Stolen Laptop Owner Outwits Mugger, Police, and the Media 272
An anonymous reader writes "What do you get mugged in Central London and the local police are too incompetent to find a mugger even with his address and photograph? You may not be able to get to the laptop, but you still own the photos and data on it, so you set up the NSFW Plumpergeddon blog which gives details of the subsequent 'owner's' 'Brick House Butts' fetishes. Now of course later the IT media might get interested and offer an interview with a promise to let him review the article and keep his name secret. luckily our hero is not so innocent and demonstrates the value of using a false name on the internet as well as planting your own monitoring software on your laptop."
Re:What do you get mugged? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd give this site less than a year before its finally pawned off to another owner and the domain recycled. The "news" here is days or even weeks old and the owners can't figure out how to ban one persistent comment spammer.
Re:Hero..maybe to you. (Score:5, Interesting)
I would be astonished if this is legal (its ethically wrong), as notices normally have to be shown...although are often small; hidden in reality. This opens the doors for people leaving usb pen drives in the street, lending computers to friends...or hell just buying someone a usb camera.
I don't really think we should be taking ethical advice from someone who conflates stealing a computer with being lent a computer, much less being gifted a computer.
Call me skeptical (Score:3, Interesting)
Keep his name secret? Possibly, and not that uncommon. Let him review the article? I really, really, really doubt that. No journalist - hell, no J-school student - would be that dumb.
Once you've been interviewed the deed is done. Unless it involves highly technical information - say interviewing a top scientist in specialized field, where there really is a need for detailed discussion - there's no way you'll be asked to "review" anything.
Re:Speak English, dickless. (Score:5, Interesting)
Slashdot replacement (Score:5, Interesting)
So what are people around here considering reading instead of Slashdot? This indecipherable summary is extremely common around here along with click bait, exaggerated headlines (click bait again), news that's days behind every other tech news site. I'd love to hear some fresh ideas for Slashdot replacements.
Tech news (Score:5, Interesting)
He hasn't tracked the thief, but his laptop regularly sends photos and screenshots while the laptop is in use. This is old news, from a tech perspective.
But, in any case, it's not a terribly interesting tech story.
The tech part of the story is that, although the laptop-tracking software technically works without any fault (well almost, but the thiefs stupidly worked around the part that didn't work), it has done nothing on the overall to help the case.
Police just ignores him.
This kind of software has always been sold/touted as the ultimate solution for lost and stolen laptops, as the best weapon against thieves.
But ultimately, it doesn't make any difference that the software worked flawlessly.
I my opinion this boils down to the motivation of the various parties involved.
For the police, handling the case would require lots of resource (paperwork, permits and warrants, interrogating the suspect, searching his home, more paperwork, etc...) and some risks (usually stolen laptops are resold, so often the people using them aren't the thieves but are thinking they use a legitimately bought 2nd hand latop, so in theory there's a risk of harassing the wrong guy - although in this case, the robbed victim has found a lot of credible arguments, including that the suspect started using the laptop a couple of hours after the mugging [too short for the laptop to be sold as 2nd hand] and using the same asset [porn site access,articles for sale on ebay] that were billed on the stolen bank card during the dozen of hours after the mugging until the bank blocked the card. That's quite a lot of coincidence and would require further police investigation) for a crime which - from their point of view - wasn't really a violent crime (no one got kiled) happens regularily and isn't a high threat to the general population.
So they didn't do a lot.
Meanwhile, the bank has quite a lot of money at stake in this case, (7k british pounds), so *they* did take the case seriously, did consider the victim's arguments, did their own internal investigation, and finally decided to reimburse the victim.
He should probably contact the insurance company. Lost laptop cost a lot to the insurance companies, so they would pay more serious attention to the information that the victim has gathered, and have a strong financial incentive to pressure the police to retrieve the stolen goods.
Re:Huh? (Score:4, Interesting)
You know, Philip K. Dick invented a similar game using computers in he's book Galactic Pot-Healer [wikipedia.org] in 1969, well before the Internet, Google or TCP existed. Probably before computer assisted translation was practical.
Re:Hero..maybe to you. (Score:4, Interesting)
It's pretty clear that the intent behind posting what he's posted was malicious and as such he could very well be liable for that.
Could be... but do you think the civil damage to the thief exceeds the thief's civil damage in physically injuring the original owner and making off with his property?
Before he can be liable for his actions, the thief's liability for his actions has to be exhausted too.
As for morality. I'm sorry, but this isn't moral. Moral would be referring it to the police and the CC issuer and insurance company and accepting that there isn't anything that can be done.
Which he did, and they failed to establish justice.
After you have exhausted options that are legal. Morality does not require that all your actions are legal.
Morality would permit you to take further actions to equalize injustice and discourage the mugger's activity.
Vigilantism is just not something which is acceptable in a civilized society.
So-called vigilantism is not what has happened here.
He has not committed any violent act, or attempted to physically restrain, arrest, injure, or kill the mugger in any way.
He has taken advantage of the fact, that his property has been put to a use without his authorization, and used that fact, to make his property do something he has authorized, but the current illegal possessor does not approve of.
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Interesting)
Given that the internet (okay, ARPANET) was actually invented in 1969, Dick's book wasn't that much ahead of its time. TCP came a few years later.
(1969 was a surprisingly watershed year: first (and second) manned moon landing, the beginning of the internet, and the development of UNIX.)