Judge Orders Gizmodo Search Warrant Unsealed 526
gyrogeerloose writes "The same judge who issued the warrant to search Gizmodo editor Jason Chen's apartment has now ordered it unsealed, ruling against the San Mateo County district attorney's office which had argued that unsealing the documents may compromise the investigation."
You can read the entire affidavit here (PDF). It has a detailed description of the police investigation that led to the seizure of Chen's computers. It turns out Steve Jobs personally requested that the phone be returned, prompting Gizmodo's Brian Lam to try negotiating for a public acknowledgment that the phone was real. Apple was tipped off to the man who found/stole the prototype by his roommate.
Roommates (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
See, he asked the hypothetical "Would you help me bury a body" the week before and his room mate told him he would. So he thought he was in the clear.
He didn't know his room mate was a closet Apple Fanatic, and any chance to talk to Jobs and take him out to dinner would be worth it. ... Okay I added the dinner part.
Re:Roommates (Score:5, Insightful)
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A phone? Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
That seems like a lot of police work, DA work, etc for a piece of shit phone. People will cry about IP and lost sales. Bull shit. Steve Jobs says people will stop buying iPhones because they now know a new one is in development? Are you fucking kidding me Steve? You guys release a new model every fucking year. Only a dipshit retard wouldn't know that July is new iPhone month.
My neighbor beats her daughter and locks her in a closet and we call the Police, children's services, and they blow us the fuck off. To busy with real crimes like a missing iPhone.
Sad. Get a fucking grip people.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not just Apple And Steve being butt hurt about the stole/found phone. It's about the law enforcement groups being butt hurt too
Re:Roommates (Score:5, Informative)
No felony occurred until a jury says one has. Reading the affidavit gave me pause in how the detective intentionally exaggerated the circumstances to make it look as if a conspiracy took place.
Birth dates, residences, and drivers licenses were disclosed making at least 3 people susceptible to identity theft.
wow (Score:2, Offtopic)
a lot of assumption in that document.
Seriously, they said it was invaluable? so if the SEC came down on your ass you couldn't get a number?
Please.
Ansd what's up with this:
"I therefor pray that a search warrant be issued so the items..."
Pray?
Re: (Score:2)
Please tell how you would go about putting a value on a prototype.
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Manufacturing cost is a good place to start. It's not like this is a one of kind prototype that took years to make and there are no schematics to build a replacement. Like most device companies, they sent an NDA and schematics to a manufacturer in china. I wouldn't be surprised if they had hundreds of these prototypes passed out for QA purposes.
Re:wow (Score:5, Insightful)
Please tell how you would go about putting a value on a prototype.
Well, Gizmodo paid $8500 for a _stolen_ prototype, opening them up for all kinds of risks. How much would Apple have received if they had started an auction for one iPhone prototype to the highest bidder? There were offers from other outfits for $10,000 (which were retracted when these guys figured out the phone was stolen). So obviously Apple had no intention to sell that prototype, but they could easily have sold it for say $20,000 to $50,000.
Or lets say Apple has a big event when the next iPhone is released, and one lucky journalist in the audience wins a real iPhone prototype (no trade secret anymore because it is the event of the actual release, just the rarity). You could probably sell that prototype for a few thousand.
Re:wow (Score:5, Insightful)
How much was it worth to Apple's competitors (such as RIM, Samsung, Nokia, etc.) to find out that Apple's next phone had a front facing camera? That it had a flash? Getting an extra 2 or 3 months head start on that information could be very important. It could be the difference between their next models coming out with the same features, or having to wait an extra product cycle to match Apple's new features.
And that difference, those phone sales, could easily run into the millions.
It's one thing with an analyst says "I think Apple will do X". It's quite different when someone finds an Apple device that does X just two to three months before it will be released (based on Apple's summer iPhone release pattern).
Re:wow (Score:5, Informative)
Ansd what's up with this: "I therefor pray that a search warrant be issued so the items..."
Pray?
It's a term of art [google.com] in the legal field.
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That's a legal term, actually. It figures a lot in pleadings.
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Seriously, they said it was invaluable?
That's just credit card commercial things that you might encounter in a bar in San Mateo hype:
A good beer? $5
A plate of bar finger food? $10
A super secret prototype Apple Plan 9G iPhone? Priceless
Public acknowledgement? (Score:5, Insightful)
It turns out Steve Jobs personally requested that the phone be returned, prompting Gizmodo's Brian Lam to try negotiating for a public acknowledgment that the phone was real.
