Laptop Thief Caught on Webcam
A 27-year-old taxi driver was arrested this week after his half-naked mug was beamed through cyberspace via webcam on a stolen MacBook. However, it wasn't as easy as turning the pictures over to police. Joshua Kaufman, the man whose laptop was stolen was from his Oakland, California apartment, had to get a little creative with social networking in order to pressure police to take action.
According to a report in the National Post, Kaufman alerted authorities of the heist and was even able to give them an exact location of the laptop using an application called Hidden. Unbeknownst to the laptop thief, the program was snapping pictures using the built-in webcam, sending screenshots of the computer in use, and logging the laptop's location on Google Maps. This should have been a slam dunk for local police, but instead Kaufman's stolen laptop was classified as low priority.
Kaufman then decided to post the pictures on a Tumblr account he titled "ThisGuyHasMyMackBook." The site soon went viral, thanks in part to Kaufman promoting it on Twitter, and eventually was featured on ABC TV's Good Morning America. Finally, the Oakland Police Department took action, recovered the laptop, and arrested the thief earlier this week.
While Kaufman's story has a happy ending, it was due to taking action before the laptop was stolen. You should too, whether it involves a program like LoJack for Laptops, or free alternatives like Adeona or the one featured here.
Comments
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Keith E. Whisman
June 03, 2011 at 2:28pm
Creepier still is that is Kaufman's bed and he hasn't shown the rest of the pictures, the ones showing what the burglar did with Kaufman's toothbrush.
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kevjohn
June 03, 2011 at 11:53am
Here in Flori-duh it's illegal to record anyone without their knowledge. I wonder if that overriding law would pertain to a situation like this, where the person is being recorded on a device they stole. Thanks to the craftiness of our lawyers here, I'm sure it won't be too long before we find out.
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MattyMattMatt
June 03, 2011 at 11:16am
Holy fuck, fire all those cops for being dumb lazy shits. They didn't even have to do any work. No investigation. All they have to do is stroll over there, cuff the douchebag and leave. Motherfucking done. And they wonder why we don't like cops.
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level1paladin
June 03, 2011 at 6:48am
(Update, October 2009.) Adeona depends on the availability of a separate service, OpenDHT. On July 1, OpenDHT was taken down. We have taken the opportunity to set up OpenDHT again on PlanetLab, under our administration. However, we are still testing our OpenDHT infrastructure. Therefore, at this time we are not encouraging new downloads of Adeona.
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haboh
June 03, 2011 at 6:33am
So in order to get the cops to do the job i pay them to do I have to spread it on twitter, create a website and get on national TV? That's totally how that should work.. I guess the police where to busy arresting pot smokers, online poker players, or flying Governors to baseball games (see NJ)
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D00dlavy
June 03, 2011 at 8:42am
++
You can expect cops to pretty much laze around when it comes to responding to home burglaries or vandalism. I don't even think they care about rape that much, either. Call it a hunch.
They do show concern if you're being killed, killing someone, or committing a traffic or drug infringement. I’ve read before that traffic and drug citations are low-risk to deal with and can be pretty profitable for the department. Hence, cops don’t really want to deal with real criminals, and they could give a rat’s swollen behind about your laptop, home, or car.
God bless this country.
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wirehedd
June 03, 2011 at 10:31am
While I will agree with a large portion of what you say I must point out one small correction.
Traffic stops and domestic calls (screaming matches between husbands and wives etc) are the highest danger situations for cops. Weird but true. A SWAT team member on a robbery call is less likely to be killed or injured than a cop pulling over a speeder or knocking on the door to an apartment containing a screaming couple.
They do seem to be more interested in pinching harmless pot smokers and loitering teenagers than anything else mind you. Property crime involving break-ins and theft are so casually dismissed due to the notion that people have insurance to take of them and the police feel they have beetter things to do with their time.
That laptop investigation would have caused a donut budget deficit. :)
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