Thieves who stole global positioning systems (GPS) from a warehouse in New York state were apprehended after authorities activated the tracking devices to locate them, police said Monday. Fourteen GPS were stolen last week from a warehouse in Babylon, New York. The town had planned to use them to track its municipal fleet of vehicles.
Police and municipal staff said they remotely activated the devices and were led to the home of one of the culprits who was found fiddling with one of them.
The thieves believed they had snagged cell phones and planned to sell them, he told AFP. Three people face charges.
Tee hee.
How do you confuse cell phones with GPS devices?
#1 Reread the title!
i love dumb crooks lol
ROFL!! I can see why some people hate technology (cuz its strapped to thier ankles!)
They had to be cell phones with gps built in. A cell phone you can remotely turn on and it also transmits. A normal GPS can’t be remotely turned on and it doesn’t transmit.
Hey, MSNBC is still reading DU. This was #1, tonight, for worst persons in the world.
Hey — this isn’t that stupid.
Not all GPS units transmit, right? Most, I think, are just passive recievers, right? How many of us would know the difference?
But I still love a story of a crook getting busted.
I was always curious about whether their is market for stolen cellphones. Since every cell phone in the world has a unique digital ID (on my phone it is called an ESN), is there a system where the phone is ‘disabled’ (in the sense of not allowing it to join the cell phone network), and thus essentially useless?
I also wonder about iPods, which have their unique serial numbers displayed prominently in the iTunes program. If you have your iPod stolen, can you notify Apple to not allow any ‘registration’ with another iTunes software setup? (I know that iTunes is constantly phoning home to Apple for updates, access to the iTunes music store, etc).
Like I said, just curious. I know the devil is in the details (how does Apple verify the iPod was stolen, etc.), but I think it would be a good marketing move to say that if your iPod was stolen, the thief would only be able to listen to your music, and would never be able to add their own.
#8 Cell phones used to be cloned years ago, rendering that unique number not so unique. I am unsure if you can still clone a cell phone.
Aren’t there SMART crooks….oh wait, if they were smart then I guess we wouldn’t get to read about them.