While there are there ways such as Find My iPhone and other tracking software available to find stolen phones, there’s really no way to shut down a phone from afar like one can a credit card.

The Washington Post reports that at a D.C. Police news conference today, D.C. Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier said that she is joining with other police chiefs around the country in lobbying the FCC, cellphone service providers and phone manufacturers to allow them to shutdown phones using unique ID numbers in the device.

“I hear 15 stories or so every morning in my crime briefings,” Lanier said. “We are being clobbered with these robberies and they’re looking for the same thing. They say, ‘Give me your purse. Now where is your phone?’”

Of the 400 robberies reported so far in 2012, as many as half have involved smartphones according to Lanier.

Officials in Houston said that the numbers of electronic device thefts have jumped recently as well. The NYPD jumped in as well saying that half of the 16,000 robberies reported in the first 10 months of 2011 involved smartphones.

“This is a national issue,” said Lanier. “We have done all we can at the local level.”

The proposal involves the use of iMEi numbers, a unique registration number that every smartphone has. Having access to them, it would allow the police to remotely shut down stolen phones within days of being stolen.

While the proposal would make it harder for people to track down their phones since that’s currently handled by the SIM card, the police see it as the only way to stop the sale of stolen phones that replace the SIM card anyway.

Lanier said that the only way to stop phone robberies is to stop the profit.

The D.C. police will soon launch a program that rewards people up to $10,000 for tips that lead to arrests in robberies.

The 31-year-old Brooklyn resident has been arrested on charges of grand larceny. She has worked for the TSA for over four years. The money has yet to be recovered however, a surveillance video shows Schmid removing the money from the jacket pocket, hiding it in a plastic glove and then taking it to a nearby bathroom. Police suspect she may have given the money to someone else involved.

TSA spokeswoman Lisa Farbstein comments on the theft:

“We do hold our officers to very high standards, and we have a zero tolerance policy for theft in the workplace”

These companies do this by activating pre-installed software once your computer is reported stolen – software that can track the location of your laptop through GPS, access the thief’s IP address, and even monitor the thief’s activity. The latter means tracking keystrokes, messages, emails, and even real-time communications happening via webcam.

An Ohio woman has been given the go-ahead to sue one of these laptop-tracking companies after they captured sexually explicit images from a live communication between her and her boyfriend.

Absolute Software, whose products LoJack for Laptops helps to recover stolen computers, is on the bad end of this decision.

Here’s the story of how a long-term substitute teacher’s sex pics were captured by Absolute and eventually used by law enforcement officers:

The Clark County Ohio school district purchased a bunch of laptops for school use years ago. One of those laptops was issued to a vocational student and in 2008, it was stolen from a public library. The vocational student reported the theft to the Police.

That stolen laptop was eventually purchased by a 9th grader at an alternative school within the Clark County School District. He purchased it for $40 at a bus station and subsequently sold it to long-term sub Susan Clements-Jeffrey for $60. He apparently made up a story about not needing the computer, which was a gift from his aunt and uncle.

The laptop in question was busted up and had been wiped of some software but another teacher at the school repaired it for Clements-Jeffrey.

Little did Clements-Jeffrey know, but when the school district purchased the laptops, thy entered a security contract with Absolute Software. Back in April 2008, when the vocational student reported the laptop in question stolen to police, Absolute was contacted and the “tracking alarm” was triggered. “The stolen laptop was directed to report its IP address to Absolute the next time the laptop was connected to the internet,” says the court documents.

Absolute also prompted the laptop to download a bunch of software that would allow them to intercept communications and monitor activity in real time.

And in June 2008, a Absolute “theft recovery officer” used this ability to monitor webcam communications between Clements-Jeffrey and her boyfriend. During that 30-second monitoring period, the tech took three screencaps of the live video.

In these pictures, Clements-Jeffrey is naked and in one she is spreading her legs.

