Fanboi beats 'e-trespassing' rap after using GPS to find stolen iPad An Australian magistrate has ruled that an iPad owner acted lawfully when he used Apple's Find my iPad app to locate his stolen fondleslab in a private home. ABC News and the Canberra Times report that when a Canberra man's iPad mysteriously disappeared he fired up the Find my iPad App. Doing so revealed, thanks to the …
If it had been an Android tablet - or TV, or laptop, or any other make of device, it would simply have been referred to by the medias "tablet","TV", "laptop" etc. But when it's an Apple product, the media always advertise it by name: "Ipad", "Istale", "Iphone", "MacProBookMacPro" etc.
Seriously, just take a look next time the media refer to some products, in any context. The amount of unfair free product placement advertising Apple get is absurd. It's particularly painful when you read two items together, e.g., the media refer to "his Mac and phone" or "her laptop and Iphone", so you can be sure it's not just a coincidence, it really is Apple always getting a special advert. Yet despite all this free advertising, they fail - outsold by Windows on the desktop, Android (or even Samsung and Nokia) on mobile.
TrustGo is just ONE of several companies that will offer remote tracking and wiping of your devices, and it is prominently displayed in Android devices. I dunno whether they supporrt iPads. But, your claim about it being at risk if that iPad were an Android is not accurate. TrustGo is on my GTab.... That is how I know the product is offered. Whether or not it actually works is something I hope to never have to find out.
But, since burglarers will be on to this, the next stage of this game has to be that the owners have gyro/accel/EM information plus the mic all in on the alerts as soon as the device is moved and an immediate followup is not a proper countermand command. But, even so, a skilled thief need only shove the device into an evidence bag and then fiddle with the device in a Faraday-cage-like bunker or building to try to audibly silence or EM-silence it.
Maybe a new trick may be to install proximity sensors around the perimeter the owner demarcs as a protection zonee. Program the devices on different freqs (to increase the difficulty for the ordinary thief) to all listen to an inventory list, all the while with each noded device sharing inventory info every few seconds. As soon as a device doesn't "check in", all the prox devices remote-call the police, the lucky alarm company, and the device's contracted monitoring/anti-theft/theft-tracking service. Simultaneous to that, motion and video sensors would try to off-site off load their footage to prevent local wiping of the footage and correlated video prior to and after entry/departure of the residence and property limits.
Too bad non-lethal booby traps arre not always legal. One with a hand-smacker, knee-whacker and some EM/IR/Reontgin-emitting dye packs could make all but the most prepared thief catchable in about 1 hour or less unless the theif is an undercity dweller and can escape with fractured kneecaps....
"If it had been an Android tablet the would never have been caught, he'd have left it behind and taken the telly instead."
I think several people above have had a serious sense of humour failure here.
It was a joke, and it made me smile, even though I own an Android table and really don't like anything to do with Apple.
(It was a joke, right?)
"It was a joke, and it made me smile"
Indeed. I also found the humour in it.
What puzzles me is the pathetic rivalry between people who buy product X or product Y... I thought we already had football teams to provide for that kind of primitive stupidity.
And besides, real men with real dicks use Psion Organisers.
Google would be off the hook if they had only collected SSIDs and no payload data. Had the victim acquired and published pictures of the thief in some compromising situation, he might have been in some trouble but all he did was receive data sent from his own device by a program which he ran.
Depends on what you call a thief. The people that are really good at appropriating wealth they have not created are able to manipulate the legal system and use the power of the state to enforce their theft. E.g. patent trolls, robber barons (via enclosures etc.), and all those fat cats who kept their pensions, bonuses and "golden handshakes" as a reward for wrecking their victims lives.
Personally if I was wrongfully arrested I'd be more than happy to hand over the prints and DNA to prove my innocence and knowing that I'm not a criminal I'd not give a toss that the police kept it on file afterwards... if on the other hand I was guilty as charged... refusing the samples makes you look guilty as hell, like you know you have something to hide.
So whilst the Aussies might get the right to refuse does it really help them in any way?
