People have been deported as long as I've been alive.

I haven't lost any of my rights yet. Certainly not in the past month. All the mechanisms to deport people were already there.

Or when the set repeats, and the random order puts songs from the end of the first ordering of the set into the beginning of the second ordering of the set, so you quickly hear them twice.

Assuming the victim owns a modern phone and still possesses it, sure.

Seems just as easy to boost the phone while you're dropping the tag.

We aren't risking it; you can already stalk people with other devices and methods. This doesn't increase the "stalkability."

I think if my car is stolen, it's probably a bigger deal for me personally than stalking.

I'm not a female, so I don't anticipate a civilian stalking me for really any reason. A non-civilian wouldn't use an airtag.

Zero stalkers are stopped because of airtag policies, since many other devices exist.

Increasing the friction and difficulty to stalk someone definitely results in less actual stalking. I'm sure some would-be stalker can figure out AirTags but can't figure out or afford the alternatives.

Also, wouldn't this argument apply to the use of AirTags as anti-theft devices? Since AirTag alternatives exist, just use the alternatives devices for anti-theft that also work for stalking. But some people don't do this and just want to use AirTags for anti-theft purposes. Which sort of illustrates my point. Fewer people do a thing when it's harder. No would care that AirTags aren't good for anti-theft if there were alternatives equally as good.

> Increasing the friction and difficulty to stalk someone definitely results in less actual stalking.

No it doesn't.

If increasing friction to do something results in zero change in how many people do the thing, then why does anyone care that AirTags don't work for anti-theft purposes? Wouldn't there be no complaints if there were alternatives that were just as easy/cheap/functional?

It's not to prevent my car being stolen. It's to find it after it's stolen.

People have been stalking each other since long before airtags.

Well it's a good thing for you, someone just yesterday told me:

> many other devices exist

So use one of them?

I do. I don't own an airtag.

So your complaint is, "This product that I don't own, and isn't designed to do what I want, doesn't do the thing it isn't designed to do.".

Do you also post complaints that GE Washing machines don't have a built-in method to cook a fucking chicken?

Most property theft isn't reported, and won't be in your statistics.

Not on Earth, no.

It would be if stalking happened at the same frequency as property theft, but the rates are ridiculously lopsided.

So much property theft happens that we don't bother reporting almost any of it.

Frequency isn't really an issue here. I don't care that much if someone steals my luggage. I'd be a little mad if someone took my bike, but I have redundant protection for it, along with other things of more importance, or I keep them on me.

But I'd really, really not like to find out someone was following me around.

If society didn't have to spend the amount of resources that it does dealing with the consequences of personal theft then it would have more resources to direct towards issues like stalking.

I bet Apple could produce some really interesting data from these tools and others that could be used to proactively target stalkers and investigate them before their actions escalate to violence.

Hell yeah, thoughtcrime!

Let's get Tom Cruise in here and whoop some ass!

Now try traveling with $30k of equipment in your luggage, like millions do every year.

You're well beyond the scope of an Airtag at that point. Either you've insured the gear, or you ship it in some more secure fashion, or you have a satellite tracker in it, or whatever other mitigation you can do here. Airtags are great things you might misplace more than anything.

> It would be if stalking happened at the same frequency as property theft, but the rates are ridiculously lopsided.

But the impact of the two activities is also lopsided:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk_matrix

Stalking can potentially result in rape and death, even if there's a low probability of stalking happening in general.

You already know the answer to your question

Africa has economic issues.

And people have economic issues in Asia, Australia, Europe, North America and South America.

People of all ethnicities all over the world steal. Plenty of immigrants work extremely hard and don't steal.

I truly can't believe my statement was 'controversial' and down vote worthy. I mean who cares about the HN points...but really??

Same. I try to remember to lock the door if I'm in a bigger city.

I don't own the key to my house, it's not something we think about here (US, south).