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GPS Devices Lead Authorities to Thieves' Home

Posted by Zonk on Sat Jan 20, 2007 02:36 AM
from the please-put-the-stolen-locatermabob-down dept.
It's funny. Laugh. Hardware Technology
Radon360 writes "A trio of not-so-bright thieves in Lindenhurst, NY stole 14 GPS position reporting devices used on public works equipment from a nearby township garage. Authorities didn't have to look too far to locate him or the devices, as one of them was still active and indicated the location of his home when it was queried. From the article: 'Town officials said the thieves didn't even know what they had: they thought the GPS devices were cell phones, which they planned to sell.'"
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  • ahh yes... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Bananatree3 (872975) on Saturday January 20 2007, @02:43AM (#17692850)
    how sweet, the ignorance of youth. They're almost begging for police to come get them. Kind of like the dimwhit students who posted their vandalizing a school on youtube [slashdot.org] for the whole world, including police to see.

  • Let me get this straight (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 20 2007, @02:45AM (#17692866)
    So if the thieves had stolen one less GPS tracking device (as only the one was still on and functioning), the headline would have read:
    "Idiot Thieves Somehow Manage to Make Off With Armloads of Location Trackers"?

  • Town officials said the thieves didn't even know what they had: they thought the GPS devices were cell phones, which they planned to sell.

    Don't a lot of cell phones also report on your location via AGPS?

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by ForestGrump (644805)
      I think they only do it when in dire need of your coordinates (like when you call 911). Otherwise, it's probably a waste of resources (computing power/network data). After all, how much does the cell phone cost? free w/signing your soul away for 2 years right?

      Grump.

      • I think they only do it when in dire need of your coordinates (like when you call 911).

        My (CDMA 2000) phone has an option to restrict the GPS reporting to 911 calls only, but it's not the default.

        Otherwise, it's probably a waste of resources (computing power/network data).

        It wouldn't be that bad. The phone already has to periodically allocate a channel in order report its presence to the base station. Tacking on a few extra bits (probably only when requested by the base station) isn't going to be that much overhead.

        As for computing power on the phones, these things can run reasonably complex audio codecs in real time during a voice call. That's a lot of spar

        • Re:So what if they were cell phones? (Score:5, Informative)

          by ForestGrump (644805) on Saturday January 20 2007, @04:03AM (#17693118) Homepage Journal
          The phone has a GPS receiver, but it's primarily designed to take a "snapshot" of the satellites and send that off to an assisting server for the actual number crunching. I'm pretty sure these assisting servers aren't cheap and the phone company wouldn't spend money buying these servers if they could sell you a new phone instead.

          Now, if you implanted one of these phones in your baby called 911 saying I LOST MY BABY! Then I'm sure they wouldn't hesitate to use the gps on the phone to locate the baby.*

          But what do I know, it was my roommate who worked in a cell phone shop. I worked on emergency dispatch equipment instead.

          http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assisted_GPS [wikipedia.org]

          Grump

          *If child protective services comes after you, I didn't seed the idea!
          • Since GPS software for Sprint cellphones costs as little as $20, and gives you an unlimited number of fixes with no monthly fee for GPS use, the load on the servers can't be very high.

            Frankly, I think cell phone companies should be, but probably aren't (there was an old story about how Sprint refused to locate a cellphone in a stolen car when the car had a baby in it), willing to report coordinates to law enforcement when a theft report has been filed. (In fact, I think they should be required to do such r

            • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

              by C_L_Lk (1049846)
              This often makes me wonder how often the GPS receiver in my cell phone is actually working. I have both a Garmin and a Magellan hand-held receiver, each which cost several hundred $, and neither of them pick up any useful signal or work even 10% of the time anywhere indoors, in my vehicle while I drive, or even when I'm under moderate to heavy tree cover or building cover. They stick themselves in "acquiring signal mode" until they return to a relatively clear view of the sky to get signal from at least 3 s