After all this information was reported to the police, they brought her in for questioning. According to Clements-Jeffrey, the officers showed her the explicit images obtained by Absolute and laughed at her, mocked her and told her she should have known better than to do this stuff on the web.

The charges for having the stolen property were later dropped, as Clements-Jeffrey denied having seen the scratched-off serial number and claiming that $60 for the 2-year-old laptop didn’t raise any red flags. She remains steadfast that she didn’t know the laptop was stolen.

Now, she is suing Absolute software for the ordeal. She claims that her fourth amendment rights against illegal search and seizure were violated and that Absolute violated her privacy based on the Electronic Communications Privacy Act and the Stored Communication Act.

Absolute hit back that Clements-Jeffrey had no expectation of privacy, as the laptop was stolen. From Wired –

The defendants moved for summary judgment on grounds that courts have ruled in the past that there is no legitimate expectation of privacy in cases involving known stolen property. They asserted that Clements-Jeffrey should have known the laptop was stolen based in part on the $60 price the seller was asking for it and on the fact that the serial number had been scraped off the bottom of the machine.

Absolute also insisted it was acting on behalf of its customer, the school district, and therefore was covered under “color of law” and “safe harbor” statutes. The company cited its agreement with the school district, which gives Absolute’s staff “the ability to view and recover any files that are present” on the school’s computers.

The Judge has ruled, however, that “a reasonable jury could find that they crossed an impermissible boundary.” The suit can move forward.

In June, we told you about another computer-recovery company called Hidden that got their name in the news by finding a man’s MacBook. The victim set up a blog where he posted images that the Hidden app was taking of the thief in real-time.

This ruling is a big decision when it comes to how far these companies can go to retrieve stolen property. Should IP addresses and GPS be enough? Should they have the right to monitor sensitive communications from suspected thieves?

You can read the full court decision here.

The Watford, England based company has become the focal point of a story out of Oakland, California about a guy who successfully retrieved his stolen MacBook by using their tracking software.

On March 21st, Joshua Kaufman’s MacBook was stolen from his apartment. He reported the crime to the police, but wasn’t given much initial support due to lack of resources. I guess computer theft is pretty low down on the priority list for a busy law enforcement staff. So Kaufman activated his account he had with Hidden, an OS X app that spies on and tracks down computer thieves.

After collecting the necessary information, Kaufman presented the evidence to the Oakland Police Department. For nearly a month, he didn’t get any response from the PD. Last Friday he set up a blog titled “This Guy Has My MacBook,” and within a few days it had gone viral. On Tuesday, the Oakland PD set up a meet with the purported thief (he’s a cab driver) and arrested him. Kaufman tweeted this last night:

So what exactly does this Hidden application do? Once downloaded, users set up a username and password. Once installed, it runs in the background on your Mac device. During this time, it doesn’t collect any information from your computer.

When that horrible day comes when someone is able to make off with your computer, you activate Hidden by logging in on their site and clicking “Stolen.” This alerts the program to begin doing its job.

Hidden suggests that users create a guest account on their computers. Having an account that isn’t password protected will encourage the thief to actually use the computer instead of just selling it quickly. And the thief needs to use the computer for Hidden to work properly.

Once you activate the tracking feature, Hidden is able to find your stolen computer in locations around the globe. To do this, Hidden employs location positioning company Skyhook. They have built a location database of over 250 million wi-fi and cell access points by driving around, gathering information in thousands of cities worldwide.

The location tracking is definitely the core function of retrieving your lost computer, but the other two features provide for a lot more lulz. Hidden uses the built in camera on your Mac to covertly snap photos of the thief as he uses your computer. In the case of Kaufman’s stolen MacBook, Hidden took pictures of the thief all over the place – shirtless in bed, in his car and asleep on the couch:

The Hidden app also takes screencaps of the thief using your computer, to track exactly what he’s doing. In Kaufman’s case, he caught the thief trying to delete his account and logging in to Facebook.

