Sam Cyberspade

Something of great value has been taken from you. The police are no help.

As any reader of classic detective fiction will tell you, it is time to call a Private Eye (think Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade) who has ways of finding disreputable people with valuable things.

Today, the valuable things being taken from people are computers and smart phones. And increasingly, people have their own technological way to track them. And the police are telling these amateur detectives to be careful. The LA Weekly reports.

Questions...

•Define "Disintermediation." How is this an example of that?

•What other valuables could someday be trackable online?

•Could this type of tracking technology be used against law-abiding people? How?

•Would you put a tracking chip in your dog or cat? Your elderly grandfather? Your small child?