MacBook recovery in Berkeley, California, US

On 5 February, Dave Diamond let us know that the Berkeley Police had called to tell him that they recovered his daughter's stolen MacBook thanks to Undercover. Below is a short description of the recovery procedure.

"I provided the police with the information Orbicule had sent me: a mugshot photo taken with the MacBook iSight camera, IP addresses and screenshots). The mugshot was underexposed so I took it into iPhoto and cranked up the exposure to make facial features more recognizable (see images above)."

"The police then submitted a warrant to AT&T (the ISP) to obtain the physical address for the IP address. This was the slowest part of the process, AT&T taking almost two weeks to turn this around. The police obtained a search warrant and went to the suspect's address, but found that it was not the location imaged in the mugshot. They fortunately took the extra step of driving around the neighborhood with a laptop in the car to map out where the wireless router at the suspect's address could be seen. They then went door-to-door with the enhanced mugshot and found several people who knew where that person lived. The next day they obtained a new search warrant and located the person (who claims that she bought the MacBook from someone else) and the stolen MacBook."

"I am now an extremely vocal booster of Orbicule's software package, and have posted a description of my experience on several computer forums."