I'm afraid I don't understand your point. I never said anything about wiping data or canceling a contract...
You said:
You don't officially transfer anything when you sell a phone or a Kindle...
But that's not really true. That's my point. You would follow some procedures, involving the phone company officials (not government officials) to avoid paying the buyer's phone bills or Kindle bills. In this way, the phone and the Kindle are like a car. The transfer of ownership requires official help because the Kindle, the phone, and the car are in a sense just nodes on a network. Other goods, from pencils to diamond rings, are fundamentally different, and don't require the involvement of officialdom when they change hands.
You believe that you can cleave the car example off as a special category of property, different because it's encumbered by government papers. My point is that a lot of electronic gadgetry is already encumbered in the same way. The papers don't have to be government ones.
I don't see the problem as one of proof of ownership. Information that could have helped an investigation supposedly existed, was offered, then the offer was rescinded, then the information was "lost." If a police department had behaved this way, the readers of HN would call it corruption.
You said:
You don't officially transfer anything when you sell a phone or a Kindle...
But that's not really true. That's my point. You would follow some procedures, involving the phone company officials (not government officials) to avoid paying the buyer's phone bills or Kindle bills. In this way, the phone and the Kindle are like a car. The transfer of ownership requires official help because the Kindle, the phone, and the car are in a sense just nodes on a network. Other goods, from pencils to diamond rings, are fundamentally different, and don't require the involvement of officialdom when they change hands.
You believe that you can cleave the car example off as a special category of property, different because it's encumbered by government papers. My point is that a lot of electronic gadgetry is already encumbered in the same way. The papers don't have to be government ones.
I don't see the problem as one of proof of ownership. Information that could have helped an investigation supposedly existed, was offered, then the offer was rescinded, then the information was "lost." If a police department had behaved this way, the readers of HN would call it corruption.