I guess they don't know how cloud drives work, and in fairness, I suppose there are a lot of people who don't. Fresh off the burglary of a Los Angeles County home, in which they netted a sweet phone among who-knows-what-else, these two geniuses just had to take some selfies with the pick of the loot.
Well. Modern technology being what it is, many people have their phone settings programmed so that all your photos are automatically backed up on a cloud drive (which you might want to think twice about depending on the type of pictures you might be taking with that thing). If you know your way around the technology at all, you realize that it's no big deal to access your cloud drive via your laptop or your desktop.
So in this case, the burglary victim simply needed to log in to her cloud drive account and see if the thieves might have been enjoying an impromptu photos sessions.
What what do you know?
"As a result of the social media attention, the male in the photo saw the news coverage and came into the station to identify himself," Deputy Sheriff Josh Dubin told ABC News today. "He is cooperating with the detectives on the case.
"The female person of interest has also been identified with the public's help and a detective will reach out to her later today.”
They are not suspects but “still just persons of interest,” he added.
Police say the investigation is ongoing.
"I’ve been a detective for quite some time and I’ve never had a case like this before," Det. Brian Dow told ABC News.
Police responded to an alleged burglary July 30 when a woman said her home had been ransacked. The victim told police she had come home to find electronics and money missing, along with other personal items. She said her front door had been unlocked and the mesh screen on a kitchen window had been cut out.
So it didn't take long for them to identify the, er, "persons of interest," and I don't imagine it will take long for the physical evidence to prove that they're the perps.
I suppose this is the upside to the advance of technology (although some of you libertarians might not see it that way). The downside would theoretically be that innocent people might unwittingly see photos that have nothing to do with any crime, but nonetheless call for privacy, exposed online because they didn't quite understand the automatic nature of cloud backups. And sure, your cloud account is theoretically secure, but we've all heard many examples of that security going only so far once clever hackers went to work.
I figure your best strategy is this: That thing you want no one to ever see ought simply not to exist. It's just like with secrets. You don't want anyone to find out your secret? Then don't have one in the first place. I suppose there's no way to follow that principle to the letter in every situation, every day of your life, but I think it's plausible for the most part if you choose to live a life of openness and integrity.
And that, by definition, would tend to rule out chucklehead burglars. I hope they had fun taking the selfies! Do they allow that sort of thing in jail?
