Media request to unseal docs in Gizmodo iPhone case rejected - Page 2

The shield laws seem to be in place to prevent journalists being charged with contempt of court when not revealing their sources.

Chen very publicly bought property which did not belong to the person selling it, while documenting it on Gizmodo's site, basically he published what amounts to a confession to a felony.

Now any lawyer will tell you that the strongest evidence that the police have when building a case comes from what the person being prosecuted says.

It is why one of the most important of your rights under Miranda is the right to remain silent, so you don't dig yourself a deeper hole with your words, which as is further stated may be used against you.

Chen dug himself a pretty deep hole with his published words, words which were posted and changed numerous times as the course of events unfolded publicly on Gizmodo.

The Police are quite within their rights to forensically examine Chen's computers in order to unravel his public confessions in order to arrive at the truth, and Chen's part in writing up a "confession".

I don't see how Chen can defend himself without trying to make out that the story he was publishing was a pack of lies, which brings out questions of his journalistic integrity.

The title is wrong as the media request was not rejected, just deferred, i.e. assigned to another judge, the judge who signed the search and seizure warrant.

The media request is opposed by the San Mateo County Prosecutors as the Police investigation is still ongoing. Next week, the judge who signed the warrant will hear both parties and decide if the contents of the warrant and affidavits can be made public, possibly giving policemen enough time to complete their investigation before the warrant and affidavits are unsealed.


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This is, of course, nonsense. It has nothing to do with whether Chen is a journalist. They are investigating a crime. IF a court later determines that Journalist Shield applies, then the evidence they gained will be inadmissible, but that doesn't mean that the search is illegal. They have a warrant signed by a judge (who presumably knows more about the case than you) and a SECOND judge who refused to unseal the documents. Why in the world would anyone think that your inane comments are more valid than TWO judges?

Again, I'll start a blog on driving prototype and rare cares. I'll offer a reward for someone to bring me a car (and later say I was just joking, wink, wink). Someone 'finds' a Ferrari sitting in a parking garage and the owner isn't around, so they bring it to me. I give him $5,000. I ask my local mechanic if he knows who it belongs to. Then I drive it around for a while, and take it apart so I have pictures of the inside of the car for my blog. When the owner contacts me, I tell them I need firm proof that it's their car. Then, when the police come, I tell them they can't take the car because it's in my garage and my home is covered by Journalist Shield laws - and I'll sue them if they try.

That's about as close to the Gizmodo incident as it can be. Why would I be allowed to do that?


Actually, there is. Chen confessed publicly. Chen's blog is about 98% of what the police need to convict him, but they're being careful to make sure everything's done by the book because they knew it would turn into a media circus.


Chen confessed to a crime, so we know a crime has been committed. Furthermore, the police stated publicly that they're still investigating. It is not uncommon for the investigation to take some time.

You're also wrong in claiming that they police are doing all of this to get around Journalist Shield law. First, their statements deny that. Second, TWO different judges have denied it. AND, there's absolutely no evidence that it occurred the way you claim - except for your own delusions.


Sorry, but purchase of a prototype worth millions of dollars and publication of such which can cost Apple many millions of dollars in lost sales is not a petty crime.

As for the rest, the laws allow for records to be sealed while the investigation is ongoing - as it is in this case. TWO judges have confirmed that it's OK, so unless you're sitting on the Supreme Court, your word is worthless against theirs.

Yet another misleading headline.

The request was NOT denied. It has not yet even been considered.

Sort of.

They went around the judge who issued the search warrant in the hopes that they could get another judge to order the documents to be released. The second judge said, in effect, "it's inappropriate for me to overrule the first judge at this point - take the issue up with him".

Since the first judge issued the warrant in the first place, he's unlikely to overrule himself, so the plaintiffs effectively lost. Their only hope was to have the second judge step in.

Of course, as time goes by, the police will eventually finish their investigation and the documents may be released without action from the press. The media will publicize that they 'won' and forced the courts to unseal the documents, but from the DA's arguments, it's clear that they would have eventually been unsealed, anyway.

You're right in that it shouldn't be a big deal to us, but anything involving Apple is.
You're wrong that committing a felony is not a big deal.

And do not forget about your illegal occupation of the land you live on since it did belong the the American Indian at one time but the US ancestors felt compelled to kill and take their land by force.

I didn't miss it. But thatnks for helping make my point. The fact that an investigation is on going is not enough by itself. There must be additional issues to make the case for sealing an affidavit. The DA's office says it's because they don't want to alert others that are being investigated. Smokescreen or not, that is the additional cause for the sealing of the affidavit.

C'mon AI, your article title is horribly misleading. The request was not rejected in its entirety (as inferred in the title), simply deferred to another judge for consideration, presumably one more knowledgeable about the circumstances surrounding the issuance of the affidavit and search warrant. Big difference. I roll my eyes at sensationalist titles like these.

