Well, one could solve that just as well with a device that is fully open to the owner and still pointless to steal. By handing out a per-device master reset key that the owner doesn't need for regular operation and thus doesn't have with the device when and where someone might want to steal it.
Can we please stop endlessly repeating this? Life is much more complex than that.
A small laptop, a phone or a tablet can be stolen from you while powered on and unlocked by a simple thief that has no intention, nor ability, to capture and torture you.
The thief could then quickly hand the device to other people that flash it and sell it in a different country. But first they might extract any valuable data.
The thing is that almost none of what I'm talking about are marked as stolen. They're just old devices bricked because they weren't removed from an account.
I would rather my devices become bricked if they're stolen from me. You are welcome to disable the feature on your own devices or not purchase devices that have this feature.
> only good enough against the average thief off the street,
Even there, only Apple has effective protection against street-thieves. Nearly all other models of phones/laptops can have their anti-theft features reset by a guy in a dark alley with a flash programmer...
So far, most thieves aren't interested in your info, they just want to reset the hardware and give it a new serial number.
This case (OP's) is an example of when a device reset could be required despite not having been stolen. What we're left with is the balancing act of deciding whether this example is an acceptable price to pay to achieve the deterrent effect you're describing.
And I'd also be interested to know if it really does have a deterrent effect. Does anyone know if criminals really do avoid stealing iPads?
This is so negative sum thought. It's not even zero sum.
"If I cant have it NOBODY CAN! <stomps foot>"
As much as theft hurts, destroying a device that costs so much environmental resources just to be vindictive to a thief over is abhorrent.
They could do this without the destroying hardware by linking serial numbers to people, making it trivial to look up who owns a serial number, and then enforcing receive stolen property a crime.
Yeah, but people aren't stealing a smart phone to power off and display on their mantle, or trade inert as a representational currency, and you can hardly smash the GPS out of it. People are stealing smart phones to use, or to sell to other people to use.
Local hardware access is ultimately unbeatable, but it should at least be hard.
allowing this would open the possibility of thefts forcing the victims to respond in a specific way thus opening a possibility of violence along with theft.
so no to that. the solution to work as deterrent should be final: stolen device = brick device, no other possibility.
in the case of solving theft of devices we have to choose the price we want to pay. all solutions are based on various ways to deter the theft. there is no solution to stop the action of theft once started. thus all solutions have a price that could range from false positives (like legit owners being locked out) to waste like theft happens because they dont know that they cannot unlock it without destroying the device.
People (on the whole) aren't afraid of losing stuff. They're afraid of someone coming into their home or grabbing them on the street and things going south. If you somehow had a device which 100% guaranteed your personal safety (but somehow still allowed theft) then (for most people) most of these crimes would merely be an inconvenience/irritation on the same level as low level credit card fraud (where you lose no money but have to get a new card).
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