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Police Busted When Tracking Device Found On Car

Posted by kdawson on Sun Sep 09, 2007 01:12 PM
from the george-orwell-meets-the-keystone-kops dept.
It's funny. Laugh. Privacy
uh oh notes a story from Down Under where a police investigation came to a screeching halt as a man being investigated by the police found tracking devices in two of his cars, ripped them out, and listed them on an auction site. "Ralph Williams, of Cromwell, said he found the devices last week in his daughter's car, which he uses, and in his flatmate's car after the cars were seized by police and taken away for investigation."
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Submission: Police busted after tracking device found on car by grolschie (610666)
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  • Good going from the PR dept. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Realistic_Dragon (655151) on Sunday September 09 2007, @01:17PM (#20529991) Homepage
    Police have neither confirmed nor denied they placed the devices.

    ...followed shortly by...

    A Trade Me spokesman said the listing was removed yesterday afternoon "at the request of the New Zealand Police".

  • Can you legally sell them (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ShooterNeo (555040) on Sunday September 09 2007, @01:18PM (#20530011)
    If the police leave something in your car like that, do you now legally own them? If a burglar breaks into your house and leaves his jacket, I'm pretty sure he can't ask for it back. If the police did not obtain a warrant, it seems like an analogous situation. I'm not sure what the rules are if the cops did obtain a warrant.

    • Re:Can you legally sell them (Score:5, Funny)

      by Asmor (775910) on Sunday September 09 2007, @01:22PM (#20530061) Homepage
      Well, it is a very well-documented legal fact that possession is 9/10 of the law.

      Therefore, all the man has to do to be in the right is provide the police with 10% of the proceeds from the sale.

        • Re:Can you legally sell them (Score:4, Insightful)

          by arth1 (260657) on Sunday September 09 2007, @06:45PM (#20532651) Homepage Journal

          While you're being facetious, if you do find something securely attached to your car, (Not just sitting on it, which could have been set there temporarily, actually attached to the car.) it is in fact yours unless someone can step forward and claims it.

          This is false. If a meter wench put clamps on your wheels, they do not then automatically belong to you. And if someone welds a can of caltraps under the rear bumper of your car (to be shook loose at random), you can not be held responsible for accidents that's caused by them.

          And no, if a burglar drops his wallet with $1,000 on your floor, that doesn't make the money yours. He may be guilty of a crime, but that doesn't give you any rights to what's not yours. Crime must not pay, neither for the perpetrator nor the victim (when it becomes profitable to be a victim, people will seek to become one, which increases crime instead of lowering it).

          Transference of ownership occurs when both parties agree to it. It's not enough that one person thinks it's an ownership transfer.
          What this guy did was theft. The police might or might not have broken a law by placing the devices on his car, but that's irrelevant to the ownership of the devices.

          • Re:Can you legally sell them (Score:5, Interesting)

            by Speed Pour (1051122) on Sunday September 09 2007, @08:06PM (#20533225)
            Minor correction, the example you give of a burglar dropping his wallet is an example of accidentally leaving the object in somebody's care. In this instance, the police knowingly and willingly put the devices into his possession. And you're right, unless he willingly accepts the devices, then the rightful owner doesn't change...EXCEPT, when he found the devices, he clearly opted to take ownership, and proceeded to attempt a sale. Unless some law prohibits ownership of these devices, then he has every right to do with them as he chooses (as long as it remains within the confines of the law ;). The really interesting part is, if there is a law prohibiting ownership of these devices, it means the police department is an accessory to the crime, in addition to any other crime they committed in placing those nifty little toys in the first place.

            Of course, now this guy has just pissed on the police...even if he weasels out of whatever he's guilty of, they will bust this guy's balls for years to come.

            • Re:Can you legally sell them (Score:5, Funny)

              by Lord Balto (973273) on Sunday September 09 2007, @10:22PM (#20534221) Homepage
              In the minds of most police, they are not subject to the law. They ARE the law. Just ask the next one you see on the street (and hope he has a sense of humor). Personally, I would have driven to the officer's house on numerous occasions while sending him messages about "the operation" and finally telling him "the cheeseberger is ready to be fried."

