California authorities seize computers of Gizmodo editor - Page 13

I can't speak for everyone in the court of public opinion, but here's why I think Gizmodo is guilty of douchebaggery and AI is not, as well as other sites and methods...

First, there are all kinds of ways that AI and other sites get information...a lot is speculation, sometimes it's slip ups, piecing together public info like job postings or part orders, reviewing log files, finding EXIF or other metadata, or just general chatter. That's all well and good.

It's also another thing if someone chooses to break an NDA or an embargo. The consequences then become that between the breakee and Apple (or other company). I would have no problem with Gizmodo if the engineer himself had let Gizmodo see the phone and Gizmodo published the information. I also wouldn't feel bad if the engineer was fired for that.

I'd also have no problem if Gizmodo had seen the phone at the bar or taken pictures of it, covering it as a story as it was being return to the owner by means of giving it to the bar manager, turning it into a police station or sending/taking it to an Apple Store or headquarters.

However, what Gizmodo claims is clearly theft and receiving of stolen goods. They're extra special douchebaggers for having outed the engineer.

As someone who works in this industry, sometimes on both sides (publishing and development), I don't want to think that my hard work could simply be physically stolen from me, and I wouldn't steal from someone else. Those that do steal, or knowingly purchase stolen property deserve to be prosecuted.

Normally, I'm against having someone be made an example out of, but in this case, they're getting special treatment because of their own publicizing of the events, and because they're douchebags, I really can't feel too much sympathy for them.

very similar case involving Apple in 2005.

Bloggers ARE NOT Journalists According to California Judge.

A judge didn't think so, thus his ruling that three blogs must reveal their sources.

http://www.businessweek.com/technolo...7877_tc024.htm

It could have been a semi-targeted theft. iPhones are very popular here, sometimes almost freakishly so in some bars and restaurants. Someone may have seen the engineer using the phone and seen the screen (the new OS was on it), perhaps talked with him or overheard him say he was an engineer with Apple and then that person saw an opportunity to swipe the phone (from his jacket, pocket, etc...). Searching online for where to sell it wouldn't be that hard if the thief didn't already know about Engadget, Gizmodo, etc... It's been said that it was first offered to Engadget, but they turned it down...maybe it was also offered to other media orgs as well.

I may also have been just a random theft of an iPhone at first. The thief took the case off to see what model it was before posting to Craigslist and realized he had something different.

It could've been a random theft and then bought by someone on the street who then sold it to Gizmodo.

There are many things that may have happened which may or may not come out at trial. In my not so humble opinion though, what Gizmodo claims itself is enough to suggest they are guilty of receiving stolen goods and the "finder" is guilty of theft.

Looking at Gizmodo, Gawker and Chen's contributions to the site he would fall under journalist more than blogger.

Wow... very nice find. Thanks for digging that up! Things just keep looking worse and worse for Giz.

Actually, I believe that ruling was overturned.

Fortunately, it's not relevant. It doesn't matter if your a journalist or a blogger - theft is still illegal.

Actually, I believe that ruling was overturned.

Fortunately, it's not relevant. It doesn't matter if your a journalist or a blogger - theft is still illegal.

Not according to the California Judge. I assure you this case (or similar cases) will be cited in court.



this too.


Nick Denton in 2009: Journalism Not Gawker's 'Institutional Intention'


http://blogs.sfweekly.com/thesnitch/...nstitution.php





Yes I agree it's not relevant. Also, if they want to know the identity of the person who sold the iPhone, the police can just contact Engadget instead. The person also contacted Engadget about the device remember?


And i'm sure Engadget will be more than willing to cooperate with the police

Yeah, remember when Gizmodo went around the show floor at CES with a remote that turned off all the monitors?

That was some Pulizter Prize winning journalism right there!!!

Seriously though, yes bloggers are journalists when that's what they're engaged in actually doing. So if Gizmodo had legally obtained information, the police shouldn't have been able to search and seize in order to discover the source. However, in this case, the police were searching for evidence in the case of Chen actually breaking the law himself.

