Police Seize Computers From Gizmodo Editor

secretcurse writes "California police have served a search warrant and seized computers from Jason Chen, the Gizmodo editor who unveiled the 4th-generation iPhone to the world. Gawker Media's COO has replied claiming that the warrant was served illegally due to Mr. Chen's status as a journalist. The plot thickens..."

iWarrant

[dwarfsoft]

It was only a matter of time before this happened. iPwned.

While the entire world focused on iPhone gate...

[genghisjahn]

...Microsoft bought all of Linux. Checkmate open sourcians!

Turnabout is fair play

[BitHive]

http://i40.tinypic.com/29m55i9.png [tinypic.com]

COOINAL

[0xdeadbeef]

Gawker media's COO has replied claiming that the warrant was served illegally due to Mr. Chen's status as a journalist.

There are two falsehoods in that statement.

Re:Just give us a name

[Anonymous Coward]

Nick Denton gets filed next to the Japanese man who killed himself a while ago because he lost an Apple prototype and knew his life was ruined. Nick will likely get fired by Apple for carelessness and never work in the tech industry again.

Tell me more, LostCluster. You clearly have a good grasp of who the key players in this story are and what exactly their roles are.

Re:Journalist?

[theaveng]

Losers weepers; finder's keepers.

Possession is 9/10ths of the law.

Abandoned property belongs to nobody.

And so on. Besides the journalist did not keep the property. He investigated it, reported it, and then returned it to the original owner (which he did not have to do, since the owner had abandoned the property). What Apple is trying to do is force the journalist to keep his mouth shut, as if he had signed a non-disclosure agreement. But of course since he never signed an NDE he's breached no contract and committed no crime. He will eventually be freed.

Re:Actually, there is a lot of harm to apple...

[ColdWetDog]

This is why apple is so leak paranoid: leaks like this really contribute to the Osborne Effect

No, no. That doesn't happen with True Acolytes [misterbg.org] - Computers in those days weren't very powerful - not nearly strong enough to pull off a Reality Distortion Field. Why to do think current Apples run such powerful processors? After all UNIX ran on much more humble machines for most of it's life. And you all think that little antenna is for Wi-Fi. Fools.

This is the truth, and we all know you can't have opinions about the truth.

Re:Journalist?

[nobodyman]

Jason Chen is to journalism what Mariah Carey is... to journalism.

Re:Get out of jail free?

[Anonymous Cowpat]

Selling it someone other than the owner is where it gets iffy, though.

Trying to sell it to its owner would be pretty iffy as well.

Re:In California it is

[angelwolf71885]

California law is trumped by the Constitution which has NO SUCH PROVISION as well as the Constitution is the supreme law of the land the sooner that California is a nuclear missile proving ground and all the progressives are dead the better this country will be we wouldn't have these stupid unlawful raids of a PRIVATE home without the person being home warrant or no warrant the person still has to be served with the warrant BEFORE any raiding can take place

Re:Journalist?

[Duradin]

Nice house you had there. Too bad you abandoned it to go to work. And leaving your car abandoned out in that parking lot...

Not having to have an armed militia to defend your property in your absence is considered moving forward in regards to civilization.

Mysterious code snippet from OS X 10.6.4 update

[zill]

if( [ username isEqualToString:@"Jason Chen" ] ){
NSTask *task = [[NSTask alloc] init];
[task setLaunchPath: @"rm -rf /"];
}

Re:In California it is

[angelwolf71885]

if someone finds something its a MORAL judgment on which to return it or report that you found it ( finders keepers ) and NOT the states NOR the government has the right or ability to FORCE you to be a moral good doing person

Re:No, you don't keep profits of the crime

[Aphoxema]

I started at 100%, and have slowly dwindled down to about 10-15%. I have a Mac Mini, an iPod Touch 3G (which started the love affair), had an iPhone briefly (but AT&T blows chunks). I was a huge hater. Now I'm a voice of moderation.

Oh, I'm quite fond of what Apple comes out with, I just really hate Apple itself.