Lab Notes

Proof that not all of us Berkeleyans are granola-munching pacifists: a Cal professor, somewhat perturbed by the theft of his laptop, called out the thief in front of the rest of his class (a transcription is here for folks unwilling to sit through the video).

It's entertaining, but probably a load of BS. Look at the claims: "the people in Redmond Washington were very interested to know why it was that the same version of Windows was being signalled to them from two different computers." Windows activation only occurs at installation time; once the OS was installed on the laptop, it wasn't phoning home like the professor claimed. How about "The thief also did not inactivate either the wireless card or the transponder that's in that computer." A transponder, like LoJack for your laptop? I'm pretty deeply involved in computer security, but I've never heard of such a thing. I do believe the part about the Wi-Fi card allowing tracking — the campus IT guys could conceivably see the access point to which the laptop was connected, which would give them a reasonably clear view of where the laptop was located. This in turn would allow the campus police to arrest the thief if he were sitting alone in a remote corner of the campus library. However, if he's sitting in the student union with a couple of hundred other students on laptops, good luck picking him out.

It's a bluff, maybe it will work, maybe it won't. I have to guess that anybody with the temerity to steal the professor's laptop from the classroom is not going to be cowed by these threats. If I were the FBI agent investigating this crime, I would have some questions for the professor as well, like "why did you leave such sensitive, top-secret information sitting unencrypted on a laptop that you couldn't be bothered to keep an eye on?"