[Discuss] Introducing BusKill: A Kill Cord for your Linux > Laptop

[Rich Braun]

David Kramer <david at thekramers.net> suggested:
> https://tech.michaelaltfield.net/2020/01/02/buskill-laptop-kill-cord-dead-man-switch
> 
> Neat, simple system.? A udev rule fires if a USB device is removed.? I 
> would not implement the hardware the way he did, but this is definitely 
> an idea to play with.

The article used an unfortunate term to describe this thing, given the timing of this incident at an Oakland Starbucks:

https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/01/us/oakland-laptop-thief-starbucks-trnd

For me, it's a local story all over the news since 12/31 here in the Bay Area. It's human instinct that often kicks in when a laptop is seized, I'm not sure how much a device like that would serve to prevent a person (well, *me*) from chasing after a thief.

In this case, the robber walked in, grabbed the MacBook, headed to his getaway driver who stomped on the gas. The laptop's 34-year-old owner was killed in the process.

Perhaps Apple could be convinced by incidents like this to restore the Kensington lock port they phased out 5 years ago. I actually benefited from using one of those at my workplace a couple years before that; my team at Splunk got hit by burglars who took about 4 of the team's laptops but mine suffered only a fairly-brutal yank which jammed but did not break the lock (had to cut the lock off).

Locking up your laptop while using it at the local Starbucks is one way to deter robbers. I suppose another is to simply buy a crappy-looking Windows laptop and run Linux on that. I managed to deter bike thieves for 36 years by riding a crappy/ancient bike. Alas, a sufficiently-desperate thief finally made off with it four months ago, and I finally got around to replacing it (with a used/crappy bike of substantially lower quality than I prefer--but this is the dangerous America we now live in).

-rich