Apple Security Chief Steps Down After iPhone Gaffe 93
Trailrunner7 writes "Apple's vice president of global security has reportedly stepped down, roughly two months after the surfacing of news reports that an iPhone prototype had gone missing for the second time in less than two years. John Theriault, who came to Apple from Pfizer and was a former FBI agent, has retired in the wake of controversy regarding the device's disappearance and the subsequent efforts to track it down. Apple did not return a request for comment. Nevertheless, Theriault's departure follows a public relations dustup that began when an Apple employee left the prototype at a bar in San Francisco."
The Samaritan Law (Score:2)
Why don't we have it?
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wait, you think the VP of Security for Apple is somehow supposed to be aware of a street crime 3000 miles away from Cupertino?
citizens are under no (legal) obligation to report a crime or intervene in any way. if you SAW a murder, you're under no obligation to even cooperate with the authorities unless you're served a subpoena.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misprision_of_felony [wikipedia.org]
With the development of the modern law, this crime has been discarded in many jurisdictions, and is generally only applied against per
Hmmm (Score:5, Funny)
he should have used Find my iPhone.
But what more could he have done? (Score:3, Insightful)
Kudos to him for taking responsibility, but:
The one iPhone was lost at a bar.
Is he saying that he should have had 2 security men following each Apple employee around during work and outside of work?
I'm sure there was more than one person working on the next version of the iPhone at that point.
And security can promulgate all the edicts they want, but people who "have work to do" either have them overturned or find a way a around them.
Seriously, what more could he have done short of implementing a police state?
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Not have allowed sociable people test out the prototype? Evaluate each employee in terms of likelihood to leave something on a table? There's always a way to do things better.
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That's silly, the obvious answer is to just glue the phone to the employee. Also attach it via some sort of leash.
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That's silly, the obvious answer is to just glue the phone to the employee. Also attach it via some sort of leash.
Nonsense - we've seen the real solution right here on Slashdot.
Cut off one of the employee's arms and replace it with a prosthetic. Then embed the phone in the prosthetic.
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Re:But what more could he have done? (Score:4, Funny)
stop makeing them in china so bribing need more (Score:2)
stop makeing them in china so bribing people will need more then just paying some one 10K-20K.
That is where some of apple leak have came from.
Re:But what more could he have done? (Score:5, Insightful)
The 'controversy' over the handling of the lost iPhone includes the bit where Apple security flacks allegedly impersonated police officers in order to conduct an illicit search of somebody's house...
For a company of Apple's stature, with extensive offshore manufacturing and significant interest from both highly-visible tech-rumor-bloggers and 3rd party accessory makers who want to have their tooling done before the competition, the leak level is pretty good. Getting the company embroiled in a potentially messy criminal case, though, is one of those 'career limiting' moves...
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We don't know whether the situation played out as alleged; but if it did, it amounted to criminal activity...
Re:But what more could he have done? (Score:5, Insightful)
The issue is not so much that a prototype was lost, but how they handled the retrieval efforts, passing themselves off as police, making immigration threats...
Re:But what more could he have done? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Good Grief. (Score:2)
We only have the word of the guy who "found" the phone (and then denied any knowledge of it when that was obviously not the truth) that these guys claimed to be cops.
Certainly the Apple Recovery Team was aggressive and intimidating, but there is really no trustworthy evidence they broke the law.
On the other hand we have a guy who "found" an expensive iPhone at a bar, took it home, failed to do anything to find the owner, and then disposed of it when it looked like the authorities were closing in. Not really
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...and from a legal standpoint pushing the head of security out the door is going to look pretty bad for Apple.
Nonsense.
From a legal standpoint, it doesn't matter one way or the other if Apple fired the head security dude, and indeed what they fired him for is pure speculation. What matters are the facts . Not how the facts "look", but what the facts are.
The Court does not care how the facts "look". the Court cares what the facts are .
At this point we really don't know all the facts, but there is really no particular reason to believe a guy who "found" an expensive piece of electronics and declined to do the hono
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No one has said the Apple Thugs didn't accompany the real cops and no one has said they didn't ask for and receive permission to search the apartment (which is certainly NOT something I would have ever allowed). Nothing you have said comes within 10 miles of supporting the contention that these Apple Thugs misrepresented themselves, we have only the word of someone who's honesty is already suspect.
Re:But what more could he have done? (Score:5, Interesting)
This may have more to do with the second 'lost' iPhone which was handled very poorly by all reports.
You don't impersonate police officers, by omission or commission. You don't pretend it is an episode of CSI or a rerun of 'Enemy of the State". Apple has never been forthcoming about what happened (if anything). Sounds like a screw up from the folks running the show.
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You don't impersonate police officers, by omission or commission. You don't pretend it is an episode of CSI or a rerun of 'Enemy of the State".
