Canadian Police Identify Suspect From Remotely-Accessed Stolen Laptop (cochraneeagle.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Last week a security consultant remotely logged into his stolen laptop, and gathered clues from a Facebook profile. Though it didn't provide the suspect's real name, the consultant shared the profile online, and says he's now receiving tips from other crime victims who are scouring through the profile's friends list. And according to a local newspaper, the Canadian police say they've now identified a suspect, although "there is a lot of work that needs to be done before we can lay charges."

But despite this apparent victory, one officer is also warning the public against sharing a suspect's identity on social media, according to the paper, "after the social media post may have wrongly identified a suspect."
"When you get to public shaming, I urge caution..." the police officer tells the newspaper. "As a person that gets stuff stolen, I understand the want to publicly shame someone... Give us all the info, and we will follow up once we have the evidence."

Comments

Better idea

[alvinrod]

If you have access to it and can know who has it and where it is you can probably get an officer to come with you and knock on a door. If the person denies having it just have it starting making noise or play a loud audio clip about it being stolen. At that point the police officer has probable cause and could enter the dwelling.

No need to post stuff to social media or anything like that. Hell once a cop is at the door it's pretty easy to talk the person into admitting that they must have "found" it and that you're so greatful that they've kept it safe until you could pick it up. Give people an easy out and they'll usually take it.

Re:Better idea

[Scutter]

If you have access to it and can know who has it and where it is you can probably get an officer to come with you and knock on a door.

I think you would be astonished at how difficult it is to get the police to react or respond to petty theft calls. Even if you hand them everything they need to make an arrest.

May not even be the theif.

[blunttrauma]

Person who has the laptop now may not be the person who stole it, and may have no idea that is was. Lots of used laptops on craigslist,

Police aren't interested in small-time theft

[Ritz_Just_Ritz]

You could have incontrovertible evidence of the identity of the thief or the current possessor of the laptop, but it's extremely unlikely that you'll be able to find a police department that's sufficiently interested to bother helping unless it's part of a larger crime. I'm not saying the police are bad people, but I am saying that most departments appear to be under-resourced to follow-up on petty crime.