          • If a meter wench put clamps on your wheels, they do not then automatically belong to you.

            No shit, Sherlock. Did the big 'Property of The City' on it clue you in there? There's a reason they put that on there, you know.

            He found unlabeled boxes attached to his car. He called the police, he asked if the boxes were theirs. They were not. (At least, according to the police, and, obviously, they'd know.)

            And if someone welds a can of caltraps under the rear bumper of your car (to be shook loose at random), you can not be held responsible for accidents that's caused by them.

            You can't be held responsible for something you had no cause to know about, but that's entirely unrelated to whether or not it's your property. If they stole a box of nails out of your front seat and stuck them under your bumper, or just unattached your bumper and made it fall off, you aren't liable either. (Assuming the facts are not in question.)

            And no, if a burglar drops his wallet with $1,000 on your floor, that doesn't make the money yours. He may be guilty of a crime, but that doesn't give you any rights to what's not yours.

            Which is why I made the distinction between 'attached' and not attached. Sometimes things fall on or in your property. That does not make them yours. (Unless they are vegetation, which oddly enough is yours in most places.)

            And sometimes things are left on your property, for you, and they are in fact yours.

            It's all what a reasonable person would think. A reasonable person assumes a wallet laying on the ground is not for him (Even in his own house), whereas a reasonable person would assume an unlabeled envelope taped to his door full of cash is for him, even if he can think of no reason why this would be.(1) However, sitting in his front lawn, nope, not for him.

            Likewise, if you're parked in a parking lot and walk up and see a cooler full of soda sitting on your car, it's reasonable to assume some ass is just using your car as a table and that is not, in fact, a gift.

            And if you walk out and see something stuck under your wipers?(2) That is pretty clearly someone leaving you something on purpose.

            In other words, while something simply being on your property doesn't make it yours (And I didn't say it did.), it doesn't mean it's not yours. Transfer of ownership can be implied by leaving something for someone.

            It happens all the time with delivery people, or people leaving things in mailboxes. (According to postal regulations, things that enter the postal system are property of the recipient.) Or, like I said, things stuck under wipers.

            He checked to see if the police had left it, which would be the only people that reasonable would attach things to his car not as a gift, and it wasn't them.

            Now, if someone else shows up and claims it's theirs and the left it attached to his car by accident, he might be in trouble, but as it pretty obviously is the police's, only they would have grounds for complaint. And they can't because they said it wasn't theirs, leaving the obvious implication it was his.

            1) Well, it might be on the wrong house, but that doesn't really apply to this case.

            2) And that raises an interesting question. Are you honestly asserting that people can't legally claim ownership of pieces of paper stuck under their wipers? And before you say 'Paper is valueless', let's postulate it is an 85 dollar concert ticket.

            • Re:Can you legally sell them (Score:5, Funny)

              by greginnj (891863) on Monday September 10 2007, @09:30AM (#20538363) Homepage Journal

              And no, if a burglar drops his wallet with $1,000 on your floor, that doesn't make the money yours. He may be guilty of a crime, but that doesn't give you any rights to what's not yours. [...]

              And sometimes things are left on your property, for you, and they are in fact yours.
              Waitaminute, so if the neighbor walks his dog and it craps on my lawn, and while he's doing it the neighbor drops his wallet, the dog crap belongs to me, but the wallet does not? How unfair can life be?

        • Re:Can you legally sell them (Score:5, Insightful)

          by History's Coming To (1059484) on Sunday September 09 2007, @09:08PM (#20533611) Homepage Journal
          If I find something electronic that I don't own attached to my car, I call the bomb squad.

          And the papers, because they'll want to cover the argument between the military guy with the flack-jacket and the police guy with the red face.

