teenage kid who had stolen before, stopped by his house and got the phone back. Then they called my brother to go pick it up.
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The truth is, there's a lot of crime and not a lot of money for cops. And for most individuals who are burglarized, there's rarely enough evidence to even begin an investigation. The best you can usually hope for is to have serial numbers for some of your stuff and that when the thief screws up and gets caught, that you'll be able to get your stuff back then. More likely it's already been sold, though.
The other truth is that all jobs have perks. Some people get to read Slashdot during the day. Some people don't have to pay for their own car or cell phone. And some people get more immediate attention from the police. Is it fair? No, but all of these things happen on a daily basis, and there's little sign that they will ever change.
GPS tracking has recovered my son's stolen phone on one occasion. He was at a children play facility, and his phone was in his cubby with his shoes. When we came to pick him up, the phone was gone. The owners of the facility were quick to remind us that they are not responsible for lost or stolen items, and they had no idea what might have happened to the phone.
I explained that while it would be unfortunate if someone walked off with it, they didn't need to worry about it as I had the phone updating it's GPS location. I proceeded to look up the phones location using my own phone. That's when it was 'remembered' that one of the employees "put the phone in the office to make sure no one stole it."
The other truth is that all jobs have perks. Some people get to read Slashdot during the day. Some people don't have to pay for their own car or cell phone. And some people get more immediate attention from the police. Is it fair? No, but all of these things happen on a daily basis, and there's little sign that they will ever change.
This isn't about fairness, it is about abuse of power. None of your other examples involve the public trust. The cops get all kinds of special privileges to enable them to do their jobs, so they have a higher standard to up hold than some guy driving to the grocery store in his company car.
The reason there is little sign that this kind of abuse of power will stop is in part due to people making false equivalancies to excuse it.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
These guys had GPS from the phone (via consent of the victim or certainly his father) and couldn't find it. That takes a spectacular level of incompetence.
I think it illustrates limitations in the technology more than human incompetence. The service can't find your phone. It can tell you that your phone is near 55th and San Pedro, but it's not going to tell you which house and room the thing is sitting in, or whose pocket it has been put in. I bet I can stash a phone "near" any intersection in the country and you wouldn't be able to find it with only that information.
Notice that I'm not suggesting a solution... the service does what it does, but it's not a panacea for finding lost things.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Just this past weekend my wife lost her iPhone after stopping at a highway rest area. I knew from Find My iPhone that it was at the rest area, but there was no phone on the grass at the GPS point. Then the point moved to the far side of the parking lot. It wasn't there, either. It moved several more times, all of which led to the conclusion that it had to be inside - that despite claiming a location and even drawing an accuracy circle on the map, it was not where it claimed to be. I searched inside several buildings, had the attendants check the ladies' room (all the while using Find My iPhone to make the phone beep).
Finally, after over an hour, an attendant and I went out to the dumpsters in back, stuck our heads in, and heard it ringing. That guided us to the right bag, and lo and behold, there it was.
So yes, Find My iPhone was terrific in that without it, I would never have been able to recover my wife's iPhone. However, given what I went through in an otherwise relatively empty area, I can't imagine what one would do if the signal was coming from near a large apartment complex, a school, a parking garage, even a dense neighborhood of single-family homes could show the GPS point in the wrong location if the phone's inside. Sometimes it's just better to take advantage of the remote wipe feature and start all over.
I cannot, of course, defend in any way the use of police resources in this particular case. I'm sure we'd all want to help our kid out similarly, but I imagine the smart among us would have done it informally and off the clock.
Michael J.
Root, God, what is difference?
I think it illustrates limitations in the technology more than human incompetence. The service can't find your phone. It can tell you that your phone is near 55th and San Pedro, but it's not going to tell you which house and room the thing is sitting in, or whose pocket it has been put in. I bet I can stash a phone "near" any intersection in the country and you wouldn't be able to find it with only that information.
Notice that I'm not suggesting a solution... the service does what it does, but it's not a panacea for finding lost things.
I bet I can find the stolen iPhone. I would do what every other LE officer would do. He would walk up to the location and then call the lost iPhone's cell number. Then with probable cause he could seize any phone that rang and was answered matching the audio he heard with his observation of the suspects lips.
This happens nearly every day in the USA. I think it is hilarious when the cops seize guns and a large drug stash at the same time from the perp and his urban buddies. My favorite form of instant justice is hearing there were panicked perps who jumped out of a second floor or higher window injuring themselves only to be caught by more backup cops waiting below.
No need to be so divisive.
Don't even has to call it. You can tell the phone to make a noise that can't be needed.
It's distinctive to the find my iPhone feature, and it is pretty damning.
AndroidLost is some clever software which does a few glorious things with lost devices, including bright lights, loud noises, taking (and delivering) pictures, making maps, and displaying messages. Also (remotely) supports wipe, basic file management, setting a passcode, and hiding itself from the app list. And it does this stuff in response to either SMS messages or from data originating in Teh Cloud.
And, it's clever enough to be completely not-running-at-all unless activated, so the performance hit when the phone is not lost is exactly zero.
Kid-proof tablet..