Police don't trust Apple's Find My to retrieve missing MacBook shown next door

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/sudbury/sudbury-bill-mcelree-stolen-laptop-1.6647876

by cf100clunk • 4 years ago

48 61 4 years ago

kashunstva• 4 years ago

If the police are so disinterested in evidentiary leads residing in citizens' iPhones, then perhaps they can cease their efforts to hack into them and to persuade governments to mandate backdoors for their use.

dismantlethesun• 4 years ago

Sometimes it just shows the last known location. Since GPS accuracy varies that could place the dot directly in your neighbors house, even if it was stolen and is long gone now.

google2341232• 4 years ago

There isn't a GPS on a laptop.

bombcar2• 4 years ago

Something about this story is screwy, the laptop determines its location based on wifi, which means I wouldn't trust it to be very accurate (Find My shows me currently in the middle of the street next to my house).

I'm with the cops on this one.

google2341232• 4 years ago

Things like this make me feel really sympathetic with the "F#@# the police" leftists.

If the police won't handle crime, then the community needs to take control.

Tallianar• 4 years ago

really? this is what makes you sympathetic? Not all excessive violence and completely unchecked abuse of power?

Gibbon1• 4 years ago

It's all part of them being bad at their jobs.

palijer• 4 years ago

I don't blame them for this one... What's to stop someone having the same evidence or some mock of the "find my laptop" application to use police resources to search a house?

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.

tdeck• 4 years ago

Consider that swatting is still a thing and that requires absolutely no evidence. That seems like a better way to ruin someone's day than reporting a property theft.

alpaca128• 4 years ago

What's to stop someone having the same evidence or some mock of the "find my laptop" application to use police resources to search a house?

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.

kevin_nisbet2• 4 years ago

Well, I'd like to understand the police perspective better on why this might not rise to the level of a warrant.

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.

1123581321• 4 years ago

That’s a shame. Back when Find My iPhone first launched, my friend used printed screenshots to track his stolen phone moving from the park to another city across state lines. Police departments in both cities helped him and coordinated with each other. When the right house was identified, the police didn’t search it, but they accompanied him to the door and asked the phone to be brought out to verify ownership, and the person cooperated. She had bought the phone from the thief and wasn’t prosecuted.

The case in the story is so much simpler and could’ve been handled within half an hour of the initial contact.

cf100clunk2• 4 years ago

Indeed, this situation has clearly been mishandled from the viewpoint of the Macbook's rightful owner, and if we are to take the story as written it seems that the officers involved are not technophiles. This raises the question of whether we are asking too much of them. If so, surely there must be someone on the local force who can be consulted so that technological logjams like this can be quickly broken.

gnicholas6• 4 years ago

I would be more understanding if this were an Airtag, which you can't prove is attached to any particular thing. You could have put it in someone else's backpack!

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.

mattw21213• 4 years ago

If one my neighbors came to my door and accused me of stealing a laptop, and then wanted to come into my house, I would also refuse them access. It isn't because I'm guilty, but because I don't take orders from my neighbor.

peter422• 4 years ago

If my neighbor came to my house and said their missing laptop is showing up in my house and I didn't steal it I'd obviously let them come in and see.

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.

kennend3• 4 years ago

With a hostile attitude like yours I hope you never need help from a neighbour.

notatoad• 4 years ago

on the other hand, this is a laptop not an airtag - the results in find my don't have the same precision.

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.

gnicholas6• 4 years ago

I get that Find My is not always correct. I've seen this with Airtags and iPhones. But it doesn't usually ping the wrong location for days on end, which it sounds like it has here.

stonemetal12• 4 years ago

Apple is reporting is in a particular location.

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.

alexwasserman• 4 years ago

https://splinternews.com/how-an-internet-mapping-glitch-turn...

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.

gnicholas6• 4 years ago

For all we know it is in their house and connecting to the neighbor's wifi.

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.

michaelmcdonald• 4 years ago

The article is lacking in numerous details; however something glaring to me is that they don't talk about how / when the laptop went missing and / or the relationship between the victim and the neighbor. Was there an opportunity for the neighbor to take the laptop?

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.

kevin_nisbet2• 4 years ago

It is interesting, the thought that struck me is the details of the households are not particularly known. So could another household member or a kid or something stole the laptop, and the parent just has no idea. I'm just speculating though.

belkinpower• 4 years ago

Police, particularly in big cities, seem weirdly disinterested in doing their jobs. More recently I’ve seen people blame this on polarizing issues like protests or progressive DAs, but it’s been going on for longer than that. I honestly don’t know what the causes or solutions are.

whimsicalism• 4 years ago

I've grown up in cities and lived in them my whole life. People in service and public-facing positions (including police) in cities generally are disinterested in doing their jobs, this has always been my experience.