@iamafish : Since you are so happy to do so, why don't you go to the police station right now and volunteer all your details, fingerprints, DNA etc., just for their records.
If people who are happy to give away their right to privacy actually did so, there would be no need for new laws to take mine away.
Fucking mumpit.
Thomas 18 - Really, false positives? I rather think that is many orders of magnitude more unlikely that the coppers assuming I'm guilty because I refused a sample and then tearing my life apart looking for other evidence when I could have easily proved there isn't any. Why create more fuss and bother?
Sir Runcible Spoon - Doing what I suggest isn't giving away my right to privacy, it is choosing not to exercise it because I don't see the point if in fact I've done nothing. I'm also not suggesting everyone has to do it, did you notice that my post started with "Personally...". I also pointed out that the Aussie thief in this example doesn't help his case by refusing the samples, it makes him appear to be hiding something - exercising your right to privacy (which you should have and it seems the Aussies do have) isn't always the most constructive thing to do.
I'm not going to wander down the copshop and ask them to sample me, I haven't committed any crimes so doing so would be wasting there time... which is a bit silly isn't it, they are busy enough already.
The words I would like to use to describe your frothy mouthed privacy paranoia is not the sort of thing I like to write in public - unlike your coarse comment.
"Thomas 18 - Really, false positives?"
Well yes, actually.
The sensitivity of the current schemes of DNA identification only really work if you keep a very small set of samples from the hardened criminal fraternity. As the pot grows larger to encompass anyone who has had a brush with the law, it becomes steadily less and less useful.
The markers used in traditional DNA identification do not give a "fingerprint-style" human-race unique marker like CSI would lead us to believe.
Some branches of my extended family tree are extinct.
When the state of Germany was founded under Bismarck, my distant ancestors happily trotted off to register themselves as citizens. One of the things they volunteered was their religion: "Jewish".
The rest, as they say, is history. Never assume that government will remain even slightly benevolent for the duration of your lifetime, and for that of several generations of your descendants. In case you don't realize it, your DNA could be used to identify your children or even great-grandchildren, many years after your death.
Indeed.
And in the UK there are criminals who have been brought to book even when their personal DNA was NOT on the system but because of a family DNA match they were traced. And if they can trace you for that then by extension they could trace or identify you for other reasons, reasons so sinister that we can not imagine them at this time.
A J Stiles: If something I enjoy became a criminal offence then I'd have to stop... and since you can't be prosecuted for something you did before it was illegal... If of course the government turned nasty and became sinister and V-Vendetta-ish then I'd either be joining the resistance or emigrating... so again... am I bothered?
Complacency isn't for everyone (hey your choice, knock yourselves out, it's a free-ish country). but it's definitely for me - quite enough to worry about without this kind of paranoia thanks - i.e. problems which actually exist now.
'and since you can't be prosecuted for something you did before it was illegal...'
Yes you can. The UK has created a number of so-called ex post facto laws including the 1991 War Crimes Act and various bits of taxation law to crack down on tax avoidance schemes. Technically the European Convention on Human Rights forbids ex post facto *criminal* laws, but some of Britain's brightest legal brains (notably Lord Denning) have said the Convention is overridden by Parliamentary Supremacy.
"If something I enjoy became a criminal offence then I'd have to stop"
Now where's that petition to outlaw being an imbecile?
Can't think of many things I'd risk my liberty to carry on doing purely because I enjoy it... doing so would seem rather silly to me, possibly imbecilic...
This forum is extraordinarily paranoid... you all seem to think we're heading for some 1984 style state in the next few years and that tin-foil hats should be uniform of the revolutionary guard to which you're all signed up... we're all just little people, boring unimportant and not exciting to the CIA or anyone else, what happens happens and we'll be watched or whatever whether we like it or not, if indeed anyone ever really gave a toss about is... get on with your lives and stop worrying!
I do like the way people have ignored Nigel 11's perfectly valid comments. Perhaps the DNA/fingerprint database is a noble *concept* however, I wonder how much of that info is shared with the US who will share it with the CIA who sell it to country X. All of a sudden you land on holiday in country X and are detained due to your fingerprint having a high probability of matching a political dissident.
