Police don't trust Apple's Find My to retrieve missing MacBook shown next door
cbc.ca
cbc.ca
I convinced my fiancé to go to the NYPD a year ago (a difficult thing, she was born in a country where all interactions with police are inherently unsafe), after her macbook was stolen during a facebook marketplace sale. (She used venmo, they disputed after the meeting, and kept the money and laptop). She went to the police with the person's identity, facebook page, venmo account, a witness, a statement from venmo, and a recording of the transaction from a security camera, and the police said they couldn't do anything, spent the next 6 months dodging her phone calls, and only once called her back, but did so in order to go on a racist tirade about the unrelated BLM protests that were going on at the time (?!?)
The United States so badly needs nationally legislated minimum standards for police.
The main development I've noticed in the past decade is an increasing share of people moving to the cities from suburbs where they were raised and expecting suburban level of service in the city.
Regarding the police however I agree, but they did start using the “DA not gonna prosecute” way too often.
Quiet quitting has been around for a while.
>here's the exact location of my stolen property
I sleep.
>obviously fake shooting threat at a popular streamer's home
REAL STUFF SEND SWAT
Police enforce the law and punish criminals who e.g. steal: they expose themselves to physical risk, and are likely to be accused of racism, lose their job, possibly go to jail. E.g. the recent case of 4 cops going to prison because they tried to arrest a counterfeiter high on fentanyl and he died of OD-induced respiratory failure while being arrested. Arrested criminals are immediately released anyway, so why bother?
Police chill in their cars and don't do anything: little physical risk, won't be accused of racism, won't risk losing job or going to prison.
The incentive structure pretty clearly dictates what police are going to do.
* He was accused of passing a counterfeit $20 bill, we still don't know if Floyd created the bill or even knew it was counterfeit. For all we know he might have been an innocent victim of someone else. https://web.archive.org/web/20220409101419/https://www.nytim...
* Floyd did not die of the results of fentanyl overdose: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/04/16/fac...
* He died because a police officer knelled on his neck after he was already in handcuffs for 9 minutes and 29 seconds. https://web.archive.org/web/20210410114811/https://www.start...
* They had him in the car but then pulled him onto the ground and started kneeling on him. There were 4 officers present at that point. They did this despite calling for EMS. They did this despite Floyd saying he couldn't breath. They did this despite bystanders pointing out that he couldn't breath. The position continued even after he was clearly unconscious. They only got off his neck when EMS arrived and told them to. With EMS on site and asking for Fire Department help, the police didn't direct the Fire Department to Floyd, delaying their help for 5 minutes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vksEJR9EPQ8
This behavior was so shocking that these officers were convicted of crimes for their behavior. It is VERY rare for police officers to be indicted, let alone tried and convicted for killing someone. I seriously doubt that they would have been tried and convicted if it weren't for the shocking video showing them kneeling on his neck for a long period of time.
I find it impossible to reconcile police refusing to do their jobs with a VERY rare conviction for misconduct that is so utterly shocking. If you don't want what happened to those officers to happen to you, simply don't kneel on someones neck for a long period of time. Carrying out a search warrant for a laptop is unlikely to result in that sort of situation. Simply because there's not really a good explanation for any of the behavior that resulted in Floyd's death on the part of the police.
Maybe they choose not to do their jobs for the other reasons you gave. But the facts of the George Floyd case do not support your conclusion.
> Floyd did not die of the results of fentanyl overdose
I don't care what USA Today says - I suggest not placing much credence on claims mid-tier tabloids make. I am a former EMT, and I've seen people go into drug-induced respiratory failure. Even if you haven't, it's pretty obvious in this case. I implore you to actually watch the entire video of his death - it make my claims so obvious.
> They had him in the car but then pulled him onto the ground and started kneeling on him.
Because he escaped the car and was spazzing out, trying to escape, high as hell. Please watch the video.
> They did this despite Floyd saying he couldn't breath.
He was complaining he couldn't breathe before he was even on the ground (including when he was in the car), because he was experiencing drug-induced respiratory failure. Please watch the video.
> They did this despite bystanders pointing out that he couldn't breath.
Yes, this is what bystanders do in every ghetto neighborhood when the cops arrest someone. I've seen it 50 times. "He didn't do nothing, why are you arresting him, you're hurting him" - the eternal refrain of the ghetto bystander, regardless of the situation. Whatever the retarded bystanders were yelling conveys zero information.
> This behavior was so shocking that these officers were convicted of crimes for their behavior.
They were indicted and convicted as a sacrifice to avoid political backlash and rioting, not because they were guilty.
> a VERY rare conviction for misconduct
Doesn't matter how rare it is - it's rationally going to affect everyone's behavior anyway. Cf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilling_effect
> But the facts of the George Floyd case do not support your conclusion.
I guarantee you, if you watch the full, uncut video of the entire interaction (which, incidentally, are some of the only facts in play here, unlike claims by mid-tier tabloids), you will change your mind. You have been fed a false narrative, and it's not even difficult to prove this, but people for some reason refuse to spend like 15 minutes to watch the actual source of truth (presumably partially because venerable institutions like USA Today are doing their best not to show it to you).
Hint: it involves serving their actual employer, which isn't the regular guy.
The case in the story is so much simpler and could’ve been handled within half an hour of the initial contact.
I think the police did the right thing. When police are involved there is too much opportunity for something tragic to occur out of misunderstanding. Filing a police report with the evidence you have is the right thing to do because the link of device to account is not some sacrosanct transaction.
