Technically I guess Gizmodo may have received stolen property, though it isn’t clear whether the guy who found the phone could have contacted the Apple guy who lost it. As the story goes, he claims he tried to call Apple several times.
On balance, reading Gawker’s position and the Cal. reporter’s source privilege statute, I probably end up thinking this sucks. I can see a scenario in which this guy might be able to sue the P.D. for being Apple’s personal police/stooge force in violation of his civil rights . . . .
A question that got brought up when Gizmodo got the phone in the first place is whether it was really “lost” or whether this was a publicity stunt from the get-go.
Yeah, I was suspicious, but unless Gizmodo’s in on the stunt, having the cops break a guy’s door down in the middle of the night seems beyond the pale of viral marketing . . . idiotic too given the buzz this has generated, for free.
Wait, what the hell were they were searching for? As soon as Apple contacted Gizmodo over the prototype, Gizmodo responded that they were happy to return it and all they needed was to know when and where to meet Apple’s rep. It’s not like Gizmodo was being difficult about anything.
Apple’s commitment to secrecy is notorious and pathological.
Breaking the guy’s door down does seem a bit far. Especially since they would now be including the police and courts in a viral marketing effort which I am pretty sure they would not be happy about.
What is scarier is Apple getting the police to do this for them. Pretty sure if my phone was stolen the cops would not go to this effort. Granted there is more to this than just a phone but really, at the end of the day it is just a phone that was “stolen”.
It looks like they want to identify and crucify the guy who found the phone and sold it to Gizmodo. I’m sure they’d also like to get the full text of the e-mails between him and Gizmodo to flesh out a potential lawsuit/prosecution against Gizmodo for who knows, receiving stolen property, theft of trade secrets, conspiracy, etc.
Probably, but I don’t see how this benefits Apple–Gizmodo interviewed the seller and he said he tried several times to return it to Apple and no one there took him seriously; Gizmodo also interviewed the Support Line person who received the call from the seller, I believe, and that person confirmed that they rejected him as a whackjob. I’m really not seeing the benefit to Apple for coming down with both boots here, even considering that they want people and journalists to fear them.
Before the story broke did anyone at Apple report the phone as stolen?
If not, and if you take the story at face value, it looks like nothing more than Apple covering for an employee that was beyond reckless and probably intoxicated.
Many of us have found lost phones. There’s an unwritten commandment that you try to find the owner because you can lose yours at any time. It’s the karma of cell phones.
BTW, if any of you ever found some paper of a specific dimension with a picture of a dead President on it I’m going to have the police search your house so that it the stolen paper can be returned to me.
According to a followup Gizmodo story, the phone was bricked within hours. The guy who found it that night saw OS 4.0 on the phone (part of what convinced him it was the real thing); the next morning it was bricked, so someone at Apple knew about the disappearance and took steps to mitigate the effect of losing it.
I’m not familiar with the term “bricked”. I assume that means it was remotely turned off or made unusable. However, that’s not my question. Was it reported “stolen” to the police?
If they “bricked” it and didn’t report it as stolen doesn’t that make it look worse for Apple? Why are the police involved?
Swift Justice in 2007: Coca-Cola Secretary Joya Williams Receives 8 Years For Trying to Sell Trade Secrets to Pepsi
Hundreds of millions of dollars can be at stake in situations like this, even if it is “just a cellphone” or just “sugar water.” That makes the cops more likely to worry about dotting their i’s and crossing their t’s on the finer points of the governing laws.
Reading Daring Fireball’s take on this, it seems pretty clear that under California’s penal code, there’s a very good case that a felony was committed. The guy who found the phone had a duty to return it to the owner or turn it in to the police. (As the article points out, the traditional thing to do when you find a cell phone in a bar is to hand it in to the bartender – not the letter of the law, but the spirit). And Gizmodo was certain enough that it was a new Apple prototype that they shelled out $5000.00 for it, the amount making the transfer a felony rather than a misdemeanor.
Is siccing the Law on Gizmodo kind of a dick move by Apple? Perhaps. But so was keeping the lost phone.
Good point. Before every search warrant, the police should as the person if they did anything illegal, and if they said no, the police shouldn’t be able to search.
Sounds like Gizmodo attempted to return the phone though. Of course while it was in their possession they had a good look but can’t they say they realized this was Apple’s property, obtained it and then made a good faith effort to return the property?
Sounds like the guy who picked it up might be in trouble. Depends I guess if he tried to give it back to Apple. Someone suggested above that might be the case and Apple blew him off. In that case I would say Apple abandoned the property therefore making it the finder’s property.
To me that is a far cry from this. It was a trade secret at stake and being given to a competitor. Presumably whoever obtained that recipe did so illegally. Picking up a phone left on a table is something else.
The point is more the PR perspective. The leak is out. If a felony was committed, it’s a pretty weak felony if the seller can demonstrate (as Gizmodo seems to assert) that attempts to return the phone to Apple were rebuffed. While someone might end up in jail over this, I’m not seeing any benefit to Apple to press the felony case. The fact that the editor in question had a letter drawn up by the company lawyers prepared to assert journalistic privilege in case of a search warrant indicates quite a bit of confidence on Gizmodo’s part that their role is defensible in all this.
An interesting analysis, and it certainly makes a good case that some malfeasance has occurred. But I thought this part was fairly baseless sniping:
How thieves think? No, that’s how everyone who’s not an idiot thinks. Sure, an Apple Store employee probably isn’t the riskiest person to hand the phone to, but it takes a very special kind of naivete to fail to take into account the possibility of dishonesty in the strangers you interact with, even if (especially if) your own intentions are honest. Their idea to mail the phone directly to Apple corporate, or to send a Facebook message to the engineer in question, was much more sensible, but suggesting that only a thief would think twice about handing the phone over to a twenty-something retail employee is just silly.
I’m guessing Apple sees it as sending a message that should anything similar happen in the future the person with the leak will think twice and the journalists will think three times or risk having their door bashed in and their stuff seized.
They figure the cat is out of the bag on this one and want to be sure it never happens again.
One wonders if they understand the market. This guy Chen will get a Cadillac-level legal defense for free – forget EFF (though I am sure they will weigh in) – how many super-bright, super-motivated, hackerish lawyers will volunteer their services to nail Apple and San Mateo Co. to the wall? It’s not far-fetched either.