Hidden will run you $15 a year for your personal computer, and have plans to protect up to 100 computers for $395 a year. It’s awesome for a company when free, real-life, newsworthy advertising falls into their lap. But hey, when your app does its job, you deserve it.

[All Images Courtesy of This Guy Has My MacBook Blog and Kaufman's Flickr]

The victim, Bill Jordan, told local media he had the cords of the bag tied around his hand, and when one of the thieves yanked it, he couldn’t let go, and it literally tore the flesh off his finger, leaving nothing but bone.

"I never hear it coming, I never see it coming," he told Denver’s FOX31. "I just remember this kid pulling and pulling and pulling and it got caught?took the flesh right off, the tendons and everything. There was nothing but bone." A doctor told him they’d have to amputate the finger.

At this point the two thieves are still out there as police continue the search. Denver’s’ CBS4 has a quote from Jordan, telling the thieves, "I hope you understand what you’ve done to my life and my family’s life for a simple piece of apparatus that’ll be junk in a couple of years."

We know there is a great amount of iPad demand in the U.S. (they’ve postponed releasing it overseas for this reason), but this is ridiculous. Looking past the sick outcome of this crime, Jordan is absolutely right as well. The first generation iPad won’t be so in demand two years from now.

Craigslist Logo
(Photo Credit: Craigslist)

Jackson County sheriff’s deputies arrested a couple in Medford, Oregon on Monday for stealing two horse saddles and other items from Robert Salisbury’s home a few days before placing the bogus ads on Craigslist.

The sheriff’s office tracked the origin of the Craigslist ads to a computer owned by Brandon Herbert, 29, and Amber Herbert, 28. They had been to Salisbury’s home because the property was for rent but had not other connection with him. They posted the ads to try to hide their crime and sold the stolen saddles online.

Brandon and Amber Herbert were charged with burglary, theft and computer crimes.

Some of Salisbury’s possessions have been returned since the crime made news, but he is still missing a significant amount of property according to the sheriff’s office.

"Other Craigslist hoaxes we’ve seen were malicious, but this was not the revenge-type thing we were expecting," Sgt. Colin Fagan said according to the Seattle Post Intelligencer. "But it was pretty sinister."
 

Huh? Right. Last I heard the legislature had not addressed robots.txt, but it’s possible I missed it. Bygones and on with it. Though it’s unclear which sites are participating, if any, social media users may encounter a notice that they’ve been blocked. Some of the reasoning is as follows:

"The users of sites such as Digg, Netscape, Reddit and StumbleUpon openly endorse Ad Block Plus, a plug-in that blocks advertisement on web sites, and are well known for providing no value to the sites they visit. Software that blocks all advertisement is an infringement of the rights of web site owners and developers. Numerous web sites exist in order to provide quality content in exchange for displaying ads, Digg users who don’t click on these ads are stealing bandwidth without paying for it and website owners deserve a method to block this unauthorized bandwith theft.

"Since social media sites do not allow website owners a method for excluding content and do not obey robots.txt law, abiding webmasters are forced to block all users from social media sites."

I suppose also if one were to visit "abiding" webmasters’ sites without Ad Block Plus and chose to ignore them they would also be guilty of "theft." Does that also apply if I go to the bathroom or kitchen during TV commercials? It would seem so.

But this article can’t be closed without a third opinion, and why not just quote one of the original opponents of WhyFirefoxIsBlocked.com, the webmaster behind WhyIsFirefoxedBlocked.com:

"Why is firefox blocked?

"Because some douche wants to infect your computer with popups, search bars and endless ads, the same kind of douche that made you get Firefox in the first place because of horrific popups, search bars and endless ads."

For a detailed explanation of why the logic of blocking social media sites is flawed, give Muhammad Saleem a visit. 

Twenty-five percent of all people using social networks in the UK have posted confidential or personal information such as their phone number, address or email, on their online profile making them susceptible to identity fraud. This includes 34 percent of 18-24 year olds and 30 percent of 25-34 year olds.