The shield was never intended to allow journalists to be above the law, and this is even more critical when you consider bloggers as journalist, since if you also consider micro-bloggers, there are currently about half a billion people who already fit that description.

too late:


Journalist shield law may not halt iPhone probe

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-20003539-37.html

Actually, I didn't forget the rest, I limited my post to your implication that it was lifted from the engineers pocket, nothing after that. This was in response to your own post about how it must have been lifted from the engineers pocket.

So let's look at your points up to that event.

And then yes, I would believe it is much more likely that a drunk dropped his phone, his phone slipped from his holster or he stood up to leave with his phone in his hand and place it on the stool while he put on his jacket. Maybe you haven't been to many german beer gardens (we are surrounded by them here) but if you are going to put your phone, keys wallets or anything else down for a moment, you are much better to place it on your stool/bench/seat instead on the table or bar...unless you want to set it in a large puddle of beer.

The whole story does sound very contrived. But the portion of the story about how the phone wound up in someone else's hands is one of the few reasonable parts. To instead want to make up a story involving Gizmodo moles in Apple alerting them to the idendities and places of association of the very few Apple employees entrusted with external carry priledges, determine when these employees would be out drinking for the night, find one with the prototype with them on a particular night who is also tanked enough not to notice and then not take steps to prevent strangers examining their phones (you'd have to get very close to the guy to see the OS was markedly different...no other way to id it was unique), and then lift the phone off of him without him or his group knowing, is to simply be grasping at very weak threads. Apple might have NSA level security, but that doesn't mean Giz had to use CIA trade craft to get the phone.

Yes I agree it's not relevant. Also, if they want to know the identity of the person who sold the iPhone to Gizmodo, the police can just contact Engadget instead. The person also tried to sell the phone to Engadget remember?


And i'm sure Engadget will be more than willing to cooperate with the police

I may have found the next generation Palm Pre in a bar last night. Now what?

nobody cares ROFL

You could probably get $0.10 for it on the street. If you're lucky.

yes, absolutely, it could have been a theft of opportunity. Even 'semi-targeted' as far as someone might have decided that night to steal it after hearing it discussed. That would still assume the thief was close enough to the screen to be able to tell OS3 from OS4 and was familiar enough with the OS to tell. Also that he was an experienced enough thief to pick a pocket without anyone seeing. A bit of a stretch, but in the realm of possibility.

To think that it was initiated at the request of Gizmode and everything else that a fully planned and targeted theft would entail is really taking it into some irrationally romanticized story, seemingly crafted to paint Giz in an even worse light and remove any suggestion that an Apple employee might be human, might get drunk and might leave a phone behind. Jason Chen is no James Bond (or would it be Dr. Evil in this case?)

I'm thinking more along the lines of Maxwell Smart or Inspector Clouseau.

The point is that no one thinks it's impossible for an Apple employee to have lost the phone. That's certainly possible. But that's not all that transpired here. To believe Gizmodo's story, you have to suspend disbelief on a wide range of topics - and believe that a long string of unlikely coincidences occurred.

next generation Palm anything

That's some comedy gold right there.

Wouldn't it be something to find out they were profiling the engineer & waiting for the right moment for him to get careless.

I don't think that's what happened but given the way they handled all this I wouldn't put it past them. Gizmodo has lost any respect I once had for them as a news organization.

I'm sure everyone is hoping that Gizmodo is more deeply involved than they say they are and that they may have even been at "the scene of the crime" sort of speak, but sadly, it is unlikely.

Most crimes, especially theft, are crimes of opportunity. Only professional criminals really plan their crimes and even then there is usually an element of opportunity involved as well.

While a lot of the details of the "finder"'s story are suspect and while Gizmodo's account is similarly so, it really *is* more likely that the engineer left the iphone unattended in some way for some brief period of time. The thief likely saw the phone and took the opportunity to purloin it.

It's not beyond the realm of possibility that someone saw him use it and sneaked it out of his jacket pocket, but it's just as likely that it slipped out of his pants pocket while sitting down and that he didn't notice that fact when he went to the bathroom or something similar. The combination of slash pockets, and sitting down on the bus or in a theatre have done the same to me many times.

