The Embarrassing Naked Photos On Your Stolen Laptop May Not Belong To The Thief
forbes.com
forbes.com
Sigh
I think what's important is that I actually had to check because I have no idea what a working used laptop goes for..and if you told me some go for $60, I wouldn't be surprised.
Given that the laptop was "messed up" and needed to be "fixed", even more so. Who "fixed" it btw? Not her, probably.
I've had stuff of mine stolen often enough (bikes, mostly) that I don't really care whether the law would say I should have known or not, but morally, I just think it's disgusting to profit off theft of other people's property and I think it's just the right thing to do, to consider the possibility.
That said, even though I'm of the opinion the women was definitely in the wrong and should have known better, the police also definitely crossed the line the way they handled those photographs.
And - wouldn't you think that _those_ offers would be shady? I mean.. There's a reason why people check eBay after their gadgets were stolen...
As for shady, no, the depreciation of electronics never surprises me. Plus, the article said the laptop needed repairs.
I'm not saying she didn't know it was stolen. I'm saying that the price, alone, is a 0% indicator in my books.
The Absolute recovery officer sent the explicit photos along with location information for the stolen laptop to the Springfield Police Department.
How sure? Perhaps she has a scat fetish that her boyfriend doesn't share. Yes it's subjective but not necessarily a chosen response; most people find the image of a mutilated corpse or a festering wound to be disgusting for example.
'One of the prudish detectives wasn’t a fan of the photos, calling them “disgusting.”'
That's all we have to go on. A single word remark reported by the plaintiff. It's pretty much impossible to make any bearing as to the professionalism or otherwise of the "detective" (it says earlier in the same para that it was "officers" operating under a warrant, which would almost certainly not be detectives for recovering a stolen laptop, YMMV the piece looks unfinished and unedited to me).
However, FWIW, saying something is disgusting isn't casting a moral judgement on it. If you show me a festering sore I might remark "urgh, that's disgusting" but I don't find sores to be immoral. I'm pretty sure he or she wasn't presenting or even attempting to present a legal judgement with what was most likely an off-the-cuff remark. Unprofessional, perhaps mildly.
For all we know the remark was disgust at a teacher having apparently knowingly handled stolen goods taken from another school and encouraged a pupil into delinquency by helping them profit from crime and that the plaintiff misinterpreted. Yes it would probably still be mildly unprofessional to comment.
Aside, aren't school laptops marked to show their owner; this would have made it near impossible to not know that the goods were stolen.
One of the prudish detectives wasn’t a fan of the photos, calling them “disgusting.”
Anyway, their job isn't to be the moral police. Also, telling her she was stupid isn't very professional.
Additionally, because a user puts their own personal data on their laptop it should be assumed that they are entitled to do things to protect that that personal data just as it is reasonable for you to use lethal force on anyone in your home you believe believe is an intruder. If it turns out after the fact that the masked guy with a crowbar isn't an intruder, they fucked up, not you.
I'm sure this argument could be translated to legalese and win the case.
The plaintiff's lawyers are just trying to get easy settlement money because the cops were rude.
Generally speaking, if you do not have a reasonable belief that such force is necessary, lethal force is not lawful, even if someone is breaking into your home. However, in that case, one might nevertheless escape conviction for use of lethal force thanks in part to that presumption.
Uh, no she doesn't. Buying a working laptop for $60 is going to easily constitute knowing the laptop was being sold for less than true value. Sorry, I don't have the link, but this whole receiving stolen goods knowingly thing was explained fairly well on HN in some comments a couple months back.
They all looked pretty crappy, is it reasonable to assume they are all stolen property on the basis of their price alone?
Given that it’s possible to buy new laptops for $300 it is certainly entirely possible that $60 are a reasonable price.
http://www.internetcases.com/library/cases/2011-08-22-clemen...
I can’t comment on the law but I really don’t understand people who are ok with this kind of behavior. Thieves don’t suddenly become fair game for any treatment just because they are thieves.
Any treatment, no. Humiliation? Sure. Mark Bao struck the right note with his video of the "dancing" thief, but I'd be willing to go further than that. When you violate someone's person or property, I'm okay with a disproportionate response. I think it should hurt you more than it hurt them. I make no claim to any moral foundation to this belief, but I don't feel sorry for muggers who get the shit kicked out of them or thieves who get exposed and ridiculed online.
Granted, the OP makes a good point: you have to be damned sure in these cases that the person you're humiliating is, in fact, the thief.
Now, as far as desire to see a shit head get punished, that's pure petty schadenfreude and I make neither excuses nor apologies for it. I don't claim to be a paragon of moral virtue. I get warm fuzzies from seeing people get deserved comeuppance. It's such a deeply ingrained part of our cultural psyche (look at every movie Disney ever made), and so universal across cultures, that I suspect it's just an integral part of human nature. We can aspire to loftier moral heights, but at the end of the day a whole lot of us get satisfaction from seeing the bad guy lose.
Could you explain this, perhaps with a solid example or a crime, it's deterrence that is not punishment. For example if you fine someone for drink driving that is both a deterrent and punishment. I can't readily see how you deter without introducing punishment.
