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On OS X or Linux I'd hack together a bashscript that uses cron to periodically (every 10 mins or so) broadcasts where it's located and then upload that information to a logfile on my Raspberry Pi. Sort of like what Prey does, just on my own.

I'm pretty sure something like that is possible on Windows as well, altough you may need some kind of server to store the information so you can avoid receiving a mail or something with the information.

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Where would you get its location data?

Traceroute should nail down the ISP and possibly enough info for the ISP to track it down, but you need law enforcement to get further I guess. Personally, I'd rather have full disk encryption and password login to prevent them even getting far enough for a network connection to be there.

I'd use the Core Location api on OS X and probably use something like https://github.com/victor/whereami (no need to invent the wheel again). When connected to a wifi, it's rather simple.

Be sure to encrypt the information before it's sent and keep it encrypted when it lands on your Pi. Only decrypt it when you need to know the info.

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