              • Your typical GPS has problems aquiring signals because it has to work out the following: The precise time, the likely location. It needs both of these to being able to even start getting a fix. This is why your typical GPS takes a lot longer to get a fix when it has been off for an extended period of time, or has moved a considerable distance when not in use. Garmin quotes 500 Miles for instance. Ephemeris data is collected by your GPS over a period of time and is used to cutdown on the amount of time it ta
      • It's not as much retrieving the phones (or, in this case, GPS devices), it's about apprehending the thieves. How many small crimes are actually solved by the police? But you can rest assured that many, many crimes are performed by a small group of people. Getting these people out of the street and putting them straight is what it is all about. Also, if people are being caught, it's a message out there to all the other (wannabe) thieves; crime does not pay - not that this message is true all the time, but th
    • Mobile phones don't have GPS. You *might* be able to triangulate a position if it's visible by a couple of sectors, but even that's iffy.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Detritus (11846)
        Many mobile phones have partial or full GPS receivers. It's one way to meet the FCC's mandates for E911 cell phone location.
        • Erm, *what*? Isn't that a massive privacy invasion?
          • When you make a call to 911, you usually want the emergency dispatcher to have an accurate fix on your location. Of the phones that I've seen with GPS capability, they all had an option to restrict transmission of location information to 911 calls only.
            • Hm, yeah, and that would *never* be switched on by anyone other than, oh hang on, the police to name but one. No thanks. I'll stick with my nice non-GPS GSM mobile, thanks.

              Anyway, what's wrong with simply telling the 999 operator where you are?
  • honestly i'm so sick of all these petty stealing pricks. i got broken into and they stole my aircon remote and a tin of wall putty. if your going to steal things, atleast put some thought into it and steal something worthwhile. like the people who stole a prize winning garden gnome and took photo's of it at places around the world and sent them back to the owner. otherwise your just a dumb punk.

    • Re:what ever happened to bold thefts. (Score:5, Funny)

      by Phil246 (803464) on Saturday January 20 2007, @03:17AM (#17692978)
      Someone in southampton, UK not too long ago stole a urinal from a pub; http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/hampshire/62344 45.stm [bbc.co.uk]
      Bottom line is , people will steal anything. Expecting them to do it in style is a bit much to hope for.

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Cassini2 (956052)
        We once had a 15 year old, 40 MegaByte Hard Drive stolen! It was virtually impossible to source a replacement non-IDE hard drive. The hard drive was embedded in an industrial machine, and it was a nightmare to source spares. We finally wound up replacing the entire computer.

        I think the bill came to something like $45,000 in machine downtime, $2,000 in a replacement hardware, and $20 for a USB memory key ... It was an expensive 40MB hard drive.
    • I had the face plate stolen off of the radio in my car about a year and a half ago. There were obvious signs of distress in the console around where the radio was mounted indicating the kid who did it had tried to steal the whole thing, but in the end he gave up and just took off with the face plate. What really made things amusing was he took the stub from a ticket to a football game and left nearly ten dollars in change sitting in the ashtray. Talk about not making it worthwhile.
    • Tell me about it. A couple years ago, when I was living in a not-too-nice neighborhood, someone broke into my car and took the stereo (which self-destructed on disconnect), the amplifier (woefully under-powered), and the speakers (which were wearing out).

      What did they leave? A Magellan GPS unit, mounted in a bracket on the dash, with "GPS 315" printed on it in big white letters, in full view. Five seconds for that one item would have doubled the street value of their take.

      Idiots.
      • Not bad.

        I had my car broken into last week as I left my cell phone inside by accident. (I know, dumb move.)

        Stolen: cell phone - bought new for $130 w/o contract, spare change, olympus mju II film camera - $40 used (I got it for free)

        Left behind: 6 DVDs in a box from amazon on the rear seat, 60 GB 4th gen iPod.
        • Not only has this happened (several times), but some people have taken it far too far [wikipedia.org].

          That article has links that will lead you to stories of several of the travelling garden gnomes.

          I also read an article a while back about a gang that look for plastic flamingoes, and when the owners aren't home (or during the night), sneak into the yard and move the flamingoes around. I saw one photo of a plastic flamingo that was found perched in a nearby tree.

  • Not news IMO (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Jack9 (11421) <.moc.rehcaet. .ta. .9kcaJ.> on Saturday January 20 2007, @02:53AM (#17692904)
    Digg and Fark cover general stupidity.
    • I guess the news is the GPS devices ACTUALLY WORKED! I had a GPS receiver for my Palm Pilot for a while. That damn thing was frustrating. It would only work with a CLEAR and UNOBSTRUCTED view of the sky, and even then it took like 5 minutes to get a lock (or whatever its' called) on the satellites. How often do we have that good a view of the sky every day? Me - just when I'm driving to work.
      • That sounds very much like the HandyGPS. Luckily I paid only 10 bucks for it on eBay, but indeed the thing is a complete mess.