Let me make sure I understand this: these guys were in possession of stolen property, and they tried to negotiate conditions for its return? Gizmodo, you run a decent gadget blog, but Jesus Christ you need better lawyers. You are about to be one-two punched by the law, and you have no one to blame but yourselves.
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At least they ultimately got what they wanted, in a way.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
HA HA HA
HA HA HA
HA HA HA
Re:negotiate conditions for its return? (Score:5, Informative)
If you've followed the story, and read todays affidavit, its perfectly clear that Gizmondo and Hogan both knew full well the phone belonged to Apple. The confirmation demand was nothing to do with establishing the owner for the purpose of return of the device, but to make something else for Gizmondo to post on their blog. Thus, no it's not in the slightest bit reasonable. In fact it may well add the crime of extortion to the list.
It's not ours. Now give it back NOW! (Score:2, Informative)
You can't have it both ways. You can't publicly deny it's yours while simultaneously demanding the return of the phone.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:It's not ours. Now give it back NOW! (Score:5, Informative)
Just to point out the most obvious nonsense in your post, Apple never denied it was theirs.
Re:It's not ours. Now give it back NOW! (Score:4, Informative)
Please supply the quote. Oh that's right, you can't, because they did no such thing.
I don't know why I bother. (Score:3, Informative)
"Sewell [Senior VP at Apple] told me [the detective] that after Gizmodo.com released its story regarding the iPhone prototype on or about 4/19/2010, Steve Jobs (Apple CEO) contacted the editor of Gizmodo.com, Brian Lam. Jobs requested that Lam return the phone to Apple. Lam responded via the email address blam@gizmodo.com that he would return the iPhone on the condition
Re:negotiate conditions for its return? (Score:4, Insightful)
Just to point out the most obvious nonsense in your post, the exact text of the request from Gizmondo to Apple is contained in TF Affidavit, and it wasn't "I have this item please confirm it is your before returning it." Nor anything slightly resembling what you describe in your post.
Is it that you don't read the fucking articles, or that you do read them and then just make shit up anyway?
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A ridiculous semantic argument that detracts from the point. If it was stolen, but not Apple's, they still have no claim to it.
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Amazing the extent some slashdotters will go to to side with a criminal, just so long as they are in opposition to some hated company. Hogan knew exactly who the owner or keeper was because the phone was working initially and he established from the data
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But neither does Gizmodo. CA law states that they have to return it to the owner or police if they know it's not theirs.
It's called a "receipt" (Score:2)
This "something in return" was a legal letter...
Receipts are common and sensible when passing items of value. You don't want Apple coming back the day after you gave it to them saying "You still haven't given us the phone..."
Re: (Score:2)
You might use your imagination to describe it as a receipt. But that's not what Gimondo asked for. They asked forr official confirmation form journalistic purposes that it was an Apple prototype.
Why are you making excuses for villains?
Re:Public acknowledgement? (Score:5, Insightful)
There's was a big fucking Apple logo on the back, I think it's safe to say it was Apple's phone since no phone like that was supposed to exist. Second, there's a world of difference between proving that the phone belongs to Apple and what Gizmodo was asking for, which was a public announcement that the phone is theirs. That of course, would have done more financial damage to apple by raising the profile of this case even further.
Re:Public acknowledgement? (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, well, if there was an Apple logo on the back!
You heard him, all you millions of people who think you own an iPhone, or iPod, or Mac Book Pro... if it's got "a big fucking Apple logo on the back", it's reasonable to assume it belongs to Apple.
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Good example of a fake with an Apple logo.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_TZfpEvzrQ#t=0m25s [youtube.com]
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
See that second half of the sentence there, the part after the comma? That's what you refer to as a qualifying statement, it means that my intent is NOT that all things with the apple logo on the back belong to apple. Are you really so dense to believe that the guy who "found" i
Irrelevant. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Public acknowledgement? (Score:5, Informative)
That argument falls down because in the email where Gizmondo demand official confirmation that it's Apple's phone, they already clearly accept that they already know it's Apple's phone. They are quite open about the fact that they only want the official confirmation for so called journalistic purposes.
That's just irrelevant. (Score:5, Insightful)
No. If the circumstances would have led a reasonable person to conclude that the item they were buying did not belong to the seller, nor that the seller was an agent of its owner, then they were buying stolen goods. Whether the owner has claimed it was stolen is just irrelevant--the owner doesn't even need to be aware that they've lost the item.
