Caution: What you don’t know about this post could cause your children to develop psychic powers and revive the dead — with stolen iPods! Also: Alarmism in television news magazines: Are you safe? More importantly, is your cat?
Everyone must watch or read the transcript of Dateline NBC‘s howlingly funny special “\to catch_an i-Jacker” (I swear I didn’t make up any of the odd formatting in the above title, which, um…reminds me of a certain Daily Show segment…). Apparently, the investigative crew was shocked — SHOCKED! — to learn that iPods occasionally get stolen. And worse, sometimes other things get stolen, too!
In Los Angeles, robberies of iPods and other gadgets shot up 34 percent last year.
To make sure iPods don’t kill your children, please click through, and don’t stop until the part where the reporters use a sexual predator tactic in order to catch a thief. No, seriously. You have to see this.
But wait, it gets better. As much as journalists would like to give the impression that we report stories purely based on newsworthiness, the fact is that a lot of us cover the things that interest us. And at least Dateline came clean there:
We met the detective when a Dateline senior producer’s son had his iPod stolen.
Not a senior producer’s son! It’s an epidemic! Make a special!
In an effort to make sure we recognize just how burglarizable (I’m learning to be a broadcast journalist) these seductive iPods are, correspondent Chris Hansen and his amazing team tried an experiment: What would happen if people left shrink-wrapped iPods out in broad daylight, as if left in a shopping bag, brand new with absolutely no personal information connected to it?
Get this: Most of them get stolen! I know, right? Who could have guessed?
Again and again, people walk away with our iPods.
This woman doesn’t even hesitate. She grabs a shopping bag with our iPod inside, turns around and is gone.
Our unattended iPods seem to be like magnets.
How would you feel if you went to a food court in a mall, got up to buy a snack and left your new iPod at your seat and this happened?
Well, I’d probably feel stupid for not watching my stuff, but if I’m leaving expensive crap out in the open in a food court in Jersey, I should probably accept whatever’s coming to me.
Apparently not understanding that Apple isn’t the police, Hansen actually calls Apple’s corporate security line to report stolen iPods, because…well, he flunked civics? Has anyone ever called bike manufacturers to let them know that bikes get stolen sometimes? I mean, really?
We called Apple’s corporate security line as an average consumer to see if it often receives calls about stolen iPods.
(Telephone call)
Chris Hansen: Wow, all day long every five to six minutes you get a call like this? Every day?
And if we were your average music lover, we’d probably be out a $250 iPod.
And you should be! You don’t know how to report a crime! Or keep track of your property!
What Dateline does know how to do, however, is set up stings in people’s homes. Only this time, instead of chatting with alleged would-be pedophiles and pretending to be little boys, they pretended to be iCurious iPods looking for lovers. No, I’m kidding. They set up a tracking database that they claim Apple should make, too. Which, no. No one in the whole world does that. There is security software that backtracks stolen laptops, but about 10 people in America use it — not even most corporations do.
But Dateline thinks this is plausible. After all, you’d only need a serial number or “other personal data on the iPod” to track it down when a sync with the iTunes Store is performed. Which, while technically true, would be pretty hard if we’re talking solely about iPods in their original boxes. Do you know your iPod serial number off the top of your head? This could only work with post-registered iPods. Anyway, this is where it gets really funny.
As it turns out, one of the 20 “thieves” from the previous week’s experiment lives in Fairfield, California. They set up a cover story (in all senses of the word) and get in touch with the thief, who turns out to be a 17-year-old boy.
So we rent this 32-foot RV and attach a banner proclaiming that the 30th anniversary music giveaway is in town.
To get them into the RV we’ll be telling the person who has our iPod they’ve won iTunes gift cards, good for free music, if they come into our fully equipped, giveaway RV.
Wait, isn’t luring an underage boy into an RV with promises of prizes exactly the sort of predatory behavior that Dateline busts people for all the time? I mean, did they see The Human Giant’s “Predator v. Predator” sketch and think it was a good idea? Hang on a minute, Chris Hansen has an insight!
It became apparent that at least in some cases, the kind of person who would take an iPod is going to be an impulsive teenager.
The people would probably not really be a criminal. So we decided to disguise the identities of the minors in our story.
I don’t know how to continue. Dateline thinks there’s some kind of story involving an Apple patent to track down stolen iPods, which they’re celebrating, even though it means more creepy big brother tactics that would be used against people like you and me, not made into exciting theft-deterrents.
Anyway, hat’s off to you, Dateline. You’ve made a slow week very interesting. Now get back to catching all of those i-Jackers — I mean predators. My mistake.
Via Daring Fireball
Pete Mortensen is a design strategist for consulting firm Jump Associates and the co-author of Wired to Care: How Companies Prosper When They Create Widespread Empathy, a book and blog that are significantly more interesting than you might initially think. Pete’s particular Apple avocations are both around design–interface and industrial. Follow him on Twitter!