The guy was a former FBI agent. The FBI has been breaking the law with impunity for many years. Why should Apple be any different?
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UPDATE: The San Francisco Police department has changed its story -- it now says that 4 officers accompanied 2 Apple investigators. The officers stayed outside while the investigators searched CalderÃn's home, which is presumably why there was no paperwork filed.
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Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
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Don't know why you were rated "funny". More like insightful.
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Make sure hardware doesn't leave the building. Lots of companies have protocols like security counts that are highly secure... banks, military...
Re:But what more could he have done? (Score:4, Informative)
They wanted them to leave the building. They needed to be tested in a variety of conditions, not just all in relatively small location.
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Well then my theory is wrong. I stand corrected.
Re:But what more could he have done? (Score:4, Insightful)
This is how you end up with really shitty phones.
The whole iPhone 4 antenna issue came about because Apple required employees to use cases during field testing, after all.
Re:But what more could he have done? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Kudos to him for taking responsibility"
How said he is taking responsibility (in the sense of "yes, it's my fault")?
There are two kinds of responsibility-related resignations:
1) As a way to say "I failed, I don't deserve this position".
2) As a way to say "I tried to do my job but the higher ups don't allow me to do it properly: I won't continue under these circumnstances".
No where in the article nor the links there's indication about what's the case here.
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To my knowledge, at least 4 of the 4S's were lost (Score:2, Insightful)
To my knowledge, at least 4 of the 4S's were lost.
In addition, I know it took Apple security days to get back to the reporting person when they reported the phone lost immediately after the loss was noted.
Apple has also been pretty arbitrary on whether or not it fires someone who loses a prototype. My expectation is that there is the strong possibility that if one of the people who was fired for the same thing another employee wasn't fired over, and the only difference was how fast Apple security reacted,
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Oh, I dunno, don't let people take them to a bar?
I doubt it's the real reason (Score:2)
Scott Forstall was the guy who convinced Jobs to let his engineers walk around with iPhone prototypes, and he just got a million-share carrot to stay with Apple until 2016.
He left it! (Score:1)
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ah...too bad your an anon. I'd give mod points for that one.
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Maybe they need to rethink their policy... (Score:2)
... on "leaking" things to the world by leaving prototypes (or pre-release models) in bars and then stirring up an immense media circus.
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Even after this article you still believe that?
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Even after this article you still believe that?
Yes,
Just because it went wrong does mean that it wasn't intentional.
They had people who could impersonate police officers... available at short notice.
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Just because it went wrong does mean that it wasn't intentional.
Right... so... we're right back at zero.
They had people who could impersonate police officers... available at short notice.
... and this couldn't have been for security?
I expected a little more. Seriously. Something like: "Well the guy did have a box of donuts in the car, he was obviously off to a marketing meeting afterwards".
My diagnosis? Slashdot headline poisoning.
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Yeah, I mean can you believe that people think that you can't melt steel with jet fuel, and that Apple ever "lose" prototyps by accident?
"...was a former FBI agent." (Score:1)
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Yeah, right (Score:2)
Oh, this is rich. I think they mean, their head of MARKETING stepped down as a blatant MARKETING PLOY to sell more iPhones after his wildly successful STEALTH MARKETING campaign involving fake engineers accidentally-on-purpose forgetting their MARKETING iPhones in MARKETING bars. Well done, sir, well done.
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Will the police help me if I lose my cell phone? (Score:3)
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I would love to have Dial-A-SWAT at my disposal for losing a single cell phone like Apple does.
Yeah? Well, here's how you do it:
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So fucking what? My phone is worth more to me then Apples phone is to 'it"...
No, it is not.
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Excellent. All we need to do is be successful in making cell phones, thus our prototype phone becomes worth millions instead of a couple of hundred, then it's suddenly much more important!
FTFY. Seriously why does Apple hate have such a negative impact on IQs?
Should Have Been Fired (Score:2)
Just guessing here ... (Score:2)
The cop union is going to be pissed.
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I doubt it will be for the better. With all of Jobs control freak ways and other foibles, the vision and the spark that made Apple stand out is gone.
This wasn't really over a couple phones (Score:2)
What if it was a Videotron (Quebecor) phone? (Score:2)
It's not like it would be all over TV or the papers (never mind that, someone's knocking on the door)
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Now I'm assuming ... they really thought the best way to do that was send hired goons to the dude's house.
That is an assumption, and it may be true or not true, we don't know. However, it is a _fact_ that you now make this assumption, which isn't favorable for Apple. And as the chief of Apple's security, you have to try to act in a way so that people don't make that kind of assumption.
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To be honest, it doesn't even matter if it's true or not. At least not in Germany [slashdot.org]