I first noticed the story about the epidemic of phone theft in London about a week ago because of some Aussie chick who chased her thief (unsuccessfully) and was so pissed off she tracked down all the CCTV footage of the crime and posted it, after which it went viral.
I figured it was the sort of thing that happpens all over, but no, as this kinda fascinating NYT piece explains (gift link). London really is the phone theft capital of the world.
For years, London’s police assumed most of the phone thefts were the work of small-time thieves looking to make some quick cash. But last December, they got an intriguing lead from a woman who had used “Find My iPhone” to track her device to a warehouse near Heathrow Airport. Arriving there on Christmas Eve, officers found boxes bound for Hong Kong. They were labeled as batteries but contained almost 1,000 stolen iPhones.
“It quickly became apparent this wasn’t just normal low-level street crime,” said Mark Gavin, a senior detective leading the investigation for the Metropolitan Police. “This was on an industrial scale.”
This story has everything: tech, crime, politics and dummies. We’re the dummies.
The police are also hoping users will become more savvy about their personal security. Even as smartphones have become more advanced and valuable, many people’s handling of them has become less protective. For the modern phone thief, a classic mark is a pedestrian walking close to the curb, deeply absorbed by the content on a cell screen — a map, a text, a video.
“You wouldn’t count your money on the street,” said Lawrence Sherman, an emeritus criminology professor at the University of Cambridge. “But when the phone is worth £1,000, it’s like pulling £1,000 out of your wallet and looking at it as you walk.”