Noble concepts are only as good as the government in power establishing the rules.
"You'd imagine someone creative enough to run the e-trespassing defence could figure that out."
This is assuming that criminals who behave in common burglary are smart. Fortunately this is NOT the case. We here in the wonderful USA have TV channels that show all sorts of "Dumb Criminal" TV shows. They take from a variety of places around the world.
That being said, the REALLY smart criminals don't get caught, so you never hear about them!
"She also said, ....... that the fondleslab-deprived man was allowed to beam them wherever he wished in pursuit of his property."
It seems the magistrate thought that the owner was shining 'searcher rays' into private property in an attempt to find his stolen property. When the people in a technological society who sit in judgement of us are this ignorant, it worries me.
Maybe she did believe that, but microwave relays and sat dishes do so. Maybe Fanboi was _radiating_ a bluetooth signal that meant he could communicate with his fondledevice without pissing away mobi data allowance. My smarty can also act as a wifi hotspot.
The above is just speculation of course.
While Hitler and Al-Qaeda may have had a bad rap for human rights, with them in charge you would not have had the farcial displays we see today of guilty scrotes actually being given a change to argue their way out of something with points of procedure.
Then again, under their system theres a chance the Guy who brought the apple product is at fault for leading on the poor thieth.
Hmmmm, maybe theres a gap in the market for 100% coverage cases for iPads?
Personally I'd rather have a few bad guys on the street (and visible policing to help prevent crime) than innocent people in Jail/dead as you would get with those guys....
Although Jail is a waste of money, it just turns criminals into hardend criminals... What we need is punishments to fit the crimes...
Theft, you work it off in government ran work programs... I.E. have them building roads & fixing pot-holes
Violent crimes, then you get publicly flogged...
"Personally I'd rather have a few bad guys on the street (and visible policing to help prevent crime) than innocent people in Jail/dead as you would get with those guys."
Indeed, this is supposed to be the very reason for "innocent unless proven guilty". It is better to have thousands of people get away with their crimes than for one innocent person to be punished.
At the end of the day, if we send someone to prison who was not guilty, they can never be given back what was taken from them. If we fail to convict someone who is guilty, they can be prosecuted later when more evidence comes to light.
"someone to prison who was not guilty"
Wow! Your a true Twit.
Why are you overlooking the FACT that the tablet was IN the guys house. Was it planted? Was it beamed in? When will idiots STOP making excuses for other idiots.
My guess is never.
Address THIS story and only this story.....Twit.
@GotThumbs
Were you talking to me there?
I did not say once that I thought these guys were not guilty.
Admittedly I went off at a tangent, but I was discussing the legal system in general. I was replying to another post which mentioned this point. You know what? In the real world discussions of one topic often lead onto other topics.
I won't lower myself to name calling, though.
"At the end of the day, if we send someone to prison who was not guilty, they can never be given back what was taken from them. If we fail to convict someone who is guilty, they can be prosecuted later when more evidence comes to light."
If we do it first thing in the morning is it all right then?
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=at%20the%20end%20of%20the%20day
"Theft, you work it off in government ran work programs... I.E. have them building roads & fixing pot-holes"
Why should my neighbour who works fixing the roads be put out of work by criminals? Or are you saying he should get paid to stand and watch them do it?
This is in stark contrast to criminal paradise The Netherlands, where in a similar case, the prosecution refused a search warrant, on the basis that a search was "too drastic a measure, because it infringes on privacy" (even though the address was known to the police for criminal activity) and the tip off came from the victim, who was therefore not objective.
This is probably because even today there are people in the Netherlands living with the memory of jackbooted thugs arriving at their front doors and dragging off their loved ones (parents, mostly, these days) to be "interrogated" and shot.
The Netherlands may have gone too far to the opposite extreme, but it's certainly the lesser error.
Before we get too deep into theorizing about the Netherlands decision, I think I'm going to call 'citation required'.