You're better than this.

gizmodo.com has been down? wow... powerful.... Apple nailed it...

the request was made by media that want to argue a violation of shield laws. which if this was a case of just wanting to know a source might apply.

But Gizmodo confessed to a criminal act at a felony level. Shield laws do not apply.

Personally I think they are getting what they deserve. Tech is a big business here in Cali and you can bet the DA started watching Gawker after that Valleywag stunt to see if they were dumb enough to do it again. They have probably been watching the site and capturing all articles, watching various twitters etc. Then Giz posts that they have the phone, etc.

Dumb ass move. If their lawyers told them that shield laws would protect them, the lawyer needs to be fired.

What they should have done, which would have gotten the scoop out there without all this, was taken the photos, made the video with no voices, names or faces and posted it as provided by 'a reliable source'. THEN they could have applied shield laws to keep Apple from finding out who the source was.

Not only are they know facing criminal charges, there's possible civil suits. Not to mention removal of ads, review lists and media invites (and possibly not just from Apple).

Hope it was worth it for them.

And that, in and of itself is what is strange. The media put forward that the sealing of the affidavit was improper. They took it to another judge, because obviously the judge that sealed it is unlikely to find he acting improperly. Instead of even looking at the chance that perhaps it was improper, this judge passed it off, sending it back to the original judge to look at it. When the original judge is available next week, if the DA still wants to keep it secret, I guess the judge could say he shouldn't review his own decision and pass to to yet another judge...perhaps one that is tied up for a few weeks.

Some have argued that taking it to a second judge was the media trying to end run the original judge. In other cases, is it common to ask the original judge to review an appeal of his own case? Why does the supreme court exist at all if the one assumes the original judge knows best?

To those that see the media requests as trying to avoid the original judge, or are defending the decision not to even examine the request, it seems it has nothing to do with the merit of the request, but with the parties involved. The best they have offered so far, is to parrot what the DA said, that the seal needs to be in place because the investigation is on going and releasing their reasons in the affidavit would compromise their investigation, specifically into two people of interest. One can perhaps ignore the assumption that it is quite likely the people they are looking at might just have heard there is an investigation. Is it so easy to simply ignore that proper procedure might not have been followed? The thoughtless, circular answer would be "of course it was proper, otherwise it wouldn't have been granted".

Don't know. Maybe the law. Could be the US constitution. Who knows.

The court can make an exception and seal the information, if certain requirements are met. The media argued that those requirements for sealing had not been met and further the sealing order itself was sealed so no public review of if the sealing was appropriate is even possible.

Maybe the sealing was valid. You don't know, I don't know. The decision of no decision puts the responsibility of determining if you should know (or when) back on the judge that made the decision in the first place. No conflict there, at all.

Your question could be restated: what gives you the right to question what the media does? What gives you the right to do anything? Hopefully, you will see the answer is the same.

No, actually, pretty much every thread you get involved with starts with you making broad claims about your own powers of insight and definitive statements of the truth that no one else seems to be able to fathom, along with a lot of disparaging (albeit confusing) subsidiary flak about the generally dim-witted state of the average poster, people in general, and our debased civilization, followed by the inevitable irritable push-back from the people you have such contempt for, followed by increasingly florid declarations of righteousness and injury to your person inflicted by these same fools and knaves, leading to ever more abstracted and irrelevant parsing of the particulars of your blamelessness and the general perfidy of everyone else, leading to another thread wandering into exceptionally tedious weeds.

Pretty much every thread you get involved with. Funny how that works.

Wow! Not about the accurate portrayal, but 128 words in the sentence!

I really have no desire to win this race. You can have it. See a previous comment.

Classic run on. Much like himself. He named himself aptly.

Why were there a bunch of posts (including all of mine in response to Harleigh Quinn) deleted? I understand the need to keep the forum focused and on topic and the whole conversation became very weedy and it makes the forum a mess and a pain to look at and read, but still. I don't quite understand why my posts (and others in response to me) were deleted. I was trying to respond civilly and personally to Harleigh Quinn and I get deleted. I don't get it.

You're leaving out the stealing part, and the receiving stolen goods part. Both, when you have the cash value of a prototype, is well into the felony area.

The California shield law was put into place to protect a journalist's sources. For instance, someone in the mayor's office has taken bribes, but he goes to the paper to show that what he did was part of a pattern of bribe-taking, even by the mayor himself. The mayor sees the first story you publish and raids the journalist's office to find the identity of the leaker. The L.A. Times, under those conditions, will not allow the police on the premises.

Now, switch that. The Times reporter does a burglary to get some papers to back up a story on bribes. They splash it all over the front pages. It's a worthwhile story, at least in the sense of selling a lot of newspapers. But wait a minute. The cops come with a warrant, and then the Times screams "Freedom of the press?" Uh-uh. The issue is, the Times reporter appears to have committed a felony to get some documents.