So while it would be nice to finally know the details, the general outline of the event is unlikely to change IMO.

When Gizmodo are publicly bragging about a potential crime that is being discussed on the news and several major chat shows, surely the police feel they must be seen to be acting.

Must be nice for Apple to be on a committee that runs such a quick responding police force.

Money doesn't buy you influence. Yeah right.

Duplicate post....

You wrote four sentences. Did you have to use red to draw one's attention to you post?

I am curious how this would work if somebody say outright stole a Madame's little black book with the names of several high profile clients. Would public interest justify the theft of such property? Or is it automatically wrong because it's a theft. And would there still be legal consequences if the little black book was returned but the names of several of those clients were sold to a newspaper who then published them? And what if the little black book was left unattended and somebody picked it up and started perusing through it and realized what he had, and sold the information? Does that finder count as a journalistic source or a thief, legally speaking, if the item was never reported stolen? Lots of questions, I am sure the lawyer types can answer them.

I am also curious about the trade secrets bit. What is considered a trade secret in this case? Is the fact that a next gen iphone exist considered a trade secret? Or the fact that Apple uses wires labelled Apple inside considered a trade secret? Are the phone's specs considered a trade secret? What's the supposedly violated trade secret that everybody keeps brining up?

Actually, police tend to like to work on cases that are easy to solve. In this case, the criminal announced his crime to the whole world. So, for a very small investment of time, they get to add a grand larceny conviction. Then there is the value of the item. While Gizmodo paid $5 K for it, that prototype is undoubtedly worth millions of dollars based on Apple's investment, plus potential lost iPhone 3G sales now that people have seen it plus the lead time advantage it gives the competition. They also like to work on public cases - they like publicity as much as most people, plus, it avoids the "why are the police letting all this crime occur and not doing anything about it" nonsense. Those explanations account for their fast action without resorting to silly conspiracy theories.


Your Madame example is completely irrelevant - even if there WERE a public interest in the matter. One might (arguably) say that the public has a right to know about criminal activity of politicians. That does not give them the right to know about a company's confidential development work.

As for the trade secrets, it's pretty stratightforward. If it is not known to the public and the company makes a reasonable effort to protect it, it's a trade secret. Apple's effort is reasonable by most standards:
- Require an NDA for anyone working on it
- Require an NDA from suppliers
- Require an NDA from developers
- Keep it restricted to a small number of trusted employees
- Disguise it before sending it out in public
Apple did all those things. The fact that someone made a mistake and left it (if that's really what happened) does not break those protections. If Jobs went on the Today show and showed al the features and other details, then it probably WOULD void their trade secret protection - at least for the items he showed publicly.

For the following, I'm going to assume that this is real. Even if it's not, the same things would probably be trade secrets, anyway.
So what is a trade secret?
- the new case appearance
- new camera location
- battery size and rating
- appearance and layout of internal components
- construction materials
- in short, almost everything about it - since Apple hasn't announced anything, nor has anything been confirmed by Apple publicly.

He was trying to jog our memory... remember?

It's one thing to receive information from somebody in the knows, which is usually what most rumors sites do. It's a whole other story when you buy a stolen item.

CNET: "If I were prosecuting, I'd go after (any blogger who bought the phone) vigorously," said Michael Cardoza, a prominent San Francisco defense attorney and former prosecutor. "I'd fight them tooth and nail to see that they wouldn't get protection under the shield law. I'd play hardball, in this case. They didn't find the phone as part of their reporting but instead bought property that they knew or should have known wasn't the property of the seller."

Gizmodo has some balls.

•

Gizmodo — "63 Ways Steve Jobs Could Strike Back" Photoshop Contest

Love to read it ... sure it's interesting, but won't give them the hit.

ReallY?

I can' believe this is still going. I'm getting popcorn.....

Say you got it from Gizmodo and you won't have to share.

The lesson of the story is: Don't make the Siligods mad.

If there were abuses, I wonder where is EFF stands on this one.

This seems a LOT like the MPAA/RIAA "directing" and "assisting"
the feds in piracy raids.
Smacks of using public servants as a private police force.

