

 Man accused of placing GPS device on victim’s car before burglarizing her home - darxius
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/04/man-accused-of-placing-gps-device-on-victims-car-before-burglarizing-her-home/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+arstechnica%2Findex+%28Ars+Technica+-+All+content%29

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bjustin
Is tracking someone's car a crime? It comes off as a newer form of stalking,
in the casual if not legal sense of the term.

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eksith
I'm surprised these sorts of crimes don't happen more often. They probably do,
but we just don't hear about them as much.

Trackers are cheap these days and even Mission Impossible style devices/bugs
can be had that are just a little bigger than a car remote. Or if you're the
DIY type, there are circuit and project boards with built in GPS chips or add-
on modules available and you can buy plastic cases in standard sizes.

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mikeash
I think that once you reach a certain level of sophistication, you become able
to make more money with less risk by working within the system. Just about
anyone on this site could come up with really smart burglary plans, but even
ignoring the morality of it, why bother? There are easier ways to make money
with they sort of brainpower.

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hnriot
It doesn't take much brain power to walk into RadioShack.

And the money to be made in crime is way more than developer salaries. The new
frontier for crime is bitcoin fraud.

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RobertHoudin
"The new frontier for crime is bitcoin fraud."

I don't know much about bitcoin but I'm intrigued. Could you please elaborate?

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futhey
They're cheap and ubiquitous, no one is looking for them, and the data can be
fed from an anonymous prepaid SIM to a virtual number (Google voice, for
example).

Not surprised that this happened, surprised that the burglar was sophisticated
enough to plan this but not sophisticated enough to recover it as well.

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sultezdukes
Of course the FBI wanted to do the same thing without warrants.

[http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2012/02/25/fbi-turns-off-
thousan...](http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2012/02/25/fbi-turns-off-thousands-of-
gps-devices-after-supreme-court-ruling/)