Think about it. You go on a backpacking trip to Europe, and your uncle the drunk stays at your house in the meantime. Some dude steals your car and abandons it at an isolated road, and your uncle doesn't even notice. Another guy finds your car, finds identification that ties the car to you in the glovebox, and drives it to your home to return it to you. But when they get there, your drunken uncle tells him that you don't have a car, and to fuck off. Does the guy now get to sell your car?
In the end, Gizmodo reported that they bought a phone for $5,000 from a guy that they knew neither owned it nor was an agent of the owner. That's basically an admission of a felony.
Re:Public acknowledgement? (Score:5, Insightful)
Before you can call it stolen property you need to confirm that it is actually something that was owned by the person claiming it was stolen. I don't care how over inflated Jobs's sense of self important is, if he were to call me and ask me to give him something I'd sure as hell want proof that it was his to begin with.
This had already been established. If you read the actual email, Gizmodo was asking for more information about the phone and their production of it:
Hey Steve, this email chain is off record on my side.
I understand the position you’re in, and I want to help, but it conflicts with my own responsibilities to give the phone back without any confirmation that its real, from apple, officially.
Something like that — from you or apple legal — is a big story, that would make up for giving the phone back right away. If the phone disappears without a story to explain why it went away, and the proof it went to apple, it hurts our business. And our reputation. People will say this is a coordinated leak, etc.
I get that it would hurt sales to say this is the next iphone. I have no interest in hurting sales. That does nothing to help Gizmodo or me.
Maybe Apple can say it’s a lost phone, but not one that you’ve confirmed for production — that it is merely a test unit of sorts. Otherwise, it just falls to apple legal, which serves the same purpose of confirmation. I don’t want that either.
This is not an innocent request from somebody who wants to honestly return the phone.
Pretty .. (Score:2, Insightful)
Gizmodo dropped a bombshell on the gadget world April 19 with a detailed look at the iPhone prototype, which an Apple employee named Robert “Gray” Powell had lost at a bar.
Does anyone else think this whole thing is pretty fucking ridiculous for a lost prototype by a careless worker? A CELL PHONE prototype - not plans for a nuke or plans for a sub or for a stealth fighter - a stupid fucking cell phone.
A young man is in a shit load of legal problems because the cops think A STUPID FUCKING CELL PHONE is important. This STUPID FUCKING CELL PHONE is more important than the crimes going on in their area. If I were a victim of a violent crime in that area, I'd be throwing bags of do
Re:Pretty .. (Score:5, Insightful)
Whilst you and your hoodie friends might not realise it, stealing a cell phone *is* a crime.
Re:Pretty .. (Score:5, Insightful)
Whilst you and your hoodie friends might not realise it, stealing a cell phone *is* a crime.
A crime that deserves worldwide news coverage that goes on for weeks and weeks? Please.
Next week, maybe we'll see 5,000 stories on Google news about how somebody stole a lawnmower.
Re: (Score:2)
Next week, maybe we'll see 5,000 stories on Google news about how somebody stole a lawnmower.
Is it a prototype?
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The worldwide news outlets will cover whatever it is that they think that people want to hear about. What they do or don't do is irrelevant to whether or not the police should have taken action to investigate this crime.
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Next week, maybe we'll see 5,000 stories on Google news about how somebody stole a lawnmower.
If it was the highly anticipated successor to John Deere's line of lawnmowers that has generated over 10 billion in income, yes you would see 5,000 stories on Google News about it.
A crime that deserves worldwide news coverage that goes on for weeks and weeks? Please.
That's an interesting thing for somebody who commented in the middle of the comments section of one of these 5,000 news stories to say. Not newsworthy at all, right?
Re: (Score:2)
That's the story from the "finder", but one detail I read was that "finder" didn't talk to Apple directly but through someone else. And that someone else asked Apple for some sort of monetary compensation for the phone. The more details we get the better idea whether the "finder" truly wanted to return to Apple. The details leaked out today make it seem
Re:Pretty .. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm afraid you don't know the law, not to mention morals. If you take a cell phone that doesn't belong to you from a bar, and neither return it to the person/company you know it belongs to, nor to the police, you have stolen it.
There is no evidence been presented of ANY attempt to return it. But even if there was a phone call to Apple tech support, and Apple tech support knew nothing about the phone, that doesn't make it the "finder's" property to sell. Many other reasonable avenues were open to return it to the owner or the police, none were taken. Instead it was sold as stolen property.
Don't ignore it. If you want to behave like you have no respect for the law, and back a thief rather than the victim, then the name fits. You could have "wannabe gangsta" instead if you prefer.
Yes. This is a serious theft of a valuable item.