    • Re:Can you legally sell them (Score:5, Funny)

      by GISGEOLOGYGEEK (708023) on Sunday September 09 2007, @01:24PM (#20530075)
      Reminds me of when my brother was arrested for siphoning gas from cars ... and after the judge found him to be innocent, he was allowed to collect his siphoning gear back from the evidence locker.

      • Re:Can you legally sell them (Score:5, Interesting)

        by petermgreen (876956) <plugwashNO@SPAMp10link.net> on Sunday September 09 2007, @03:24PM (#20531047) Homepage
        I don't belive it is illegal to posses such gear so giving it back is the right and proper thing to do if they can't show it was used in a crime.

          • Re:Can you legally sell them (Score:5, Funny)

            by cp.tar (871488) <cp.tar.bz2@gmail.com> on Sunday September 09 2007, @06:16PM (#20532457) Journal

            In Germany, you're now accused of being a "hacker" if you own "hacking tools" (like nmap or other tools used to secure your own network). So I wouldn't feel too safe. Depending on where you are, of course.

            OK, I'm never going to Germany.

            I could easily be accused of being a rapist, since I "own" certain "raping tools", i.e. a penis.

            And I carry it with me all the fscking time.

            • Re:Can you legally sell them (Score:5, Funny)

              by wirelessbuzzers (552513) on Sunday September 09 2007, @08:55PM (#20533531)
              O.J.: Radio interview quote from Marine Corps General Reinwald and a female radio host. He wants to host some boy scouts at the training center for some practise excercises. As follows
              FEMALE INTERVIEWER: So, General Reinwald, what things are you going to teach these young boys when they visit your base?
              GENERAL REINWALD: We're going to teach them climbing, canoeing, archery, and shooting.
              FEMALE INTERVIEWER: Shooting! That's a bit irresponsible, isn't it?
              GENERAL REINWALD: I don't see why, they'll be properly supervised on the rifle range.
              FEMALE INTERVIEWER: Don't you admit that this is a terribly dangerous activity to be teaching children?
              GENERAL REINWALD: I don't see how. We will be teaching them proper rifle discipline before they even touch a firearm.
              FEMALE INTERVIEWER: But you're equipping them to become violent killers.
              GENERAL REINWALD: Well, you're equipped to be a prostitute, but you're not one, are you?
              The radio went silent and the interview ended. You gotta love the Marines!

              -- bash.org [bash.org]

    • Re:Can you legally sell them (Score:5, Insightful)

      by sepluv (641107) <blakesley@NOSpAM.gmail.com> on Sunday September 09 2007, @01:27PM (#20530099) Homepage
      In general, in common law jurisdictions, I think if someone leaves there property on your land (which is a similar sutuation), it is still owned by them. You are supposed to try to return it or, at least, keep it for so many years in case they ask for it back.

      Assuming the police are responsible though, and they aren't admitting it is theirs, I'd imagine it is fair game. They can hardly complain about him selling their property if they deny it belongs to them.

    • Re:Can you legally sell them (Score:5, Funny)

      by daeg (828071) on Sunday September 09 2007, @01:34PM (#20530171)
      The police won't admit or deny they placed them. The owner of the cars most certainly own them.

      I would've attached them to a police car, though. Or a public bus. Or some kid's tricycle.

  • Why sell them? Then you admit they were there... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by QuasiEvil (74356) on Sunday September 09 2007, @01:24PM (#20530083)
    I would have simply removed them, disabled them, taken them out on some back road, and run over them a few times, followed by a thorough beating with a sledgehammer. The police won't admit they were there, so why should you? Then they'd have to admit to them to get them back, and you could plausibly say you never knew they were there, and thus couldn't be held responsible for their disappearance.

    Now if you want to get really funny, leave them powered up and transmitting on aforementioned backroad for a few minutes, make sure they get at least one location transmission off, and then beat the crap out of them.

  • Two Words: Helium Balloons... (Score:5, Funny)

    by stoicfaux (466273) on Sunday September 09 2007, @01:29PM (#20530117)

    He should have attached the devices to helium balloons and set them aloft.

