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Legal tussles can sometimes take ridiculous turns, thanks to the accomplished and worthy lawyers who can twist the law to whichever form they want to. So is the case with an iPad theft in Australia, where the defendant’s lawyers is arguing that remotely detecting the location of an iPad and then triggering its alarm is tantamount to ‘electronic trespassing.’

The claim obviously borders to be ridiculously absurd. The whole incident started when an iPad was stolen and the owner of the iPad was able to track it down with the help of Apple’s anti-theft app and GPS.

The location of the iPad was found to be a townhouse in Canberra which is owned by Alden Harder. At the townhouse, a rather sizeable stash of other stolen stuff was found, confirming that whoever stole the iPad was a regular.

However, the lawyer defending Mr. Harder has come up with a rather strange line of defence. The owner of the iPad originally tracked the location through the GPS and was then able to trigger its alarm by essentially going near the townhouse. Harder’s lawyer argues that this essentially counts as trespassing. In fact, since the man used Apple’s anti-theft app to trigger the alarm in the stolen iPad, Harder’s lawyer calls this ‘trespass via radio wave.’

The lawyer further said, “It’s very clear that [the alleged victim’s] purpose was to play amateur detective and to carry out a test with the GPS in his iPhone in an attempt to obtain evidence to give police as to the location of his iPad.” However, the prosecutor, Keegan Lee stated that the man was simply executing a claim of right by trying to access what was his property, i.e. the stolen iPad.

Lee further debunked the claim of ‘electronic trespass’ by saying, “‘I would safely say nearly everybody in this courtroom has committed that act by having a wireless router” which essentially transmits signals across other’s properties.

The prosecutor is trying to extract a court order to get the fingerprints of Mr. Harder which, if they match with the prints on stolen stuff, will confirm his involvement.

Source: Canberra Times

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