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Comment by topochico3 | Hacker News Reader

I’m not convinced this is a priority for police. Air tags seem to be a net negative for all.

I would attempt to file a restraining order against the owner of the tag, that would force the police to act.

A ... a net negative? Okay, like maybe I get that some people abuse this thing and maybe that's bad and maybe ten extra people got their car stolen this year or something although even that is questionable given that Tile already existed. But net negative? All the utility from all the people that found all the things they found this year with AirTags is counteracted, is wiped away by... what?

You can always buy more stuff. Lowering the bar for stalking seems like a bad trade off, doesn’t it?

Not for the people who own stuff.

Well, I'm blind and I use an AirTag to find my cat. I would rather not just buy another cat. I get a lot of utility from knowing if he's inside or outside when I go to bed. This is one trivial example of millions of people every day using millions of AirTags to do small but useful things. That utility aggregates.

Using your logic we should also ban cars because cars create the novel attack vector of being able to transport someone against their will discretely in the trunk, which clearly will increase kidnappings. After all, lowering the bar for kidnapping seems like a bad tradeoff, doesn't it?

The bar is already really low. GPS trackers are just as cheap, more “real time”, and have no way for anyone to detect them unlike AirTags.

Please don't discourage people from seeking assistance from law enforcement when their personal safety is at risk.

You may not live in a large American city. It’s a bad place to rely on the cops in my experience.

So what is your suggestion, just let bad situations happen to you? Regardless of if the police actually do anything, it's important to have a paper trail of things so that you point to them if you ever have to end up in court.

Not the OP and not advocating to not go to the police, but I'd be shocked if they were of any use at all.

The paper trail is useful.

True if further actions can be taken. When my house was burglarized the police came and investigated and shrugged their shoulders, but their police report was instrumental in filing an insurance claim.

I do, and this is an appropriate situation to call them about, regardless of your race. There are problems with the police, to be sure, but this is not a situation where someone is getting beaten up (or worse) over a traffic stop or misidentification during the commission of a crime.

Cops have been known to push stalking, domestic violence, rape and similar cases under the carpet or, even worse, abuse the contact information from the criminal complaint to stalk the victims themselves (see [1], [2] or whatever turns up at Google for "police officers stalking women"). Not to mention the organized denials of service that regularly crop up as "backlog of rape kits discovered" headlines.

Women have all kinds of valid reasons to stay as far away from cops as they can, women of color, queer/nb/trans women even more.

Some PDs have changed procedures and established special, often female-led, teams to deal with cases involving such sensitive scenarios... but they're not many to begin with.

[1]: https://psmag.com/news/stalker-cop-police-protection-danger-...

[2]: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/oct/20/my-frie...

Is this the rule or the exception? No doubt there are reported failures, but is that the average experience for a reporter (even accounting for race, gender, etc.) of a stalking or other similar personal security concern? Stories such as these are useful for motivating the public and our government to fix the problems, but they have a side effect of discouraging people from taking useful action where it would not be harmful.

We should be giving our most helpful advice here; let’s not make people panic unnecessarily.

The fact of the matter is that Apple will only provide the identities of AirTags owners to law enforcement officers in the course of legitimate investigation work; in the interest of privacy, they won’t give them out to just anyone who asks. So if you want to get help, getting LE assistance is practically the only way to go.

> but is that the average experience for the typical reporter of a stalking or other similar personal security concern?

In Germany, it is estimated that 300.000 (!) stalking cases happen each year, not even 20.000 get reported to the police - and only 1 % of these (!!!) ends up in a conviction.

Unfortunately, as with all attempts at estimating why crimes are not reported, data is scarce - the general consensus seems to be a mistrust in police and the court system (either that the case gets ignored, that proof is insufficient or that personal data ends up at the offender - I personally was exposed by incompetent cops at court after filing a criminal complaint for racism against a local Nazi, fwiw), and a fear of attackers escalating their behavior.

[1]: https://www.zeit.de/news/2020-12/25/stalking-grosse-dunkelzi...

Yes, ~~but~~ and the fact that some police departments are broken doesn't mean we need to propagate learned helplessness about all police departments.

I think we are in agreement. Did you mean “and” instead of “but”?

yep

You’re making a big assumption about me. I simply said I’m not convinced this is a priority for police. Prove me wrong!

I’m not making an assumption about you. I am saying that that is how statements such as yours can be (and often are) interpreted.

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