  • Two devices two parties (Score:5, Interesting)

    by BlueParrot (965239) on Sunday September 09 2007, @01:58PM (#20530353)
    Guys forget about judges, buses, smashing them to pieces and whatnot. You have two tracking devices. The obvious thing to do with them is to glue them to the politicians cars. One to a democrat, the other to a republican. Bonus points if you get a friend to cross-file fake DMCA requests from the respective victims to one another. Jackpot if you can crack their wireless connections and download a gig or two of child porn, Disney movies and instructions for growing pot. Then file an anonymous tip or two... If things are to change it needs to have negative consequences for the people who make the rules...

  • Ralph Williams arrested for 'Theft of Property' (Score:5, Informative)

    by isaac (2852) on Sunday September 09 2007, @02:00PM (#20530377)
    The subject in this case, Ralph Williams, has been arrested for theft of property. See http://tvnz.co.nz/view/page/1318360/1336811 [tvnz.co.nz] for a more recent article.

    I suppose the police will argue that listing the items as police bugs on an auction site shows awareness that the bugs weren't his to sell. Thus, he'd "stolen" them by their logic.

    Mr. Williams' day in court promises to be interesting...

    -Isaac

    • Why don't they just let it go instead of digging a deeper hole for themselves by arresting him and lying. This is almost as bad as the recent incident of the under-not-so-good-cover police agents provocateuse with the rocks trying to start a riot in Montebello, Quebec.

      As stated in the article, he asked the police officer whose mobile phone device was contacting if the police had left their property on his car. When they denied they were theirs, he concluded they were fair game to sell as they were on his property. I think the judge might take a dim view of this.

  • Fascist Police tactics not so funny (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Jeremy_Bee (1064620) on Sunday September 09 2007, @02:10PM (#20530459)
    This is a funny story and all, but isn't anyone worried by this part?

    The Summary Proceedings Act, which covers tracking devices, says a warrant should be obtained for a tracking device but an officer can install one without a warrant if there is not time and the officer believes a judge would issue a warrant.
    I mean that puts Australia more towards the Fascist end of the scale than even the US doesn't it?
    (and that's hard to do)

    Since when is surveillance ever an issue of immediacy? You usually engage in it over a protracted period in order to slowly gather evidence. Also a warrant hardly ever takes more than a day or even a few hours to get in any country I ever heard of. Anyhow, what Judge is going to refuse a warrant for a bugging device considered so important by the Police that they have already installed it?

    This seems to be a deliberate loop-hole in the law to allow for warrant-less surveillance. The very fact that a regular police force investigating a fairly low-level crime uses this tactic kind of implies that this is fairly widespread or typical behaviour as well.

    Yet another reason never to go to Australia. ;-)

  • How this was found... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Technician (215283) on Sunday September 09 2007, @07:28PM (#20532975)
    a man being investigated by the police found tracking devices in two of his cars, ripped them out,

    The article was very sparse regarding what problem he had with the cars that led to the discovery. I will take a speculation stab at this. Cell phones are well known for causing RFI problems with poorly shielded electronics doing everything from causing keyboards on PC's to lock-up to putting a buzz into radio and stereo gear.

    The location of the device was on the passenger side footwell. This would place it close to the engine computer in many cars. It may be an easy to install location for the police and the GPS antenna can be located under the dashboard giving a good location for GPS reception through the plastic dash and windscreen, but the cell transmitter in that location could and probably did cause problems with both the stereo and engine computer. As he stated, it was a botched installation that led to the discovery. A proper install would have located the cell transmitter in the trunk away from sensitive electronics to transmit out the rear window. The car ran poorly, but it was probably the teltale radio noise that geve it away. Removing it fixed both the radio and engine computer.

    This interference issue is why most magnet mount tracking devices are mounted on the rear of the car away from the engine compartment. Inside the plastic rear bumper on a metal bracket is a favorite location. there is little chance of interference revealing it's presence, and good GPS and cell signals.

