Re: [CNN] Stolen Laptops and lame 'solution'
How is the buyer responsible even indirectly?
Someone puts an add in the paper NEC Laptop $1,500. I go and check it out and buy it. Should it be my respocibility to call NEC over in Japan and
If anyone is responcible for the theft other than the theif is the person who was so carless with their equipment.
Legally Law Enforcement Agencies (LEA) and the courts willl find you responsible for being in possession of stolen property. If you purchased the unit from a storefront or a person selling the unit from their home you could deflect responsibility to those parties. I would suspect most stolen units are fdisk-ed, re-formatted, and moved a minimum of a state or province and then sold through brokers who operate through a pager or cell phone. The units are sold probably more in the range of $600 to $700 CAN Dollars for 486 color units and abit more for Pentium units. The brokers may offer the unit through an auction. At this point the buyer should start to suspect something is not right, the units are too cheap and all the proprietary drivers have been removed. The reason given is that they are being disposed of by a large corporation and it is policy to erase all data. No manuals or documentation are offered with the unit. Normally when you purchase an unit from the original retail buyer manuals and documentation and extras would be included with the unit and the seller would probably be willing to show you the bill of sale. Would you buy a car from a seller offering no documentation or proof of ownership. It is tough to take the argument that stolen notebooks are the fault of the victim seriously. Notebook thieves can be pretty enterprising. They walk into offices dressed as maintainance people, buy pass keys from the real maintainance people and go through every office. A friend had a notebook taken from a locked office in a supposedly secure area, no signs of break and entry so no insurance coverage and there were notebooks and computers taken from three locked offices in the middle of the day. So in this case it was my friend's fault for doing business in a shared office environment where someone had sold a pass key to the thief?? If there was no market for stolen notebooks thieves would not steal them as there would be no gain. In my experience most people selling merchanise of doubtful origins are not sophisticated, ask lots of questions and their stories quickly fall apart. I have walked away from many deals when the origin of the goods were not clearly explained and I would suggest you do the same. Virtually Raymond Mereniuk Raymond@wcs.net
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- In <199706120120.SAA05683@mat.wcs.net>, on 06/11/97 at 07:02 PM, "Raymond Mereniuk" <raymond@wcs.net> said:
How is the buyer responsible even indirectly?
Someone puts an add in the paper NEC Laptop $1,500. I go and check it out and buy it. Should it be my respocibility to call NEC over in Japan and
If anyone is responcible for the theft other than the theif is the person who was so carless with their equipment.
Legally Law Enforcement Agencies (LEA) and the courts willl find you responsible for being in possession of stolen property. If you purchased the unit from a storefront or a person selling the unit from their home you could deflect responsibility to those parties. I would suspect most stolen units are fdisk-ed, re-formatted, and moved a minimum of a state or province and then sold through brokers who operate through a pager or cell phone. The units are sold probably more in the range of $600 to $700 CAN Dollars for 486 color units and abit more for Pentium units. The brokers may offer the unit through an auction.
They will be sold at whatever the market will bear for used equipment regardless of how the equipment was obtained. Usally the person who steals the equipment will not be the one selling it to the general public so any discounts because the item is "hot" are usally gone before it get's to joe sixpack.
At this point the buyer should start to suspect something is not right, the units are too cheap and all the proprietary drivers have been removed. The reason given is that they are being disposed of by a large corporation and it is policy to erase all data. No manuals or documentation are offered with the unit. Normally when you purchase an unit from the original retail buyer manuals and documentation and extras would be included with the unit and the seller would probably be willing to show you the bill of sale. Would you buy a car from a seller offering no documentation or proof of ownership.
There is no comparison between the two. For better or worse there are state madated ownership papers for autos. I can see that you have not spent much time in the used electronics market. Equipment may change hands multiple time over a period of years before it finaly reaches your hands. It is common for the seller not to have any documentation or recipts for the equipment. To use your comparison you wouldn't expect the owners manual & receipt from the dealship when you went to buy a '65 F100 would you?
It is tough to take the argument that stolen notebooks are the fault of the victim seriously. Notebook thieves can be pretty enterprising. They walk into offices dressed as maintainance people, buy pass keys from the real maintainance people and go through every office. A friend had a notebook taken from a locked office in a supposedly secure area, no signs of break and entry so no insurance coverage and there were notebooks and computers taken from three locked offices in the middle of the day. So in this case it was my friend's fault for doing business in a shared office environment where someone had sold a pass key to the thief??