Life will indeed go on, but someone might not find their next few months very fun at all.

I think what it simply tells us is that there are two "persons of interest" whose rights need protecting, because the warrant mentions them, therefore the warrant is still sealed -- because the investigation still isn't finished. Once it's finished, the evidence that will be public. We'll see what the accuseds' lawyers say about that.

Receiving stolen property does not require a financial transaction, just knowledge that the property was stolen.

Maybe. The articles don't say that. They said the police don't want to alert those two individuals, but nothing about protecting their rights. I guess they might both be in comas and so, unaware of the current investigation.

But, even if that was they case, why seal both the affidavit and the order to seal the affidavit. The order itself wouldn't identify them. Like I said, the sealing might be valid. This is likely. Then why shouldn't the court consider the argument that it was valid? The laws says the information must be released after 10 days. If a court is going to make a exception to the law, they should explain why. Otherwise, why have laws?

In other creepiness, anyone notice that the story titled " Apple's brand 'buzz' loses steam among young adults in survey" which was posted this morning has since been pulled from the front page?

The discussion still shows up in Google:
http://forums.appleinsider.com/showt...hreadid=109349

That's another bad title.

The article actually says that the surveyed individuals are hearing more bad things about Apple than in the past - but still far more good things.

What was stolen? Free marketing and Press? Seriously, what was leaked?
An NDA is a NDA and you can get into trouble.
If you ever attend a wedding and they have a DJ, by law the accused could be fined up to $100k per infraction if he/she does not pay ASCAP/BMI dues. But knowone ever bothers. They do have inspectors for clubs and restaraunts though.

They stole a phone and broadcast its composition to the world. That causes immense damage to Apple. People could hold off on buying iPhones. Competitors get a head start on their next generation to phones. The damages are undoubtedly in the millions of dollars.

You are treating the phone market like a corner lemonade stand. Yes, if someone in Dallas steals your lemonade recipe, your stand in Detroit isn't going to be harmed much (although it could still be illegal). That's NOT true in the mobile market.

Not to mention that it's illegal and the police have a responsibility to investigate.


Any clue why that has any relevance at all to the discussion here? People also smoke marijuana which is illegal and few of them get caught. What does that have to do with the case at hand?

Ah. So it is about the phone. Some believe this could be an Apple Marketing tatic. Knowone can really catch up to the iPhone "as-is", so why do you think Apple could lose millions? With regard to buying phones, everyone knows you wait until June/July around April plus stories like this are mainly on websites, not your typical mainstream news.

Godspeed...

Care to explain that in sentences that make sense?

The fact is that the competition now knows what Apple's NEXT generation phone will look like rather than having to wait for the release in June. That gives them a couple of months' head start.

In addition, millions of people have seen the new phone - and may decide not to buy the existing phone.

Both of those things cost Apple a LOT of money.

http://blog.laptopmag.com/eff-lawyer...nd-federal-law

Except that the police are investigating a crime i.e. receiving stolen property, due to Chen publishing what amounts to a full confession it seems that the Police have a rather strong case, which no doubt the judge when issuing and sealing the warrant took into consideration when interpreting and ruling on the legalities involved.

"...cannot be adjudged in contempt by a judicial, legislative, administrative body, or any other body having the power to issue subpoenas, for refusing to disclose"

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/03/bu...ia/03carr.html

http://www.newsweek.com/id/237186

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/04/dude-apple/

Read More http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/201...#ixzz0nPPo1Few

http://www.newsweek.com/id/237186

http://www.newsguild.org/index.php?ID=8951

Now everybody shut the hell up.

Again. The iPhones been out for a few years and it's still not topped. Only us forum geeks read this stuff and most everyone knows not to buy an iPhone a fewcmonths before June:July. I've even heard specialists say you might want to hold off to customers.

I remeber when apple would just release a new product. Now they run out two weeks before hand so knowone can return the items. This story will have little affect on suffering sales in fact as I stated in my other post, it's free press for Apple which have Bern known to leak for years in order to create a buzz.

Not to mention the previous model is always sold to businesses that do not want to have the expense of the new model but also want the enterprise email functions and don't want to shell out for an archaic blackberry server.

I purchase 8GB iPhone 3Gs (NOT 3GS) for employees of the company I am at all the time. One of my functions is to also administrate the cellular package we have with AT&T. I am repairing a 3G and a 3GS as I type this (3GS's are only purchased for those willing to pay out of pocket for the difference between that and a 3G...)

But as usual the person you are replying to is more talk than actual substance, so it is no surprise he/she would still continue to beat this dead horse.

That is incorrect on both counts.

This prototype phone and all the story around it is national news. It's been in the Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, and even on Letterman. It's not just forum geeks that know about it.

It's also not 'most everyone' who knows not to buy an iPhone a few months before June/July. THAT is the part that mostly forum geeks know about. The average mobile user doesn't follow it at that level.

You managed to get it exactly backwards.