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Stolen Laptop Owner Outwits Mugger, Police, and the Media
An anonymous reader writes "What do you get mugged in Central London and the local police are too incompetent to find a mugger even with his address and photograph? You may not be able to get to the laptop, but you still own the photos and data on it, so you set up the NSFW Plumpergeddon blog which gives details of the subsequent 'owner's' 'Brick House Butts' fetishes. Now of course later the IT media might get interested and offer an interview with a promise to let him review the article and keep his name secret. luckily our hero is not so innocent and demonstrates the value of using a false name on the internet as well as planting your own monitoring software on your laptop."
What do you post articles that are unintelligible?
Editing is a lost art.
Based on the content of the summary, I have no fucking idea what this story is about.
Just delete this and start over. Really. How does this word-salad get approved for publication to millions of people?
I am a geek attorney, but not your geek attorney unless you've already retained me. This is not legal advice.
I've read this twice and I'm still confused.
I'll try to translate what I think the article says: ...
1. Man was mugged and lost his laptop.
2. Police won't do anything about it.
3. He has hidden software on his old laptop that was sending images and data back to him.
4. He posted it on the Internet under a fake name
5.
6. Profit?
Incompetent editing can't write good but maybe give interview in IT media if keep name secret yesno?
Sense making this summary very much doesn't however is okay because Slashdot's really been going downhill these past 15 years.
I are unintelligible and I are endorse this message.
Life needs more saving throws.
Different guy.
What do you a new Slashdot meme has been created.
I would be astonished if this is legal (its ethically wrong), as notices normally have to be shown...although are often small; hidden in reality. This opens the doors for people leaving usb pen drives in the street, lending computers to friends...or hell just buying someone a usb camera.
I don't really think we should be taking ethical advice from someone who conflates stealing a computer with being lent a computer, much less being gifted a computer.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
And I guess the submitter missed the other story that came out of England a few weeks ago where the theft victim similarly posted the "thieves" photos all over, only to discover the people he was harassing were innocent.
#DeleteChrome
Has anyone really been far even as decided to use even go want to do look more like? Because I think you have.
This is crap. Where I come from, possession of (i.e. buying) stolen goods is a crime. It is almost always obvious that what you are buying is stolen. Laptop with just the power supply on eBay? STOLEN! You deserve the consequences. Owner contacts you? RETURN THE ITEM!
The case of the Iranian family was something of an exception. They are still a bunch of stolen-laptop-buying dirtbags; they just don't deserve the Iranian consequences for that (torture, loss of hands), which is why the guy decided to relent.
And I guess the submitter missed the other story that came out of England a few weeks ago where the theft victim similarly posted the "thieves" photos all over, only to discover the people he was harassing were innocent.
That's not really relevant because in this case the mugger also used the victim's debit card to buy a subscription to the fat chick porn website he's been caught wanking over. There is no question that he's 100% culpable here.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
So what are people around here considering reading instead of Slashdot? This indecipherable summary is extremely common around here along with click bait, exaggerated headlines (click bait again), news that's days behind every other tech news site. I'd love to hear some fresh ideas for Slashdot replacements.
He hasn't tracked the thief, but his laptop regularly sends photos and screenshots while the laptop is in use. This is old news, from a tech perspective.
But, in any case, it's not a terribly interesting tech story.
The tech part of the story is that, although the laptop-tracking software technically works without any fault (well almost, but the thiefs stupidly worked around the part that didn't work), it has done nothing on the overall to help the case.
Police just ignores him.
This kind of software has always been sold/touted as the ultimate solution for lost and stolen laptops, as the best weapon against thieves.
But ultimately, it doesn't make any difference that the software worked flawlessly.
I my opinion this boils down to the motivation of the various parties involved.
For the police, handling the case would require lots of resource (paperwork, permits and warrants, interrogating the suspect, searching his home, more paperwork, etc...) and some risks (usually stolen laptops are resold, so often the people using them aren't the thieves but are thinking they use a legitimately bought 2nd hand latop, so in theory there's a risk of harassing the wrong guy - although in this case, the robbed victim has found a lot of credible arguments, including that the suspect started using the laptop a couple of hours after the mugging [too short for the laptop to be sold as 2nd hand] and using the same asset [porn site access,articles for sale on ebay] that were billed on the stolen bank card during the dozen of hours after the mugging until the bank blocked the card. That's quite a lot of coincidence and would require further police investigation) for a crime which - from their point of view - wasn't really a violent crime (no one got kiled) happens regularily and isn't a high threat to the general population.
So they didn't do a lot.
Meanwhile, the bank has quite a lot of money at stake in this case, (7k british pounds), so *they* did take the case seriously, did consider the victim's arguments, did their own internal investigation, and finally decided to reimburse the victim.
He should probably contact the insurance company. Lost laptop cost a lot to the insurance companies, so they would pay more serious attention to the information that the victim has gathered, and have a strong financial incentive to pressure the police to retrieve the stolen goods.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
That might well be, but it's pretty clear that the "victim" in all of this has himself broken the law and is liable at bare minimum for libel, if not various other laws.
It ain't libel if it is true.
It's unfortunate the the mugger would get away, but ultimately, the UK has a system of laws and you don't get to break them just because somebody else has broken them first.
A system of arbitrarily enforced laws is anarchy. The blogger can't get the law enforced in the first place.
Besides, this isn't about what's legal, its about what's moral. The mugger is sending the blogger those pictures. He made that decision when he stole the laptop. He's probably not cognizant of that decision, but it is a reasonable assumption that using a stolen computer will result in the webcam sending photos to the rightful owner. After all, the guy did put a piece of tape over the camera for the first 4 weeks.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Those are the same tired old lies.
"No taking Guns out of "equation" means that you are much more likely to have violence done to you, often with the same guns you disarmed from law abiding citizens."
There's absolutely no evidence of this, if it were remotely true then in the UK we would have far more gun deaths, and in the US, Mexico and South Africa violent crime would be largely a solved problem and yet they're some of the most violent Westernised countries on Earth.
"Just look at the crime statistics of any major City where they have extremely restrictive gun laws (Washington DC, Chicago, NY etc or the UK, incidents of violent crime are way higher)."
Sure, if you cherry pick outliers you can prove anything. FWIW the UK's violent crime incidents consist almost entirely of alcohol related brawls and football hooliganism, gun crime is such a small component that it's pretty much immeasurable in the stats.
"Guns are a great equalizer. Criminals want easy targets."
Right, and how does a gun make you not an easy target? Do your guns give you magical psychic abilities that let you know when someone is approaching from behind? Are criminals in America special such that they just happen to be the only segment of society that draws slower than everyone else and is less able to pull the trigger when pointing at another human being?
How do you reconcile your NRA sponsored world view with the idea that the leaked gun registry lists a few months back put the owners of those properties of being burgled? Surely all gun owners should have their address and fire arms publicly listed because criminals wont touch houses with guns right because they deter crime? Obviously the MIT cop didn't die to the Boston bombers the other day either as they'd never attack someone like him, a trained firearms user and holder. Oh wait.
Honestly, you don't need to give me the propaganda treatment, I've heard it all before and I'm fully aware of the logical inconsistencies and FUD required to give it at least some semblance of a valid argument as pointed out above. The FUD is tiresome, it makes no sense due to often being contradictory, and has no statistical merit.
Come back when you have some evidence of value for your point rather than hearsay and arguments that can be trivially pointed out as nonsense with only a few seconds of critical thinking.