Berkeley professor spooks laptop thief

Rine, who is a professor of Genetics and Development, ended his lecture by telling his class that someone nicked his laptop.

He told them that the kid was probably after an exam paper so that he could cheat in a forthcoming test.

However, what the student didn't know was that Rine works for all sorts of nasty government agencies, who are dead keen to throw the book at the tea-leaf.

To make matters worse, Rine knows the boy that stole it. He told the class that the kid was smart enough not to try to plug it into the Berkley network, however he was too dumb not to try and disable windows and switch off the wireless capability first.

The spooks Rine works for were able to locate the stolen laptop very quickly, as it had not yet left the campus.

Rine told the class that the boy was in a whole heap of trouble and at least three law enforcement agencies and several companies were interested in locking him up for a long time.

He said he was going away next week so the kid had to turn in the lap-top by then. We don't yet know if Rine's scare tactics worked. Hell, we would have given the damn thing back.

You can listen to an edited tape of the lecture here. µ