Jobs' Burglary Manhunt Yields Kenny the Clown 99
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."
Clowns have always creeped me out. (Score:5, Funny)
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Electronic devices that take the liberty of ratting out their users have always freaked me out. Sure, this time the result was recovery of stolen property. Next time the result might be capture, torture and execution of a politcal dissident.
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Re:Can we have some real content, Slashdot? (Score:4)
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Back in 2000 there was a fad where people would say "This is not news!" and poo-poo whatever announcement was made. One time there was a story about a CD burner that reached speeds of 55x. I jokingly posted "All you have to do is use your old CD burner and just wait longer. This is not news! " It was taken seriously and modded insightful.
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True, but your post is a classic "slashdot is has gone to the dogs." I am sure you can find a many posts from 2002 saying something like "I can't believe slashdot posted another stupid article about Theo and all the dumbass BSD flaming politics. Can we get on with the real news, or do I just need to go over to Ars for good?"
As someone who has been on this site since well before you could even get a user account, its absolutely gone down hill steadily for a decade now. Its really dropped off enormously in the last two years. Slashdot, and its community, like to act like they're so intellectual, but Slashdot is driven by ad revenue, and it hit on the exact same solution to driving ad views that Fox News did -- identify an overzealous market and carefully pick the stories that market wants to hear. Keep them whipped up in a frenz
And the fucking clowns... (Score:2)
Re:Can we have some real content, Slashdot? (Score:5, Insightful)
Can you post the links to your story submissions, please?
money well spend (Score:1)
Cost of items lost: $60000
Cost of replacing them with insurance: $1000 ish
Cost of finding lost items: priceless
Nothing like last time REACT was involved (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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which may trouble some privacy advocates.
Not me, I don't steal things. When you commit a crime, you have no standing to complain about a violation of your privacy except in court.
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Do you really believe that only criminals get arrested and/or persecuted by the government? You think that as long as you "don't steal things" you have nothing to worry about?
Re:Nothing like last time REACT was involved (Score:4, Insightful)
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Are you sure ?
I heard recently on the radio that carrying lobsters in your car is illegal. There are so many laws, especially dumb and obsolete ones, that each and everyone of us is breaking laws every day.
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I heard recently on the radio that carrying lobsters in your car is illegal.
As a general rule, if you hear something on the radio that doesn't make a whole lot of sense, that's probably because it isn't true.
(N.B.: You can substitute quite a few other things for "the radio" and this principle will remain a good one. "The television",
"the Internet", "Slashdot", and so on.)
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A quick google of this topic fails to provide any hits of relevance (your post is the top hit).
sounds like an urban myth to me. Not that I am going to debate that there are some stupid laws still on the books in most jurisdictions - lets start with the ones about gay marriage and anything that goes on in the bedroom. I got a hit on carrying a horse in your car, but nothing about lobsters.
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The concern is that these techniques could be used by law enforcement agents against people who are not criminals in order to harass or intimidate them.
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Because its Apple and they are Evil. Screw shades of gray. If someone is Evil, then everything they do is evil, if they do something good then that just have an Evil motive behind it.
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React was involved because Gizmodo bragged about dealing in stolen goods and intentionally leaked trade secrets.
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Absolutely! Great job! Got the criminal, even recovered other stolen property.
SCREW the privacy advocates.
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Toad-san is volunteering for a new policy of checking for bill of sale for everything in your home and possession. If you don't have a sales receipt then it will be assumed stolen and confiscated. More than $10,000 worth of stuff and you will be charged with a felony. The police will be there in a few hours.
network admins keep access logs (Score:3)
news at 11
apple audits network traffic that hit their servers. isn't this taught in MCSE class?
Re:Worried about privacy (Score:4, Interesting)
Finding only secured Wi-Fi signals, investigators could argue it was being used by the person paying the bill or those with permission.
Gee Mr. Persecutor, I know the router is locked down now, but it was insecure before my brother-in-law pointed it out to me.
That's probably an argument you'd make to a judge to invalidate the search; though I think you'd have a hard time arguing they didn't have probable cause for a search since the router was secured when they checked. That would provide, IMH-nonlawyerO, reasonable justification for a warrant.