No it was his fault for leaving the security of his property to someone else who obviously has some rather poor security policies. I have wore out more than 1 credit cards getting into locked offices because the key was not available. The you have those that think a locked door is secure when there is a 3' drop ceiling that anyone can use to climb over the door with. If that had been $5,000 cash rather than that laptop I bet your friend would have thought twice of leaving it in that room.
If there was no market for stolen notebooks thieves would not steal them as there would be no gain. In my experience most people selling merchanise of doubtful origins are not sophisticated, ask lots of questions and their stories quickly fall apart. I have walked away from many deals when the origin of the goods were not clearly explained and I would suggest you do the same.
Bah this is just bull. The purchaser of used equipment is not looking for stolen equipment. The market is for inexpensive used equipment which theifs take advantage of. This is an important difference to make. The amount of stolen equipment in the used equipment market is quite small. The end buyer should not be held responcible for the illegal activities of the seller. - -- - --------------------------------------------------------------- William H. Geiger III http://www.amaranth.com/~whgiii Geiger Consulting Cooking With Warp 4.0 Author of E-Secure - PGP Front End for MR/2 Ice PGP & MR/2 the only way for secure e-mail. OS/2 PGP 2.6.3a at: http://www.amaranth.com/~whgiii/pgpmr2.html - --------------------------------------------------------------- -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3a Charset: cp850 Comment: Registered_User_E-Secure_v1.1b1_ES000000 iQCVAwUBM59g/o9Co1n+aLhhAQH+DgP/VP5nX7/kCPbRJVi5Tjxf2G2x9A45Wu9o GkQE3tRrg47mhRtDiO14ZvcaLVMUsAUYp0Q7jO/Q0dgShCmaMR+0bbHNuv5+ZO2e WNdUF4GtzAAMtMh2mJG60vhCi81Nt6Dhb7vGIeS8WhvI7a3iSxiYzj+BoA54UqNR vdi2u9CjXQ4= =6L95 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
On Wed, Jun 11, 1997 at 09:37:42PM -0500, William H. Geiger III wrote: [...]
The end buyer should not be held responcible for the illegal activities of the seller.
Regardless of responsibility, if the original owner can prove it is stolen goods, the end buyer is out of luck -- clearly the original owner should get their goods back. And if the end buyer provably has clear knowledge that it is stolen property, they are an accesssory to the crime. -- Kent Crispin "No reason to get excited", kent@songbird.com the thief he kindly spoke... PGP fingerprint: B1 8B 72 ED 55 21 5E 44 61 F4 58 0F 72 10 65 55 http://songbird.com/kent/pgp_key.html
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- In <19970611223934.43941@bywater.songbird.com>, on 06/11/97 at 10:39 PM, Kent Crispin <kent@songbird.com> said:
On Wed, Jun 11, 1997 at 09:37:42PM -0500, William H. Geiger III wrote: [...]
The end buyer should not be held responcible for the illegal activities of the seller.
Regardless of responsibility, if the original owner can prove it is stolen goods, the end buyer is out of luck -- clearly the original owner should get their goods back. And if the end buyer provably has clear knowledge that it is stolen property, they are an accesssory to the crime.
I have no problem with the original owner getting his property back though a reasonable statue of limitations should be set (7 yrs?). Well "clear knowledge" is a rather tough one to prove and brings you into gray areas of "well he *should* have known it was stolen" type of logic. IMHO any criminal prosecution should be based on additional evidence other than just possesion of the property and the word of an admitted felon (ie the thief). - -- - --------------------------------------------------------------- William H. Geiger III http://www.amaranth.com/~whgiii Geiger Consulting Cooking With Warp 4.0 Author of E-Secure - PGP Front End for MR/2 Ice PGP & MR/2 the only way for secure e-mail. OS/2 PGP 2.6.3a at: http://www.amaranth.com/~whgiii/pgpmr2.html - --------------------------------------------------------------- -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.3a Charset: cp850 Comment: Registered_User_E-Secure_v1.1b1_ES000000 iQCVAwUBM5/qF49Co1n+aLhhAQFqKQP9GDcJsUFxvAkY/W/DcR544WAx0YM/FeZY l8WA07RW1cKmRKr4cr3VZB8uokTiNuzFS9JE9pbhOjZvPo9mVZvorLgjLHmwvkxG dOB8fMMIGAcCIRNbejBuS2sNiDCwDIeNm7Gra9a8PSuMwZfEsq03o3z67lpJIcai su9L2zrVTlY= =hHJo -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
participants (3)
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Kent Crispin -
Raymond Mereniuk -
William H. Geiger III