If a company, or even individual wants to settle a beef like this
where the property was already returned to the rightful owners,
shouldn't they go to court instead of narcing out the person who
returned it?

Maybe those turtlenecks are a bit to tight for mr big britches.

hehe - ya gotta luv em - thanks Sol

What kind of lawless place is California? Stuck in the Wild, Wild West mentality? Shoot first, ask questions later?

I'm shocked by what happened. In Canada, the search warrant would be illegal and open the door to civil damages as showing no cause for breaching the constitutional right to privacy.

Let me explain. First, a criminal offence must be proven or probable cause that a crime was committed must be shown before a search warrant is issued. Second, theft has never been proven nor alleged. Finding lost property never constitutes theft.

It never is a criminal offence to find lost property.

In Canada, policemen cannot search a home in the hope of finding evidence of criminal offences. Policemen must establish probable cause that a crime was committed before they can be issued a search and seizure warrant. Here, no proof was ever offered before the warrant was issued.

I thank God (for the first time!) that Canadians are protected against such abuse of power. Corrupt or unqualified judges are not acceptable in Canada.

My strong advice to Jason Chen: Seek legal advice from the lawyers working for the American Civil Liberties Association and SUE for damages and unlawful breach of your civil rights of privacy and protection against unlawful search and seizure.

So, Canadian police cannot search a property at all?
or
They can search... but cannot look for evidence?

Sounds a little odd to me.

Just where they always stand - on the side of anarchy.

More often than not, you can look at where EFF stands on a topic and choose the other side - you'll be right 95% of the time.


My strong advice to you - stop offering legal advice on things you don't understand.

There WAS a crime committed. Period. Apple filed a complaint AND Gizmodo's public admissions were sufficient proof that there was a crime.

The police had probable cause and obtained a valid, legal search warrant, so they searched the home.

Now, Chen can raise some legal objections and has the right to challenge the validity of that search warrant, but it would be completely inappropriate to just leave all the evidence in place so it could be tampered with. If we adopted your approach, then any time the police showed up anywhere with a search warrant, the person would say "I'm a journalist. You can't search here" and search warrants would no longer have any use.

There is absolutely nothing wrong here - except with your understanding of the law.

Strawman. Really, you can't get away with that here. Not when posting with someone who has spent 10 years posting in AppleOutsider.

That is obviously ridiculous.


Uh, really? Which crimes? Could you post the indictment? The police are gathering evidence to ascertain if a crime has been committed. The issue is with how that evidence was collected. This goes to the very heart of the law dealing with different rules for journalists.


No, that is simply not settled yet. The thing is that it wasn't actually stolen, it was lost. Legally though, it might be considered stolen, because the person who found it didn't return it in a certain period of time and used it for his own purposes. You keep making these insane comparisons about "going out and stealing cars" or what not, but that's simply not what happened. If it was, we wouldn't have a debate at all. If that was the case, Gizmodo would be done-zo.

I'm just asking you to take a realistic view of this thing (as in, how we all know the legal system works). All of the following will come into play:

--Gizmodo did not "steal" the phone. They purchased it.
--The phone was not "stolen," it was lost.
--It's unlikely that Gizmodo knew that phone might be legally be considered "stolen" under the CA law (no idea if this is a defense...it might be).
--Gizmodo voluntarily returned the item to Apple.
--Evidence collected was probably done with an improper warrant. It may have been served at the wrong time of day as well.


I think you're misunderstanding here--I am not saying the phone isn't or won't be considered legally "stolen." Despite the considerations I posted, here is my opinion:

--The prosecutor/courts will decide that the phone was "stolen" under the CA law that dates back to 1872.
--The person who sold the phone will be prosecuted.
--Gizmodo will face a civil suit involving the UTSA and misappropriation.
--Gizmodo employees will not face criminal prosecution for buying stolen property. My prediction (and that's all) is they'll get off on this one, because it's unlikely that they knew the phone was considered legally stolen under a relatively obscure statute.



I was just thinking out loud. Relax.

Great post! The potential outcomes you mentioned seem most likely to me, too.