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Comment by rgbrenner | Hacker News Reader

The Austin bomber is a perfect example. They caught him because he brought his cell phone with him when dropping off the bombs. He didn't use it--it was just powered on and with him.

Imagine that happening before cell phones. The criminals carrying a tracker 24x7.

The Unabomber sent mail bombs for 18 years. The austin bomber gets caught in 3 weeks.

https://www.dallasnews.com/news/crime/2018/03/21/authorities...

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I used to work with the local Sheriff's Dept doing IT stuff. The detectives said they were amazed at how much data they could get from phones / cell providers. It's helped solve so many crimes like bomb threats, abuse cases, and even some murders.

They also said that if someone was smart, they would just leave their phone at home, or somewhere else as an alibi and do whatever. Then they would have to go back to the drawing board which they admittedly said they haven't had to do in a long while.

If you’re smart, not impulsive, able to plan and consider other points of view, you tend not to be the murdering, bomb threatening, abusing type. People who can lay plans and carefully follow through with them tend not to rob liquor stores, and deal drugs. If you don’t care about poeple, or hurting them, but can plan and have good impulse control there’s a world white collar crime, politics, business and law for you. In short, the police tend to deal with idiots, or people who have poor planning/impulse control.

In other words, the guy who plans out a careful alibi tends not to be the guy who needs one. The previous post mentioned the Unabomber, who was a rare example of someone who had excellent planning skills, high intelligence, and excellent impulse control. It took almost two decades to catch him, and only because his brother recognized his writing.

Burner phones don't seem to work either. Have seen more than one Dateline where they pinpointed the date/time of the cash sale and pulled store video.

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