I've been involved in a "Find My" mixup, where I was texted that the device of an elderly person totally unrelated to me was somehow assigned and locked to my Apple ID. Could that have been a scam? Find My showed the device to be in a wealthy neighborhood but there was no way I would give someone else my credentials to unlock the device.
If I had seen that device on my own "Find My" and requested police support to retrieve the device based on that information--that would have been a grievous wrong against that person. This isn't to accuse the claimant of misdoing but to say that the evidence required to violate a domicile or body in the absence of imminent danger should be more than what is essentially a blip on an app.
You do realize that the police have influence here? Having the police not come and help because what boils down to "we might shoot someone" is asinine. If they are so afraid of causing something tragic, let them leave their toys at home when they confront the potential phone thief.
> If I had seen that device on my own "Find My" and requested police support to retrieve the device based on that information--that would have been a grievous wrong against that person.
Clearly find my shouldn't be used as sole evidence here, but it sure is enough evidence to ask for the phone in question to be handed over to the police so they can do some quick ownership checking. Heck just the IMEI number for the phone should be plenty to verify the true owner, don't even need the phone in hand for that.
But this is a laptop, which is linked to the user's account and which Apple is reporting is in a particular location. That seems like a pretty clear-cut case.
And if the neighbor is saying they don't have the laptop, then they should have no problem with the laptop's owner coming in and triggering a sound. Basically, it seems like there's probably cause here, and it would be minimally intrusive to put this to rest.
Since when do you treat your neighbors with that kind of default animosity?
If there is a back story that is one thing but who cares if your neighbor looks inside briefly to see the find my feature is malfunctioning.
With what Accuracy and Precision? There was an article on HN, probably a few years ago now about how some geoIP company returned a specific location near the center of the US, instead of not found. The location was on someone's property so police, FBI, and everybody under the sun would come and harass them because the computer said it was right here.
For all we know it is in their house and connecting to the neighbor's wifi.
Scary read overall.
And, MacBooks don't have GPS, AFAIK, so it's more likely going on pings from nearby devices on the FindMy network, potentially less accurate. Depending on the houses around the area it might or might not be as trust-worthy.
An iPhone I'd expect to be much more exact.
You're absolutely right that the distance between homes is key here. If it's apartments, I wouldn't put much stock in the location accuracy. But if it's standalone homes with normal setbacks from the property line, I'd think they'd have enough (in the US, which this is not) for a search warrant.
sure, it's being pinpointed as in the neighbour's house, but what are the odds that's it's simply been lost in the owner's house? Find my often will place my laptop in my neighbour's house even when it's sitting on my lap.
From the linked article:
>A Sudbury, Ont., man says local police wouldn't obtain a search warrant to retrieve his missing laptop, even after he gave them evidence pointing to its exact whereabouts.
Lawyer Gerald Chan, who has expertise on search warrants and digital evidence, said he was "a bit confused as to why the police don't think they can get a search warrant in these circumstances," though he noted he doesn't have the background information in this case.
> "However, when I showed them the screen shots … they didn't seem to understand it. He said police returned to their cruiser, and when he spoke with them again, they told him they were researching Find My to learn how the app works."
Perhaps the misunderstanding is on the part of the complainant. Especially considering that the 'Find My' signal is potentially originating from <2m of their home, although Sudbury looks quite sparse.
I'm with the cops on this one.
MacBooks can also be found in the same way as AirTags. They broadcast a BTLE beacon that is picked up by close-by iPhones that send it to Apple. iPhones do have accurate location information based on GPS. On newer Macs this even works when it is turned off.
Not sure how Find My prioritizes the different reports.
The absence of certain guilt doesn't mean there's not enough evidence for any investigation whatsoever. That's what probably cause and search warrants (or even less, in this case) are for.
The cop likely doesn't want to trigger an issue based on "we got a warrant based on hearsay from a neighbor".
If this is indeed a house, not an apartment, I would think that that location accuracy would be high enough that its presence over multiple days would be enough to get a search warrant.
That's a pretty dumb conclusion to draw from the fact that we know who the thieves are.
If the police won't handle crime, then the community needs to take control.
Can always then argue that some laptop was reset so they don't know the password and then require serial numbers etc to be known.
If I were relaxing at home and had police search my house because someone said their Lenovo app was indicating their laptop was in my house - I'd be rather put out by it.
The same thing that stops people from just going to the nearest police officer and falsely report their laptop as stolen by their neighbour without first mocking an app.
But I'm not totally sure I agree that if someone falsified the evidence that there is not something to stop them. You're presuming the owner wouldn't be able to show evidence they had legal right to the laptop. If they can show that, the person making the false report I would expect to be in a huge amount of trouble.
I also don't know what the process is, would the police search the house and give the laptop back if they found it. Or would they take it as evidence and only release it to the owner at some point in the future, if they can themselves show better documentation, and it's not disputed.
I just don't know enough about how police operate, but I would expect there is a big reason not to falsify evidence in this way.
Also, and this could just be me: I found it odd that the neighbor was fine with calling the police as well as speaking to the author of the article. I wouldn't have thought that the perpetrator of a crime such as theft would _want_ the police / attention put on them.
what is the standard required in Sudbury that one may secure a warrant to investigate a home, and what elements of Sudbury and Canadian law may preclude law enforcement from using a private company's software as evidence.