Guy who auto-uploaded pix of self turns in hot Mac

The fellow whose inked and un-shirted self-portrait flooded the web on Monday, after being uploaded unwittingly on a stolen laptop, has turned the pilfered Mac over to police in Victoria, BC, Canada. He says he's innocent, and authorities are still sorting through the case. Snip from Vancouver Sun story:

The tattooed man, whose photo has been viewed hundreds of thousands of times around the world and who suddenly found himself famous from Iceland to Brazil, walked into the Victoria police station with the stolen machine at about 4 p.m. Tuesday, said gt. Colin Brown. The man also contacted Global BC on Tuesday, telling the station he did not know the computer was stolen and that he had bought it from a friend who had bought it from someone else.

Link.

The guy's self-portrait has now been viewed more than 252,037 times on the original Flickr page, and heaven knows how many thousands or millions more times on blogs and other websites.

Dane Brown from Workspace (the "office 2.0" space from which this and other laptops were stolen) said Flickr dude was "known to police," and that while no charges were filed to date, the matter is "certainly under investigation."

In other news, he's been LOLled.(thanks, Pete Quily and many others!)

Previously on Boing Boing:

Guy uploads pix of self from stolen iMac

• [dculberson]

  Make sure you default your auto-uploaded pics to “private.” I’d hate to have some of my “gotta check my email before crashing out” moments immortalized publicly.

• [anothershamus]

  He looks like my neighbor…..er…um…uh.

• [dculberson]

  Maybe he didn’t see the security cam photos.. one of the people in them looks a lot like him. I think he’s goin’ down!!!

• [Tomas]

  Got it from ‘a friend of a friend,’ eh?

  I can only assume that law enforcement in the area will be talking to some folks with great interest. :o)

  I hope BB will continue tracking this (and also that the police in BC realize that the world is watching).

• [tub]

  I’ll tell you what I’d download – a program that automatically took a picture when I logged in/switched on & sent it to my Flickr account.

  Alas, a project for someone with better tech skills than me …

• [Tommy]

  For Tub, this is close:
  http://www.lifehacker.com/software/theft/hack-attack-turn-your-macbooks-isight-into-a-ftp-backed-up-security-camera-207605.php

  I dunno if Flickr has a command line interface. Sadly, its uploader program isn’t AppleScriptable.

  Is it just me or does this guy look like a hung-over Henry Rollins?

• [Tommy]

  I took a quick look. You can upload photos to Flickr via email. So you could probably combine iAlertU with some AppleScript that kicks off the capture as email to Flickr.

• [Dirk]

  He kind of looks like the father from “The Wonder Years”.

• [[e-mail]]

  He’s Been Officially Lol’d: Another Reason To Learn To Use A Laptop

  UPDATED: Moron Steals Computer, Gets Outsmarted By Settings

  Lots of lulz for all!