If you’re going to steal a mobile phone, I guess it would be a good idea to make sure that it didn’t belong to a high level US diplomat and that it wasn’t GPS enabled and thus couldn’t be tracked back to you.
But that’s precisely what happened to two Bulgarian policemen, according to CNN. U.S. ambassador, John Beyrle, left the mobile by the x-ray machine in Varna Airport. The policemen pocketed it and denied finding it when the ambassador phoned to ask.
When the phone was tracked, it was found still in the policeman’s pocket.
Irakli, who sent the story in (thanks!) also raises a very interesting point, inspired by a comment on Fark, which said:
Who the hell steals a cell phone? Maybe in Bulgaria they’re worth something but normally the only value a cell phone has is if it has a sex video on it.
In other words, the phone is useless as means of using it for free calls etc, as it’ll be shut down anyway. And also, who do you phone, as you’ll be leaving evidence pointing back to you?
So is there a value to the content it might contain? That home-made porn video or your other half scantily clad. Or even ringtones and other content.
It’s an interesting question, but I don’t seriously think that gangs of criminals are targeting mobile phone content as we write. Besides which, it seems a pretty hit and miss affair, unless I’m innocently assuming that home-made dirty movies aren’t on practically everyone’s phone out there.
But, it could be something to look out for in the future. Samsung announced today the first 3 gigabyte memory phone, which can therefore contain an awful lot of content, ranging from a music library to a couple of full length movies.
This means that potentially, the value of the content (assuming it was acquired at retail value) could quite soon easily exceed the value of the phone itself.
Interesting thought that….
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