I’m ok with punishment if we know (or if it is at least plausible) that it’s a deterrence. I’m not ok with punishment for the sake of punishment. I’m also not ok with drastic increases in punishment for little or questionable gains in deterrence.
To pick an absurd example: If we were to find out that not imprisoning or otherwise punishing murderers would decrease the murder rate I would be all for stopping punishing murderers. If something is an effective way of preventing crimes – even if it’s not punishment – I’m all for it.
OK I think I got that from your previous comment. What I can't see is if there is actually an instance that matches your preference at all.
For example in my country minor criminals might be persuaded to meet the people they've offended against. Some may not define this as punishment but it can be a type of humiliation and so I'd class it as a (very minor) punishment.
I'd guess you'd be thinking of something like giving free drugs to addicts that rob people to stop them robbing and at the same time just leave the victims to sort themselves out and pay for the crime (ie no levy, no fine, etc.)?? FWIW this example seems injust to me.
I do not know whether there are crimes that can actually be prevented by doing something besides punishment. I just wanted to make clear that I’m open to the possibility.
Numerous sources can attest to this, but here's a generic reference: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/LoJack#LoJack...
As you mentioned, not everyone would know, nor have the capability to reformat. This is doubly so for steps I take with administrative passwords, firmware passwords, hard drive passwords, etc. to make it further difficult for the thief to reformat the machine.
Pro-Tip: Leave a guest account, and have everything else encrypted.
(Looking forward to OSX Lion's upcoming support for a browse-only guest account on the unencrypted boot partition when using filevault2)
A scary thought? That's why it's wrong, because it's scary? I've grown to expect slightly more sophisticated arguments from the people I agree with.
You have a reasonable expectation of privacy in your home, but that doesn't stop a criminal from breaking in and setting up hidden cameras.
When someone steals your laptop, they are initiating force. In doing so, they give you the right to use methods, such as this software, to recover the laptop. But that right only extends to recovering the laptop, not to unnecessarily violate the privacy of the thief. While the thief does owe the laptop owner compensation for the crime, this is something that is determined via court, not by the victim of the crime.
So, yes, you have the right to hack into your laptop, turn on the webcam, collect evidence necessary to locate and recover the laptop, but you don't have the moral right to exploit the thief beyond that.
I remember the Defcon presentation had some privacy obscuring bits for the thief when he took nude shots of himself in the shower. That's appropriate. Shaming the theif by showing their face is reasonable, but only if you know they aren't an accidental victim. Sharing the thief's nude photos with the police or with any unnecessary third parties, where the they are not necessary for recovery, is a violation of privacy.
At least morally. Who knows whether a government in the US will hold the police accountable for any immoral actions.
The problem with this sort of ideology is it ignores deterrence as a force for stability. If the only acceptable response to an application of force is an equal, opposite force, then why shouldn't I steal someone's car for a week rather than rent a car? If the only punishment is that I am forced to pay for the "rental", then I'm afraid the logical thing to do is to steal a car from the nearest parking lot rather than go through the rigmarole of taking the shuttle to the rental car parking lot.
You could counter-argue that the equal-opposite force would take that into account, but then, how do you calculate that? Does it cost exactly the same as a rental of an equivalent car would have? (In which case, no deterrence). Is there an additional charge for the theft? The calculation of opposite force starts to take on characteristics of our current civil legal system: calculation of the cost of a wrongdoing.
However, that retaliation is usually left to the courts in a society governed by laws. For example if someone steals from you, you can't just show up to their house and punch them.
So yes, deterrence has a place, but it's a very minor one, and researchers have understood this for decades. Politicians and the public haven't yet caught on, perhaps because we seek concrete preventative measures or conflate deterrence and justice.
Would a bank give a loan to a thief? It's up to the bank. It's hard to say how effective a social credit system would be.
[edit: Should add that although there are certainly disputes to how to fund said services, to the best of my knowledge it's largely agreed that some court system is required.]
Unless you do it in an amusing way, humiliating them in front of millions of internet users. This performs a public good by making people laugh, but more importantly by reducing the incentive to steal laptops.
> Shaming the theif by showing their face is reasonable, but only if you know they aren't an accidental victim
If it becomes well-publicised that people buying dodgy laptops can have their privacy violated, it will be harder for thieves to fence them. This will reduce future laptop thefts.
> Sharing the thief's nude photos with the police or with any unnecessary third parties, where the they are not necessary for recovery, is a violation of privacy
Yes, one that can bring considerable publicity, which as I've explained earlier can have the effect of reducing future thefts.
This is pure B.S. right? "I'm eager to see what a jury will think."
A jury is composed of randomly selected individuals. So he's saying "I'm eager to see what a group of random people will think." Clearly doesn't make sense.
Basically what he's saying is, "A group of random people are clearly going to side with us."
Possibly, dare I say it, it might even be more interesting than the weighted average of 12 random members of the Brains Trust here on HN reading a blog for 5 minutes and forming an opinion...
(In technology-related cases, item 3 often results in the exclusion from the jury of anyone who knows anything about the technology---one or another team of lawyers will want the jurors to know only that which was presented to them for the first time at the trial.)
[1] https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Strike_for_ca...