Aussie In Hot Water After Tracking His Stolen iPad



Presumably, when one of your iDevices is stolen with iCloud activated it means you can find where it’s gone with the help of the police, right? After all, Apple helps you track the thing on a satellite map? Not so much for one Canberra man who is currently up on charges of digital trespass for tracking down his allegedly stolen iPad.

The Canberra Times reports that the unnamed individual allegedly had his iPad stolen by another Canberra man.

A court yesterday alleged that when the iPad’s owner activated Find My iPad via iCloud to track down his tech, he committed what’s being called “trespass via radio wave” into the accused thief’s house, before allegedly committing physical trespass while trying to recover the device.

Now the story goes that the iPad owner went to police first with the GPS location data after his iPad was allegedly stolen from a construction site three days earlier. When police reportedly did nothing, the iPad owner took it upon himself to track the device down, allegedly going to the townhouse, looking inside a window before going back a second time on another occasion.

The second time the iPad owner went back, he activated the alarm on the iPad via iCloud and traced the sound to the garage. That was enough for police to get a search warrant. The search turned up not just the iPad, but also several other laptops and even a police badge.

The defence for the alleged thief sought to charge the iPad owner with digital trespass after setting off the iPad alarm, which was labelled absurd by prosecutors who said that if the theory of digital trespass via radio wave were expanded upon, almost everyone in Australia would be guilty due to the range of their Wi-Fi.

The case is ongoing.

Is it lawful to track down your stolen gear? [Canberra Times]