  • It reminds me... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by gooman (709147) on Saturday January 20 2007, @02:57AM (#17692924) Journal
    My dad likes to say, "If they were smart, they wouldn't be crooks, they'd have real jobs."

    • Re:It reminds me... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ColaMan (37550) on Saturday January 20 2007, @03:02AM (#17692938) Homepage Journal
      If they were smart, they'd still be crooks, just at large.

      Smart crooks are not identified - you hear very little about them apart from statements such as, "Police are appealing for help from the general public to help catch a criminal who did X."
      • If they were *really* smart then nobody would know that a crime had been committed.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by atcurtis (191512)

        The smartest criminals are so deft at their art that no one, least of all the police, is aware that a crime has even taken place...

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by hughk (248126)
          you forgot that they are probably working on Wall St wheer as long as they steal in the name of the company, they will be rewarded handsomely with end-of-year bonuses.
      • Be that as it may, most crooks are not smart. Most crimes are spur of the moment rather than carefully planned, and have a low payoff relative to their risk. Most crimes are committed within 1 mile of the criminal's home. Most petty criminals average 20 crimes before they are caught: those are the ones who think they are smart, not realizing they're playing a fool's game for what amounts to chump change.

      • Re:It reminds me... (Score:5, Funny)

        by Cyberax (705495) on Saturday January 20 2007, @04:33AM (#17693220)
        The smartest crooks do not violate laws. They MAKE them.
        • That's like the famous quote from the Beggar's Opera:

          "What is breaking into a bank compared with founding a bank?"

          • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

            by Cyberax (705495)
            This quote is mine.

            But it looks like that I'm not the one who thought about it first :) I've found this quote in Google: "The really successful criminals never break laws - they make them", but I can't find its attribution.

            And there's also Mark Twain: "There is no distinctly American criminal class except Congress" :)
      • Smart crooks are not identified - you hear very little about them

        Smart people aren't crooks. It doesn't take too much intelligence to perceive that you have limited time and resources to commit a crime, law enforcement has all the time and resources in the world to investigate. The only way to remain uncaught, apart from pure luck, is being such a petty crook that nobody really cares.

        Remember you aren't alone in the world. There's always someone who may have seen you, who may remember. The homeless who was

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by kfg (145172)
      "If they were smart, they wouldn't be crooks, they'd have real jobs."

      Yeah, that's a fairly common thing for people who aren't so smart to say.

      The idea of a "real job" is something the smart people invented to take advantage of people stupid enough to buy into it.

      KFG
    • As in pumping gas? Selling clothing? Washing dishes? Yeah, those take a lot more intelligence than breaking into a house, stealing stuff, and selling it, all the while not getting caught.
  • This reminds me of the episode where Dell purchases "a satellite dish" :-)
    http://www.tv.com/only-fools-and-horses/the-skys-t he-limit/episode/52299/summary.html [tv.com]
  • There are no photos of the GPS devices, but I imagine they are rugged, ugly things with a greyscale LCD screen and maybe you could get them confused with a cell phone from 1996. Did they honestly think a phone that ugly would sell?

    I know thieves are stupid but wouldn't it be worthwhile knowing what you're stealing?
    • Googled a bit and found that it probably was cellphones with built in GPS tracking. "Babylon uses its GPS-enabled cellphones and supporting software every day to help make work like sweeping streets and filling potholes more efficient." [1]. Maybe they police and the town doesn't want to advertise that there are some 300 phones if to steal if you can get to them (and of course shut down the GPS in them!)

      [1] http://developer.sprint.com/site/global/home/p_ho m e.jsp [sprint.com]
    • There are no photos of the GPS devices, but I imagine they are rugged, ugly things with a greyscale LCD screen and maybe you could get them confused with a cell phone from 1996. Did they honestly think a phone that ugly would sell?

      I know thieves are stupid but wouldn't it be worthwhile knowing what you're stealing?

      If you attend flee markets, you'll notice quite a few people who simply don't know what they are selling. I remember back in like 1986 I wanted a cordless phone, which I bought one from such a fl
    • I'd rather see the township call up the Air Force and arrange for the delivery of a concrete-filled JDAM to the coordinates of the device.

    • A smart theft is not even discovered. Like stealing one cent from a lot of people and nobody relizes he is missing a cent.

      Good plan, Richard Pryor. Just make sure Superman doesn't catch on to your brilliant scheme.

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