I was raised to understand never to touch others’ property. It doesn’t matter what the situation is, it’s never OK to take someone else’s rightful property. Of course, if they gained their property illegitimately from you, that’s another story. But that’s not what happened here. Just my humble personal views though.
Apple should offer a 10$ gift card on their next purchase for returned stolen items.
If an iOS-device is jailbroken, can Apple still brick the devices? How much control do they have over their own property?
Well, a gift card would essentially be rewarding someone for pillaging. IMHO, Apple should “reward” them by granting them amnesty and not forwarding their information to LE. Otherwise, looters should be tracked down and sentenced.
I believe that’s more than fair considering in “normal” circumstances, people can’t steal and then return items and apologize to be let go scott-free. They’re usually still punished (maybe reduced punishment).
As far as jailbreaking and tracking goes,
this may be interesting. It’s a bit dated but the general concensus is Apple can track via Find My and iCloud. Supposedly also through the phone connecting to the internet. But in this case, it seems like Apple knows exactly which product batches (all serial #s) were stolen and went ahead and disabled the phones before they can even be jailbroken — very quick work in all of this chaos. Fastest working fruit I’ve ever seen.