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Proposed MAC Sniffing Dongle Intended To Help Recover Stolen Electronics
An anonymous reader writes to say that an Iowa City police officer is developing a new concept to help police find more stolen property. The Gazette has a short report that officer David Schwindt, inspired by a forensics class, is working on L8NT, a specialized wireless dongle to help police officers locate stolen electronics (any of them with wireless capabilities and a MAC address, at least) by scanning for MAC addresses associated with stolen goods. The idea is to have police scan as they drive for these MAC entries, and match them against a database. The article notes a few shortcomings in this concept, but does not point out an even bigger one: MAC addresses are usually mutable, anyhow, in a way that's not as obvious as an obscured serial number, and thieves could refine their business model by automating the change.
Not sure if you're aware, but white men are killed more often by police than black men, and while the proportion does not match the racial makeup of society it does match the rate of violent crime.
The number is also absurdly low; something like 100-150 black men are shot per year by police, and that does not factor out those shootings which were justified. Given the media's propensity to report every shooting (as it drives a popular narrative), and given that there have only been 3-4 reported unarmed killings by police this year, I think its safe to say the number is under 20/ year for the country.
To put that in perspective its substantially less than the number people who die falling off their roof each year (>40).