Apple Now Working With the NYPD To Curb iPhone Thefts 123
An anonymous reader writes "Back in late 2012, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg attributed the increase in statistical city-wide crime to Apple, noting that thieves had a propensity to target folks using iPhones and iPads. As an illustration of the problem, there were 3,890 more Apple product thefts than in 2012 than there were in 2011. At the time, Mayor Bloomberg's press secretary Marc La Vorgna explained that 'if you just took away the jump in Apple', crime in New York City would have been down year over year. Indeed, the number of major crimes reported in 2011 in NYC came in at 104,948 compared to 108.432 in 2012. If you exclude Apple related thefts from the figures, then the crime rate in 2012 is essentially the same as it was in 2011. In light of that, a new report from the New York Post details that Apple is now working with the NYPD in an effort to curb iPhone and other Apple related thefts."
Re:How about bricking them? (Score:5, Interesting)
Why brick them? Just making using them useless. Every connection to network: WiFi or Cell, just opens a FaceTime connection, so the police can direct comunate with the current holder. So clean records.
Password to power off (Score:4, Interesting)
How about just making it require a password to power off, put it in airplane mode, or disable Find My iPhone so you can use find my phone? As it is you can still turn the phone off even if the lock screen is passworded. I don't want to have to enter a PIN every time I unlock my phone, but I also don't want a thief to be able to disable Find My iPhone (such as by turning it off), and I wouldn't mind entering a password on the rare occasions I turn the phone off or put it in airplane mode. Do any Android phones have a feature like that?
I think most thieves know to turn off an iPhone that they've stolen.
Re:The NYPD has too much fucking money (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't think you understand how politics and police in a big city work.
There's the police force that the poor get, the police force that the middle class get, and the police force that the rich get. Generally, when cops come into poor neighborhoods, it's to bash heads. In middle class neighborhoods, you get sympathetic cops who politely explain that they're too busy to investigate your report. In the rich neighborhoods, they drop everything in order to find your missing poodle.