Thieves caught stealing political yard signs : publicfreakout

[–] ThePowerOfGeek 47 points 1 month ago (1 children)

At least the kid half-heatedly apologized when he was called out (after trying to nitpick about costs and the law and then realizing he was out of his depth). The mother pitching a tantrum and throwing the signs at the couple who were investigating & filming was utterly pathetic.

You have to be an especially sad person with no life to drive around stealing signs of the 'other team' from other people's property. And no amount of "lolz I saw it on tiktok and it looked funny" bullshit can excuse it. That family needs to get a life.

I hope that couple press charges, and they probably will. But given where it was and how politically bias many cops are, I doubt it will go anywhere. Hopefully I'm wrong.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 month ago (1 children)

The only regret he had was that they got caught. I'm sure he's done performances like this all his life. The mom seems like a real class act though. No wonder her kids turn out like this.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago

Well said. Those kid weren’t born believing liberals are bad…

[–] [email protected] 32 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I hope they pressed charges. As they pointed out, regardless of the value of signs, that's a lot of trespassing to acquire them.

[–] syreus 13 points 1 month ago (2 children)

It sounds like the cost of the air tag would kick the value over 200. Not sure if stealing it by proxy would be considered.

When I was a kid my dad picked up a bunch of political signs AFTER the election to use as free range targets. A cop stopped him and gave him a hard time but nothing came of it.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Yeah, even his best estimates put him over the dollar threshold. His "they're $3 on etsy" argument is equally stupid anyway. It's like arguing "air jordans" are available cheap on aliexpress, and trying to calculate the value from there. Official signs, from the campaign, $20/each. That's felony theft territory.

[–] sartalon 4 points 1 month ago

Your Dad was doing everyone a favor. So many people don't take the shit down in public right of ways.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 month ago

It’s funny how one side is always up to bad behavior. Anything devious that they can do they will. And then act like they’re getting persecuted when they get caught. As if they wouldn’t flip the fuck out of it happened to them.

[–] TriflingToad 15 points 1 month ago

Jesus Christ thats a lot of them

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago (1 children)

So let’s hypothetically say that the only signs for a candidate are homemade signs for some personality cult reason, definitely not posted by the campaign, and posted on public property. Wouldn’t be illegal to remove those, right?

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 month ago (1 children)

It's still trespassing, and if needed a judge could put a value on them based on cost of materials + cost of labour.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago

Some public spaces do offer public posting within guidelines, som I’m guessing trespassing wouldn’t be a primary charge.

I’d wager Vandalism over Trespassing, but you’re spot on with the value added charges.

[–] Lost_My_Mind 6 points 1 month ago (4 children)

I'm confused how airtags work. I thought they had to be near your apple cell phone. Like bluetooth?

How do they work if they're not near your iphone? Do they have their own cell service/sim card/battery?

[–] kevindqc 19 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

They have to be near any iPhone, which will then tell apple where the airtag (which is using Bluetooth) is. It has a CR2032 button cell battery. More recent iPhones can use ultra wideband to more accurately track the airtag position.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Does it only have to be phones (and specifically iPhones) or can it triangulate from wifi, like a ton of other tracking things do? Even if you don't connect to the wifi, the polling for available Wi-Fi connections can still be used to triangulate position.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

All the tracker does (to my knowledge) is sending out a Bluetooth signal every Bluetooth-capable device that has ~~been backdoored~~ the appropriate software running and Bluetooth enabled, which is at least all IPhones, as well as many Android smartphones, will pick up. Those devices will calculate the rough distance based on the delay, and then send the rough location to the Apple servers. The Airtag itself does not calculate anything.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago

Reminds me a bit about how the German covid app worked. Obviously not for location tracking, but to track whether you got in contact with someone who's potentially infected.

[–] IphtashuFitz 1 points 1 month ago

My understanding is that most modern iPhones, iPads, and Mac laptops will respond to Air Tags and forward their pings to Apple.

[–] Lost_My_Mind 3 points 1 month ago (2 children)

How far is "close"? Unless these people left their phone in their car, it eould have to be more than 30 feet like bluetooth, right?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

10-30 meters from airtag to the random apple device, pending environment conditions.

[–] officermike 10 points 1 month ago

Air Tags have a battery and have short-range low-energy communication with phones. What makes them work out-of-range of your phone is that their signal can be picked up by any phone that participates in Apple's tracking network. Say your luggage has an Air Tag in it, and it ended up flying to a different city than you. Your phone obviously can't find the Air Tag because it's out of range, but someone in that other city is bound to have an iPhone. Their phone sees the signal from your Air Tag and reports that location back to Apple's servers. Apple updates the last known location of that tag. You check your phone to see where your luggage is and your phone requests that info from Apple's servers. Apple sends your phone that data, and now you can see your luggage ended up in Timbuktu while you're in Seattle or wherever.

[–] vladmech 6 points 1 month ago

They anonymously piggyback across any nearby iOS device so you can get to the general region and then Bluetooth takes over for the fine pinpointing

[–] Donebrach 2 points 1 month ago

Regardless of anything else it is specifically illegal to steal or otherwise tamper with election signs so at the very least that little troglodyte and or his parents will hopefully face prosecution from the DA.

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