Police Seize Gizmodo Editor's Computers Over iPhone Leak | Forums

[Urufu_Shinjiro]

http://gizmodo.com/5524843/pol...ason-chens-computers

For those that don't know the background let me lay it out for you, an Apple employee was drunk in a bar and left his iphone there. Another person there found it and took it home to try and return it the next day. Well the next morning the phone had been remotely wiped and was non-functional. The guy started looking it over and found it a little odd, he discovered that it was in a false case to make it look like an iPhone 3Gs, turns out on inspection it was some sort of iPhone prototype. Well over a two to three week period this guy contacted Apple several times trying to return this obviously important prototype. Apple denied it was theirs and gave him the runaround. So after Apple refused ownership the guy assumed (rightly so) that it was his to do with as he wished, so he contacted Gizmodo and sold it to them for $5000, Gizmodo then took it apart and ran a story on the new iPhone 4G prototype to much applause. Well Apple got PO'd and demanded the device back, Gizmodo complied and gave it to them, but Apple decided they weren't satisfied and called the police to start an investigation on possible receiving stolen goods or even industrial espionage charges. Now the story linked above comes out and the Ca. authorities just screwed up BIG TIME.






This will be a poopstorm, be sure.

[WTE_Ibis]

I hope so.


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[Urufu_Shinjiro]

I noticed looking over the documents that the warrant was authorized by the judge at 7pm with night search NOT approved, the police promptly went straight over to his house that same NIGHT and violated the warrant right there, let alone the fact that the judge should not have issued a warrant for a journalists work computers in the first place.

[Feathered_IV]

Hmm, aren't the police over there sworn to uphold stuff?

[Pirschjaeger]

The chip will hit the fan.

Sorry, but I love stories like this.

[Ba5tard5word]

Apple is notoriously secretive and draconian about trade secrets.

[Urufu_Shinjiro]

This story has hit a lot of the major new sites, though almost all have left out the two week period where the finder tried to return the device and was turned away by apple. Some news stories have even failed to mention the fact that Gizmodo returned the prototype as soon as Apple requested it.

One item in the inventory of (illegally) seized property that struck me funny was they listed and seized the email he printed up from his lawyer saying how search warrants on journalists are not allowed, it was listed as "1pg. doc Signed by Gaby Derbyshire pertaining to invalid search warrant", LOL!

On a not so funny note, it turns out that Apple is on the steering committee for the California Rapid Enforcement Allied Computer Team, the task force that executed the warrant....

[Airmail109]

Originally posted by Ba5tard5word:
Apple is notoriously secretive and draconian about trade secrets.

Hah yeah these "cool" indy kids all use Apple as they view the company somehow morally superior to the evil giant corporation that is Microsoft.

Little do they know that Apple is actually the bigger ******* out of the two companies.