Thieves steal 3,000 laptops from US Special Ops contractor

Thieves lifted 3,000 laptops from a military contractor for the US Special Operations Command in a leisurely nine-hour robbery back in March, it has emerged. According to the St Petersburg Times the brazen bandits loaded a brace of trucks with the lappies and a pile of other kit in the robbery at the offices of US contractor …

[Anonymous Coward]

Significant digits

"around 1,911"

There are roughly 9.59235 things wrong with that statement.

[Anonymous Coward]

Reminds me...

...of a certain BT exchange in central London......

[Anonymous Coward]

ho hum...

Just because they are contracted to supply IT equipment to spec forces doesn't mean that Delta Force are guarding their warehouse your know.

/nade obvious.

[James Hughes 1]

Miami Date PD?

Send in Horatio!

He'll have it all by within 45 minutes. As usual.

[Jelliphiish]

quick

to the ebay-mobile

also: playmobile or it never happenned

[The BigYin]

Err...

...I've got a crappy webcam. It cost about £15. It came with some crappy software. Guess what?

I can plug that sucker in and set it to "alarm" when it detects motion. For £15. Sweet.

I am no expert but I would guess that there are much better commercial system available (possible even open source ones) what could "alarm" as well can get a human to look and see if there is something really kooky going on and even call the cops if the human doesn't respond in time.

Actually, I know there are as I have seen the demo of just such a home safety system (Linux based, I forget the exact details, it was some kind of home entertainment/automation system too).

Of course if you want to supply kit to ne'erdowells in a manner with plausible deniability, a "robbery" is probably the best way.

[neil 15]

Zoneminder

Is that Linux based one. It is actually quite good.

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux MCE

"Actually, I know there are as I have seen the demo of just such a home safety system (Linux based, I forget the exact details, it was some kind of home entertainment/automation system too)."

Think you are looking for LinuxMCE

http://linuxmce.com/

[frank ly]

Some know, some don't even know they don't know.

Ahhhh, you're one of those guys who knows stuff and knows how to find out about stuff.

[Anonymous Coward]

What happened to the other $435M?

3000 Toughbooks, even all decked out, might run around $15M. Where did the other $435M go?

[John Dougald McCallum]

alarums

The kind of alarms that call the cops is so old that one textile firm that I worked for had the message on a 78rpm record I kid you not.

[John Smith 19]

Nearly 2/3 of the haul recovered

*Impressive*

Hard to believe that by now they still have *no* idea who done it though.

[Version 1.0]

Not as hard as you'd think.

I worked in an office park in Tampa just like that one some time ago - they are completely deserted at the weekend. In America so nobody walks around anyway but there'll be no cars driving around or anything. Nobody - they are like a desert!

When I was there a new company was setting up and had all their furniture delivered one week and thieves broke in over the weekend and stole every chair, desk, bookcase and filing cabinet in the building!

[tuna 1]

Special O.... What?

RSS feed stopped at "Special O..."

I thought it was a new low for crime and they had ripped-off the Special Olympics!

Luckily, just another iWar military contractor making $$$ hand over fist.

9 hours??? Let's hope the iDiots handled their iNsurance policies as well as their iInTheSky.

[Neal 5]

LMFAO

Everyone knows that war efforts stop at 4PM for a cup of tea, not an entire day. Guess that's amerrrrrrrrrrrrrcun globalizaaaaaaaaaaashun for yah. Fuck'em it ain't coming outa my pocket.

[Anonymous Coward]

iGov?

They own the name iGov (and Apple doesn't?)

That's Steve Jobs' plans for world domination scuppered, then.

[James O'Brien]

Please tell me im not the only one who noticed this?

"To add insult to injury, the St Petersburg Times"

Apparently the Russkies werent spying on "US" they were trying to keep an eye out for news-worthy items. . .

[David McMahon]

All they need now...

Is Gary Mckinnon to be able to use them

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_McKinnon

unfortunately he is facing life imprisonment for embarrassing the US Gov so

note to thieves try

1, "Password"

2, "Admin"

Look for the gold plated one for the top Brass!

[Marvin the Martian]

So the actual danger didn't happen...

They could have broken in for 2-3hours, loaded malicious stuff onto the lappies, scarper off and never be found out?

Don't see why the article makes a point of them being closed on saturday --- it's not like anyone's working then in the gov offices they'll deliver the lappies to.