Googling for 'gps tracking search warrant refused' and similar terms with the quoted phrase "too drastic a measure"' turns up the OPs message as the top result but I can't see anything that looks like the story he's talking about anywhere in the first few pages.
Someone who was ten in 1945 would be 77 today. The majority of such people will still be living. The activities of the Gestapo in the occupied Nederlands are well-documented. And the legal structures of a country usually arise out of its history.
It is of course a hypothesis: as with most statements about society it's almost impossible to prove scientifically.
Did you bother to read his post?
if it was 67 years ago, then someone who was 10 at the time would be 77 today. The poster went with an assumption of a 10 yr old (and was quite clear on that), because this is someone who would be old enough to have some recollection of the events. Someone who was just being born at the time likely would not have.
The reason you don't find anything is because you are searching in English.
Here is a Google Translate link:
http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=nl&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=nl&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.pcmweb.nl%2Fnieuws%2Fpolitie-niet-geinteresseerd-find-my-iphone.html&act=url
Clarification: OM = Openbaar Ministerie = Prosecution
Manalo, thanks for the citation. Now that I have read it, however, I believe that it is not relevant to this discussion as, according to the article you cite, the reason the search was denied is that there was insufficient evidence as to the precise location.
This could easily be because the item is located somewhere where imprecision in GPS indicates multiple suspect dwellings. I'm certainly not happy to have my house raided because my neighbour is suspected of having stolen goods, and I'm sure he feels the same way.
In the case described in the article, the iPAD was clearly identified by the owner as being in a *particular* property. It seems to me that both the positive decision in this case and the negative decision in the Dutch case are therefore sensible judicial responses to the circumstances.
This post has been deleted by its author
OK, the British judge was a bit silly actually saying it out loud, due to the BRAVE==GOOD thing lots of people have, but it's essentially true (I presume, I'm not inside his head). I, and lots of others, certainly wouldn't have the balls to go around breaking and entering when there could be a burglar-eating Staffie lurking in the hallway; that's even if I wanted to make burglary my career.
Bravery can be used to enable someone to carry out good AND/OR evil acts, something to remember.
Still, brave or not, he should've been sent down for it.
Amazingly in the Brave==Good case, something said by the judge, arguably shorn of important context, was echoed loudly in all British media, nearly all of whom apparently forgot to say what the sentence was, deliberately or otherwise giving the (wrong) impression that the guy got off without punishment.
Now, we can debate whether the sentence was appropriate, or even whether the judge should have included those particular words in his judgment, but the fact that the case was reported both widely AND incompletely, seems to indicate that the majority of the media are more concerned with whipping up a response than conveying information.
His lawyer missed a treat.
Australia was originally populated largely by convict immigrants. I'd have claimed either that half-inching an iPad was a display of the kind of behaviour without which Australia wouldn't exist in its present form, else that he was genetically bred from sticky fingered crims and therefore its all the fault of his genes.
E-trespass - what we're they thinking?
I use cerberus on my android phone.
it is installed into ROM so even a factory reset will not remove it from the phone. Its also hidden from the apps list. I can lock it or wipe it remotely. I can place a message on screen telling anyone who finds it where to return it to. If they clear the message, the phone takes and emails me a picture. It will tell me its exact position via GPS and will also give me its history of where its been. Give me a list of numbers its been used to call. Copies of all the texts. and the best one of all... even if they pull the simcard out, when they put a new one in, it will send me a SMS message to a number I set, telling me the new phone number along with all the other details of the new SIM.
It only cost a couple of quid too and I can register up to 4 handsets on the one account. Its worth every penny just on the off chance I loose my phone....
The thing with an apple iphone/pad I dont think a security app can be installed in such a way that it can survive a factory reset..... not unless you jailbreak it anyway.....
"If apple wanted, they could brick the iPad remotely."
The operative word here is IF......
How many times has this actually been done? Is there a procedure apple have set up to get your idevice remotely locked? what about unlocking it if you get it back? In fact, Every phone on the market can be blocked from accessing the mobile network from its unique identifier or IMEI number....
