IIRC, they caught some bomber based on a serial part of a radio he bought and repurposed components from.
So yes. They do track that stuff. As for people who resell and don’t record the sale, they can track the item to that person and then sweat the story out of them.
Restricted or not, anything electronic you buy has a myriad of serial fingerprints on it that can narrow down the potential pool so suspects to a particular retail location and month.
A circuit board fragment, allegedly found embedded in a piece of charred material, was identified as part of an electronic timer similar to one found on a Libyan intelligence agent who had been arrested 10 months previously for carrying materials for a Semtex bomb. The timer was allegedly traced through its Swiss manufacturer, Mebo, to the Libyan military, and Mebo employee Ulrich Lumpert identified the fragment at al-Megrahi’s trial.
IIRC, they caught some bomber based on a serial part of a radio he bought and repurposed components from.
So yes. They do track that stuff. As for people who resell and don’t record the sale, they can track the item to that person and then sweat the story out of them.
Restricted or not, anything electronic you buy has a myriad of serial fingerprints on it that can narrow down the potential pool so suspects to a particular retail location and month.
Edit : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_Am_Flight_103