Twenty-seven percent of 18-24 year olds have posted information or photos of other people without their permission online. Seven percent have shared contact details from someone’s online profile with another person without their consent, this is 14 percent more likely to occur among 18-25 year olds.

The research found that 15 percent do not use any privacy settings on social networking sites and that 18-25 year olds are the most security conscious, with 89 percent using some type of privacy setting. Fifty-one percent of those over 65 do not use a privacy setting.

Tony Neate, managing director of GetSafeOnline.org, said, "The popularity of social networking and other sites means that we are much more open about ourselves and our lives online. Although some of these details may seem harmless, they actually provide rich pickings for criminals."

"Your date of birth and where you live is enough for someone to set up a credit card in your name. So whilst most people wouldn’t give this information to a stranger in real life, they will happily post it online where people they don’t know can see it."

Organized group activity took place in 42 percent of the cases, involving 2-45 offenders. In about half of those cases the Internet was used to commit the crime.  Just 20 percent of the cases involved non-technological methods for identity theft such as dumpster diving or change of address.

More than a third of the victims were financial institutions such as banks, credit unions and credit card companies. Individuals were victims 34 percent of the time and 59 percent of the victims did not know the offenders.  Only 5 percent of the victims were related to the offender.

Of the offenders 42 percent were between the ages of 25-34 and 18 percent were between the ages of 18 and 24. Just 6 percent were over the age of 50. Out of 933 identity thieves 53 percent were black. White offenders were the next largest group at 38 percent followed by Hispanics at 4 percent and Asians at 3 percent.

"Having access to these closed files for purposes of studying identity theft should prove invaluable to law enforcement officials and policy makers," said Gary Gordon, founder and Executive Director of the Center for Identity Management and Information Protection, as well as the Economic Crime Institute (ECI) at Utica College.

"These findings shed new light on how identity theft related crimes take place, what motivates the perpetrators, and who is being victimized, and dispels some common myths about identity theft.

What you might call a fringe group – global conspiracy prophets are fringe, right? – have uploaded an obscure video from 1994, where then former Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney defended the decision not to invade Iraq following the Gulf War (a decision which, if you remember in fairness, broke poor Al Gore’s heart).

Though it may be easy to dismiss a group called "Grand Theft Country," whose primary goal it is to prevent future state-sponsored terrorist attacks (9/11 being the first one) while exposing media cover-ups and global-fascist alliances, this is the very group that has unmasked Vice President Cheney as a man who abandoned previous (and prophetic) insights.

In the video, produced by the conservative American Enterprise Institute, Cheney predicts invading Iraq and toppling Saddam Hussein would be "a quagmire" the US wouldn’t be interested in navigating.

Cheney focused on the consequences of taking over Iraq, and the delicate balance of power there that would be obliterated by religio-political factions as they divvied up the ruins.

And then there’s this little nugget at the end, regarding George H.W. Bush’s decision not to invade:

And the question for the president, in terms of whether or not we went on to Baghdad, took additional casualties in an effort to get Saddam Hussein, was how many additional dead Americans is Saddam worth?

Our judgment was, not very many, and I think we got it right.

So, apparently, there was a change of heart, one that wasn’t (hasn’t been) sufficiently addressed in the past six years in the media – a good time to bring that up might have been, say, the 2004 election.

I’m not going to walk out on that limb with Grand Theft Country and point to a global-fascist conspiracy with Arab-terrorist pawns and complete media control, but I will concede they’ve made a point nicely, and that point will be tested if and when the rest of the media, which will report on YouTube videos of every other (read: unimportant) stripe, picks up this gem.

It also underscores the power and importance of YouTube, sites like it, and citizen journalism, while reminding us why  the First Amendment to the US Constitution included the Press in its protection, and why consolidated media might not be the best idea we’ve had in the past 200 years.    

Hat tip to Editor and Publisher.