Cerberus only costs a few quid.. less than £5 and the fact I can act straight away to block access and track my phones location way before the manufacturer may or may not do something is worth the price....
and lets face, regardless of the brand of the phones, they really have little incentive to block or provide help in replacing your device. The fact that somewhere along the line an insurance policy is most likely to be replacing the item, to them its another sale.
and anyway, on the two occasions that I have misplaced my phone, it has took me about 2 minutes to find my phone. First time it located it in my car parked in the street, it had come out of my pocket and slid under the seat. the other time I located it in the van I had hired. It had been returned in the night with the keys posted in a box so I could not gain access to it until the following morning. At least I knew where it was and proof of where it was if needed. On the other hand, My daughter lost her iphone, as it turned out, it was in her school bag. It had got through a hole in the lining and even though she emptied the bag she couldn’t find it, we tried ringing it, but as she was in school it was set to silent, so that was no good. It was getting to the point where we were going to have to report it to the network provider and get the sim locked when she found it. If it was an android device with cerberus installed, I could have remotely taken it of silent and found it almost straight away....
so don’t tell me I don’t need it.... I know I don’t need it, but I want it, and want a similar app for the iphone that will not be removed by a factory reset...
"Each iPad has an unique identifier.
Turn it on and connect it to the app store.
Then see what happens...
If apple wanted, they could brick the iPad remotely."
Yes but then they would not make any money by
a. Selling a replacement item (as if they were useless when stolen no one would steal them)
and
b. selling apps & music to go on the stolen item
So no money for Apple if the kill the device. So no way will Apple (or any other manufacturer for that matter to kill their device)
I have this app too and its brilliant. The multiple devices for one account is good. I have it set on family members phones and often get emails showing them mistaking putting in their unlock codes.
You can also set an alarm remotely and it will take a photo when someone hits the dismiss button to shut it up.
That story needed to be read. I read the headline and was appalled. The problem was if you read the whole story, the criminal has made some steps the judge regarded as serious in terms of turning round their life/behaviour. I'm not a leftie, I hate it when this garbage happens, but in the case of this judge, its pretty clar to me that he was following the right track. The point of the criminal justice system has to be to get/help people turn their lives round. Society and the judiciary have to work on this premise. So, despite the headlines, the Judge had a point.
I don't want burglers to be treated with kid gloves. My gut feeling is throw the book at them - BUT, I'd rather see them stop doing it and doing something with their lives. This is much better than both sides of the coin suffering ongoing failure, repeat offending, repeat burglary, rinse - repeat. The public/tax payers end up paying over and over if thats the trodden path...
DS1, I absolutely agree, hence my point above.
Absolute #1 priority in dealing with crime is to protect the innocent. Where that is best served by trying to rehabilitate criminals rather than focussing primarily on punishing them, we have to hold our noses, swallow hard, and do that --- however much we want revenge.
@DS 1
I agree. The best criminal system surely is one that minimises the pain for everyone else, be it financial or emotional, through reducing crime. So rehabilitation clearly needs to be part of the solution. Ken Clarke would likely agree. Chris Gayling not so much.
Unfortunately for those of us who genuinely would like to see less crime, it is very easy to hijack the issue and appeal to the lust for revenge. "Build more prisons and lock'em up" is the mantra. Newsflash: it doesn't work. Just look at the US.
We're shit out of cash, so the "build more prisons" bit is out of the question. Hello further over crowding as sentences are "toughened" and prisons become even better colleges of crime. Rinse - repeat indeed.
Sigh.
Most iGadgets that are wifi-only (e.g. iPods) are programmed with a lock-screen. Combine this with the baddie's wifi almost certainly requiring a password, and 'Find my...' just doesn't work. It's just going to sit there, under the baddie's bed, until the battery goes flat. To be fair, Apple was clever enough to call it 'Find my *iPhone*'.
The only work-around is to rig up your home wifi hotspot as a portable system (takes great effort) and take it just outside the suspect's house. But you need to have a suspect.
