I just stumbled on to a sad story on VeloNews.com from bike tech columnist Lennard Zinn:

Much of what I do in life is collect information about bicycle technology, and {in November} I went to the Milan bike show to do just that. But when my week-old MacBook Pro computer was stolen from me on November 7, I learned about some new technology that compromised my collections of bicycle information. I want to tell you what I learned with the intention of saving somebody else the stress and hassle I went through.

Lennard goes on to explain that a thief used a scanner to pickup the electronic key code that his traveling companion used to lock their car when entering an Autogrill restaurant. The thief had staked out the parking lot looking for indications that people were leaving valuable items in their cars and hit the jackpot in this case.

The article gives 14 lessons he learned about securing portable technology while traveling. Several of them are things that I never would have thought of myself, since I've never had a piece of expensive electronics stolen from my car. The article is well worth reading.