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.

YeBanKo• 4 years ago

I don’t know, I would disagree regarding all public-facing positions being disinterested. While living in SF I had interactions with Park services, mainly requesting them to fix stuff, it was fine. They fixed / cleaned up things.

Regarding the police however I agree, but they did start using the “DA not gonna prosecute” way too often.

SQueeeeeL• 4 years ago

Yeah, police in big cities are basically just there to act as a strike force when the rage of all the minimum wage workers boils over every few years. They don't even have a legal obligation to protect you in dangerous situations, so they truly don't have a purpose

CPLX• 4 years ago

When you see a whole profession that seems to be weirdly disinterested in their jobs, like say police or the speaker of the house, consider the idea that it's you who doesn't understand what their actual job is.

Hint: it involves serving their actual employer, which isn't the regular guy.

anoonmoose• 4 years ago

Just basing my opinions off of what they loudly declare their job is. If it's different than that, then they're lazy AND lying.

knaekhoved3• 4 years ago

In big cities with progressive DAs,

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.

majormajor• 4 years ago

So how do you explain the lack of effective policing in the decades before these new "progressive DAs" that police complain about so much?

quantified2• 4 years ago

Nothing to do with "progressive DAs" except that as a tribe they really want to make those DAs look bad.

breser• 4 years ago

Your example is George Floyd.

* 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.

JTbane• 4 years ago

Interactions with cops be like:

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

quantified2• 4 years ago

What are their incentives? The brotherhood has their back to do whatever they want or not.

Quiet quitting has been around for a while.

sevenf0ur• 4 years ago

Something that is concerning with Find My is that if you join family sharing, then any person in the group can play a sound and remote wipe your device. I'm at work and my phone started going off. I was worried that someone got into my iCloud. There is also no indication as to who in the family triggered the action.

rcarmo• 4 years ago

Every _adult_ person. There are some limits to what kids can do.

narcraft• 4 years ago

I think late 2014/early 2015 I had my first iPhone stolen when playing soccer with some bros in a local park. We were able to use Find My iPhone to track it to a specific address. Went to the local police station, filed a report, and they told me candidly that they'd probably never find it and that they wouldn't go to the house. So another guy who also had his phone stolen and I went to the house and called police to let them know that we were about to knock on their door. About 4 squad cars showed up almost immediately. A man answered the door and we explained that our phones went missing and we tracked them to that address. He yelled for his kid who apparently had a history of trouble. The kid denied it at first but his dad(?) gave him a talking to and we got our phones back an hour or so later. We did not press charges.

ep103• 4 years ago

Yeah, this sounds like the police just not wanting to do work.

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.

14• 4 years ago

Got lucky that the dad realized it is much better to give the phone back vs have his windows smashed out with a rock once a month for the end of time in the night. I don’t condone damaging people’s stuff but in my city there is a lot of vigilantism talk and I imagine rocks would probably be the least of worries. I have seen it here where a known thief had his car lit on fire. Another guy was hog tied and beat up on Facebook live. My point is some people are crazy and I would think people once found out they were caught would just return the items vs risk being revenge attacked. But then again criminals are not that smart.

Ekaros• 4 years ago

So on other hand what would be fair punishment for giving false testimony that is point to wrong house? Couple years in prison and couple hundred thousand in damages to person who was misjustly subjected to a search?

nimbius• 4 years ago

this article is sensational and unproductive. a better question is:

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.

MonkeyMalarky• 4 years ago

Hooray, a Sudbury article made it to the front page of HN!

kazinator• 4 years ago

More and more I think we're losing touch with our sense of community.

That's a pretty dumb conclusion to draw from the fact that we know who the thieves are.

Confiks• 4 years ago

It's quite a low-quality article. The only real testimony is that:

"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.

GeekyBear• 4 years ago

The issue appears to be that the police don't want to attempt to get a warrant.

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.

adolph• 4 years ago

As for the neighbour, he doesn't want to be named. However he has told CBC Sudbury he did not take the laptop, and believes the app is malfunctioning, and noted he has read comments online about cases of that happening with the Find My app.

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.

Doxin• 4 years ago

When police are involved there is too much opportunity for something tragic to occur out of misunderstanding.

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.

ydnaclementine• 4 years ago

The Find My isn't all that accurate and the dot generally hops around. I had a recent experience of a friend losing their phone in a park. But maybe you could trust it more in the suburbs

Police don't trust Apple's Find My to retrieve missing MacBook shown next door

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