Of course had the alleged thief turned off the iPad, removed its SIM, put it into flight mode or given it a factory reset none of this would have happened. You'd imagine someone creative enough to run the e-trespassing defence could figure that out. ®
-=-
Perhaps the author should note that one could lock the iPad so that while you can remove the sim card, you can't put it in Airplane mode or shut off the WiFi?
Oh wait, not everyone locks their kit?
if you are a computer shop and you are asked to perform a "factory reset" on this "bargain" ipad that someone "picked up from a mate", would you?
Or being asked to reset the password on a childs laptop by their parent, again, would you? I do recall interesting discussions with my parents as a teenager, about whether i had legal entitlement to my own goods I bought and paid for, like stereo equipment and sports goods (they said "no", I said "yes")
Personally, I would insist on a record of their drivers license number or passport number (but not their personal details) and the serial number of the device, noting I would provide this to the authorities if requested. (Although I have just noticed the photo license number gives your date of birth in lazily scrambled format).
Let the ethics debate and flame wars begin.
Example, i got broke into in the UK last year,
they came in the back door, the alarm went off, some police happened to be passing my house when this happened (going to a fight up the road in a shop),
they came round the back, caught them in the act, in my house, red handed.
and 6 months later i got a call, they got let off, insignificant evidence....!
im baffled by this, another time i was chatting to a copper about some kids that had been causing some hastle locally in gardens etc, and they said: you cant really do anything, they are minors, you cant touch them, throw them off your property or they can get you done. i said what can you do, he said, well like us nothing...!
the law unfortunately like the banks and the goverment, is not on the side of the victim/regular joe. It always on the side of the criminal/person screwing you (human rights etc),
the whole system is broken if you ask me.
glad the victim here came out on top. (no matter what the device was that was in question here)
I was in a similar situation about 10 years ago.
I was living in a not so good area and we were being targeted by the local scum. On one occasion one of them threw a spark plug at our home and smashed a window. I could identify all four of the youths, but I could not tell for sure which one actually threw the spark plug. The police would not even pick them up or even question them on the street as they could not do anything....
One day after about 6 months of torment, broken windows and damage to my car, I lost the plot. I seen two of them walking down the road in front of me with their backs to me... I saw red, mounted the pavement and hit the throttle hard. Just before the point of impact, I realised what i was doing and slammed my brakes on, I scared the shit out of them, but they were unhurt.
I later wish I had mowed them down and killed them as they both went on to murder Anthony Walker in a racist attack. If I had killed them, maybe Anthony would still be alive.
I do honestly believe in rehabilitation over punishment, but some people just cant be rehabilitated. More effort needs to be done in the way of crime prevention. At some point the crime will not be worth the time.
Myself, I don’t think enough is done for the youth that DO behave. Give them something that is worth loosing by getting into trouble. Give them free driving lessons and a free car & 6 years insurance on the 17th birthday if they manage to get through to 17 without being known to the police. That means even if your with someone that has got in trouble you loose. any child that is picked up by the police for anything should be subject to a curfew until they are 21...
Give them something to gain and too much to loose and the law abiding citizens will regain safety on the streets. For many it will be deterrent enough, for others it wont be, but then there is always prison.
Glad to hear someone finally acknowledge that the airwaves are public. It's why companies wanting to use them have to buy the right from the gov't. The way things have been going, if the theft-victim listening to the iPad from the sidewalk had instead been a neighbor using an unsecured wi-fi connection emitted into his house by the same device, the law would have arrested HIM! Ridiculous. I never understood why I'm forbidden to listen in (if I can) to electro-magnetic radiation that's propagating through me.
Um, the factory reset and removing the sim may only temporarily stop them tracking it since it is based on hardware ID's that are tied to your Apple ID. Hard reseting it won't erase the hardware ID.
So if he reconnects to any Wifi or Mobile network it should be trackable again. Don't take my word for it but Apple can track any iDevice that is online and connected. Not connecting to any Wifi or Mobile network kind of makes the device rather useless in my opinion and the thief is bound to slip up sometime or another.
Either way its a good system and the thief deserves everything he gets for damn well stealing things.
At least the owner did the right thing and called the police rather then breaking in.
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