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Comment by compsciphd | Hacker News Reader

I've said before, apple should just create a law enforcement mode that one can turn their air tags into. When in law enforcement mode, the tag will not report to your page, but law enforcement can go through legal channels to get the devices location.

To put a device into (or out of) law enforcement mode, can only be done over bluetooth (i.e. in proximity to device)./

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This would work great if law enforcement was interested in recovering stolen goods.

Law enforcement usually are interested in recovering stolen goods, when you have evidence of where the goods are via GPS. Or eyewitness or video evidence of who has them.

Where people often get disappointed is when all the evidence they have is "my [object] is gone!" and they expect the PD to send out a full forensic team.

I have a couple of their devices. It's useful since the purpose isn't usually to recover bike through highly ritualized process that activates after community street bicycle repairman has performed eco-friendly recycling operation on bike. It is built for semi-rule-of-law cities like San Francisco where speed of action might yield desirable outcome like retrieval of bike. In such situation, one has short window to re-identify bike location before it is used for ecological protection activities.

Based on how many issues we have with police using Flock for their own personal issues, I think this may not be a great solution either.

Yeah because police and cop won't definitely abuse this.

If police want to stalk me, use their damn device, ask their friend at 3-letter departments for cool toys.

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