    • Re:Sue the police? (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 09 2007, @01:26PM (#20530095)
      And what kind of law requires a warrent to do something, except when the police are claiming they are in a hurry and don't need a warrent if they think the judge will be on their side?

      You do realize that the US has very similar rules of evidence, right? That whole 'exigent circumstances' thing? There are similar rules for FISA wiretaps, even before this whole NSA scandal thing, in that DHS could have tapped someone's phone then gone and gotten a warrent retrospectively.

      It's more limited than the scope of this law seems to be, but the idea is by no means absent from the US legal system.

      • Re:Sue the police? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by jedidiah (1196) on Sunday September 09 2007, @02:05PM (#20530411) Homepage
        ...it's like what McCain said about torture.

        Sometimes, the good guys need to break the rules in order to do the right thing. This
        doesn't mean that disrespect for the rules in general should be ensrined into the law
        or SOP. If the situation is really serious enough that you need to ignore the usual
        rules then you need to be prepared to take any of the consequences for breaking them.

        This is especially true for anyone that is supposed to be "setting an example".

        If you are a cop and aren't willing to take the consequences for breaking the rules,
        then it's pretty obvious that the situation doesn't warrant breaking them. Being too
        lazy to get a judge's signature is not a good excuse. Writting the law so that cops
        can be lazy as a matter of routine is not good.

        This is the part of "being Dirty Harry" that tends to get missed.

      • Re:Sue the police? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by tomhudson (43916) <hudson@vide[ ]on.ca ['otr' in gap]> on Sunday September 09 2007, @02:08PM (#20530443) Homepage Journal

        "but what about smaller areas where a warrant at 3am means having to wrest an old man out of bed?"

        Then you wake them up. Or you do your job properly, and plan better, so you don't have to go and bother someone at 3am.

        • Re:Sue the police? (Score:4, Interesting)

          by Obyron (615547) on Sunday September 09 2007, @04:08PM (#20531435)
          If the old man finds doing his job to be such an inconvenience, maybe it's time to retire and join the rest of the fogies in Shady Acres. Judges / Magistrates / Trial Commissioners / Whatever The Hell You Have In Jurisdiction X know very well that late night phone calls and police knocking on your door at 4am to get warrants or EPOs or what-have-you signed is part of the job. The stuff you see in police procedural dramas where the cops don't want to call Judge SoandSo because it would be a horror to wake him up is silly. To me, "not wanting to wake the judge" is a sign that the evidence for the warrant is paper thin, and they know he'll chew their ass for waking him up over nothing, when they SHOULD be waking him up over -something-.

        • Re:Sue the police? (Score:4, Funny)

          by cyberwench (10225) <tunalei@gmail.com> on Sunday September 09 2007, @05:31PM (#20532123)

          False Pretences

          Pretending to practise witchcraft, etc.

          365. Every one who fraudulently

          (a) pretends to exercise or to use any kind of witchcraft, sorcery, enchantment or conjuration,


          So, if you legitimately practice witchcraft, that's ok? Looks like the sort of law that would need a bit more fleshing out.

    • Re:they will become mandatory sometime too (Score:5, Insightful)

      by T5 (308759) on Sunday September 09 2007, @02:37PM (#20530687)
      Have you never heard of OnStar [onstar.com]? That fits exactly what you describe - a perceived additional sense of security and safety by having a corporate entity (or a law enforcement or other governmental agency with or without a warrant) track your every move and even listen in on your conversations remotely. The courts have sided with disallowing OnStar's use for listening in on conversations inside the vehicle, but all it will take is one judge and that's out the window. OnStar's just one more good reason not to purchase a GM vehicle.

      "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." --attributed to Benjamin Franklin

      • Re:Legality? (Score:5, Funny)

        by Midnight Thunder (17205) on Sunday September 09 2007, @03:46PM (#20531235) Homepage Journal
        Then again, maybe it's stamped "Property of New Zealand Police. Removal prohibited". One never knows.

        Or more likely, based on the article: "Not Property of New Zealand Police, we don't even know about it. Removal prohibited by order of New Zealand Police" ;)

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