GPS cyberstalking of girlfriend brings surveillance and indictment for alleged American mobster Joseph Amato's attempt to surveil his girlfriend by attaching a hidden GPS device to her car led authorities to surveil the alleged mobster, and ultimately to his indictment by a grand jury. Amato, said to be a captain in the Colombo organized crime family of La Cosa Nostra, was among 20 defendants charged by the Justice …
It seems these wise guys develop overconfidence from their strong network of family and crony connections, as well as the feelings of superiority and control over the public and LEAs that develops over extended periods of "getting away with it". They let their guard down and the LEAs can just scoop them up.
Of course there's a bias towards dumb in the ones that are stupid enough to get caught. The smart ones, you don't even feel the sting.
Are you kidding?
Usually if you run a red light you face 20 years inside, because the red light was in one county, and as you went through you ended up in another, thus making it federal.
They also seem to think that’s reasonable!
Whereas, the UK, caught 5 times with an illegal knife, stabs someone on the 6th. Gets a suspended 2yr sentence and a £15 victim surcharge. All other costs are picked up by us as they’ve never worked a day in their life.
'Usually if you run a red light you face 20 years inside, because the red light was in one county, and as you went through you ended up in another, thus making it federal.'
er ... what? Leaving aside that traffic lights are not 'usually' at county boundaries, and crossing counties does not make it a federal rather than state offence, running a light is a traffic violation rather than a crime.
A search of the net (I was bored and waiting for a phone call, okay?) revealed only one such draconian punishment, and the drunk who ran the light killed a mother and two children, making the 20 years rather generous IMHO.
So unless you can produce a reference for this hyperbole, I'm going to suggest you are blowing smoke.
Well that all depends on how much money the criminal has doesn't it?
To pluck a couple of examples from last week, rich couples get a slap on the wrists for trying to bribe colleges into giving their children places, while a poor single mother gets put into prison for lying about where she lived, so her kid could go to a safer school.
Of course, I say it's all down to money, and of course the rich couples are white, and the poor woman is black, but that would involve America examining it's entrenched racism, and I think we'll have to wait another hundred years before they're capable of doing that.
A decent tracker (that broadcasts position frequently) needs to be wired into the vehicle so it can top up its rechargeable battery, so non trivial to add, but would not be findable by the casual user.
Those that just rely on their own battery (not wired in) face conflict of how often to send position updates - if a device sleeps most of the time and only occasionally awakes to send a position record then battery life extended a lot, but frequent updates hammer battery life.
Assuming tracker with SIM card that sends data "back to base", less power hungry trackers do not transmit via cell network but store data on SD card, but you need to retrieve SD card to view the data.
.. Of course, crim could have had someone periodically replace batteries on a non wired in model, but and so had good position granularity, but massively increases chance of being caught fiddling with the vehicle.
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