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That argument only comes up at trial or in a motion to suppress, and requires a brother-in-law willing to commit purgery. Since they actually found the device, no such motion would be allowed and you would lose. On the plus side, if you attempted this and your purgering brother-in-law participated in the foolishness, you would both get a free place to live for a period of time paid
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It's spelled perjury.
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That argument only comes up at trial or in a motion to suppress, and requires a brother-in-law willing to commit purgery.
"purgery" sounds interesting but the word you are looking for is "perjury"
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Gee Mr. Persecutor, I know the router is locked down now, but it was insecure before my brother-in-law pointed it out to me.
And then the prosecutor enters Google Street View WiFi logs (date stamped) into evidence revealing the secured status of the AP at the time in question.
Do you really want to risk a perjury charge?
burglar robs lots of homes, police catch him (Score:3)
news at 11
Steve Jobs' home was just the most high profile. isnt this what police supposed to do? catch criminals who rob lots of homes?
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yeah but if the US is anything like where I live, a solved burglary is actually newsworthy because they only solve about 2% of all burglaries.
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Since the average burglar is doing it for a living, on a regular basis, even a 2% clearance rate means that any given burglar will be caught soon enough.
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I and 48 other people would rather our stuff wasn't stolen in the first place.
Re:burglar robs lots of homes, police catch him (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:burglar robs lots of homes, police catch him (Score:4, Interesting)
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post to undo bad mod
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OTOH, who in their right mind would leave diamonds and easily fenced electronic gizmos at a house that is unoccupied while undergoing extensive renovations?
Sounds, and FSM forgive me, like a sting. Nobody could be that dumb.
Right?
Re:burglar robs lots of homes, police catch him (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Statement 1: Florida should not be held up as an example of anything except possibly the advantages of global warming and the subsequent rise in ocean levels.
Statement 2: Anecdote is not data. Some Police do a lousy job. So do some doctors, nurses, astronauts, politicians (well, they always do a lousy job) and pedicurists.
Statement 3: Your neighbors are not, and never have been, Stephen P. Jobs. It does make a difference.
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Yet there are something like 5 million people in prison for simple possession of the wrong kind of drugs. Seems to me that the cops aren't prioritizing crimes with actual victims.
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that's because addicts are more likely to commit crime to steal money to get their fix. some of us city folk figured this out in the 1980's.
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that's because addicts are more likely to commit crime to steal money to get their fix. some of us city folk figured this out in the 1980's.
So that's why my car is always being broken into by cigarette smokers and alcohol drinkers?
Get real.
The average pot smoker doesn't commit crime to buy weed either. And what few do would be even less likely to if they could get it legally for the same price as a pack of cigarettes.
Heroine is maybe a different scenario, but then people addicted to heroine ought to be trea
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You like pot, we get it.
So when do *I* get this type of service? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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Apparently when it's stolen in Minnesota [cbslocal.com].
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Or Canada [ipadtalkz.com]
Re:So when do *I* get this type of service? (Score:4, Informative)
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Police found the iPads using the same method every iPad owner has with Find my iPad
Not true. Did you read the article? They looked at IP addresses and Apple IDs in Apple's DBs when the stolen devices synched to iTunes, then cross-referenced them with ISPs. Find your iPad is a useless toy that disappears with a factory reset.
Re:So when do *I* get this type of service? (Score:5, Informative)
When you turn on Find My iPad [apple.com].
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Uhhh... no. If they wipe it, Find My iPad (or iPhone) no longer workie.
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Some animals are more equal than others.
Shucks (Score:4, Funny)
When I read the headline, my mental image was of course of Kenny the Clown moonlighting as a second story man. Now, that would be a surveillance tape I would like to see.
Re:Shucks (Score:4, Funny)
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Was the get-away-car a mini minor driven by 17 of his closest accomplices?
The Burglar is a Complete Idiot (Score:5, Funny)
Public Figure? (Score:2)
"To connect with Kenny the Clown, sign up for Facebook today." No need, I'm already signed up for iTunes, and I'm sure they could connect me with Kenny
Wow (Score:2)
Last time I lost an electronic device or had it stolen, the exact same people swung into action and recovered it for me.
Oh wait...what? Nobody did anything at all?
Awwwwww.... :(
Taxes too low on rich (Score:5, Interesting)
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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