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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
[email protected]