Jobs' Burglary Manhunt Yields Kenny the Clown
theodp writes "Even in death, Steve Jobs managed to get specialists from the Apple-friendly Rapid Enforcement Allied Computer Team (REACT) to team up again with Apple investigators and local police to track down the whereabouts of a stolen Apple device. Unlike a 2010 stolen iPhone prototype incident, which ended with a raid on a Gizmodo editor's home, this new investigation into the $60K burglary of the late Apple CEO's under-renovation Palo Alto home ended with the recapture of an iPad from Kenny the Clown, who accepted the device as payment of a debt owed to him by burglary suspect Kariem McFarlin. PCWorld has the details of how Palo Alto Police, REACT, and Apple investigators connected the dots to track down Jobs' stolen iPads, which may trouble some privacy advocates."
Dunno, I can't see any place where they went beyond the law this time. Based on the article, it seems as if they took pains to build a legal case, even to the extent of checking for open APs nearby.
Not sure why, but I've always felt that way. Maybe it has to do with when I was 5 and my father was killed by a clown.
So when do *I* get this type of service when my iPad is stolen? Since it is so easy for Apple to cooperate and cough up the info needed to locate the device, why the HELL won't they do it for Joe Consumer? If Apple did this for every stolen iDevice, they would become worthless as theft targets.... hell, they would be come a liability to steal them and try to sell/reuse them.
When you look at the typical response the police gives to a typical house/office break for the rest of us (a shrug and you never hear from the pigs ever again), this only shows how corrupt the US police are and what lengths they will go to keep their masters happy.
Was living in NW Florida around 10 or so years ago in a duplex apartment.
The other apartment in the duplex got a window busted out and somebody stole a lot of collectibles and some electronics, including a fairly valuable comic book collection and a laptop computer.
The police showed up, took a statement, and left. That's it. No pictures of the damage, no fingerprinting, nothing.
Just 2 lazy overweight assholes with badges wishing they were at the doughnut shop.
Can you post the links to your story submissions, please?
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Aside from the issue of allowing the iPad to connect to Apple's servers to wipe and reinstall the OS, he should have realized that the real value of an iPad or Mac from Jobs's home would have been the content of the device. If it turned out to be Jobs's personal device (as opposed to his family's), who knows what might have been on it... design plans for rounded hexagons, or seamless rounded translucent-aluminum dodecahedrons? His family, and the world, may have lost this brilliance forever... like burning Leonardo's notebooks for firewood. I hope they throw the MacBook at this barbarian.
People whine about progressive taxation, but compare a lost iPhone from Apple with a phone stolen in a "regular" robbery. The poor person gets to give a statement, and if the right serial numbers are turned into the police, he may get a phone call 10 years later, after a trial in which the device was evidence. But Apple makes a phone call, and millions of dollars are spent tracking it.
The rich get special treatment. The rich get protection perks the rest of us don't. Then the rich complain that a poor person in a high-crime area with no police patrols doesn't pay enough taxes, but the rich person in a low-crime area has constant patrols.
The issue here isn't the privacy concerns of your iDevice, but that you are raped by taxes for programs that mainly benefit the rich, while being told that the rich get nothing from the programs because they opt out with private security (though I didn't see any mention of the Apple private security doing the recovery work, that was all government).
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