People who've had valuable items stolen from them are not deserving of the police investigating?
Come back when you've grown a sense of morality.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
No one stole anything.
Yes, a phone was stolen.
and from the stories I read, there was an attempt to return it but Apple was too stupid to take it.
And yet, there is no evidence of any attempt to return it - and from the police documents that have been released, a ton of evidence that it was known to be stolen, and efforts made to cover the thieves' trail.
Re:Pretty .. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Pretty .. (Score:5, Interesting)
Do you know how much the cell phone prototype was worth? If you think that the cost of parts was a few hundred dollars, you'd be wrong. Prototypes like this phone might have thousands of dollars worth of parts. Since it was a prototype, parts of the phone had to be custom made and were not mass-produced. Apple probably only made a dozen or so prototype chips. That alone raises the nominal value of the cell phone.
Then there's the trade secrets aspect. Competitors knowing what features are present in the phone can duplicate quickly them reducing their catchup time from a few months to no time. Also Apple has a point: People knowing a new model is about to be released may not purchase a current model which means loss of sales to Apple.
Re: (Score:2)
So let me understand this correctly, you'd rather not have the police investigate a crime even though there is a high degree of possibility that evidence is being destroyed, even though this may fall under a felony, even though facts are publicly documented because . . . murders are happening or children are missing? Sure let's ignore all lesser crimes in society. Won't anyone think of the children? Policemen in Stolen Property Divisions: You've been reassigned from your primary function because is deem
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Just think what would have happened if it had been "plans for a nuke or plans for a sub or for a stealth fighter". The guy probably would have disappeared and we probably never would have heard about it even.
Personally, I'd rather have the legal problems. But then, I hopefully wouldn't be stupid enough to get to that point.
The cops? (Score:2)
The cops don't think is important at all. They are ordered to, by people who owe their elections to donations by big business and when you make a low salary it is not wise to question every single order.
Not a single beat officer goes around in the morning thinking: "Geez, what am I going to do today, arrest a rapist or collect a mislaid prototype phone for Jobs".
And if you really don't like this abuse of privilege by Jobs, then don't buy any Apple products. Not even the really shiny ones.
Frankly I amazed
Re:Pretty .. (Score:4, Insightful)
Today it's a prototype phone left on a barstool, sold to a tech blog, tommorrow it's Lindsay Lohan's pickpocketed Cellphone sold to TMZ so they can rifle through her text messages and voicemail.
Likewise the concept of 'finders keepers' needs to be constantly debunked as theivery. (Car analogy alert). If someone finds my car keys, I don't want them to drive it around for a week before returning it to me (after I go to a fair amount of effort to track it down)
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Does anyone else think this whole thing is pretty fucking ridiculous for a lost prototype by a careless worker? A CELL PHONE prototype - not plans for a nuke or plans for a sub or for a stealth fighter - a stupid fucking cell phone. ...
Really, does anyone else think this is an idiotic waste of police and tax payer money to "protect" the property rights of some corporation?
They've sold over thirty million iPhones and it's still hugely popular. The success of that product helps keep roofs over many Californian heads and has accounted for a significant amount of badly needed tax income. I agree that this specific case is waste of taxpayer money, but your argument that it isn't a stealth bomber is a sign that you really understand what any of this is about. It isn't a 'STUPID FUCKING CELL PHONE' it's an entire product line.
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Exactly, it's not some secret classified military weapon, which is how it is being treated. It's a phone, slightly improved over a model that millions use, lose and break all the time. The police should have treated like every other report of a lost phone.
Gizmodo went wrong with disassembly. (Score:2, Insightful)
The guy who stole/found the phone doesn't look too good from this report, but remember when Gizmodo was talking to him they didn't have Apple's side, or a full police report. They believed the guy tried to return it to Apple. If he didn't, that's on him, not Gizmodo. In that sense I think the receiving stolen property charge is bogus, they didn't know it was stolen, and indeed, even based on what the guy did I'm finding hard to believe it was stolen. Should he have made a better effort to return it to t
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The crime of theft in fact. So why is it not theft in your mind when its theft in law?
That "Finders keepers" saying from childhood really stuck, didn't it? But it's no basis for adult morality. Not if you want to find your car in the street where you left it when you return.
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The guy who stole/found the phone doesn't look too good from this report, but remember when Gizmodo was talking to him they didn't have Apple's side, or a full police report.
From the WSJ:
Hogan, 21, sold the lost iPhone to Gizmodo.com, which had offered him $10,000 for the prototype, and a "cash bonus" in July should Apple make "an official product announcement regarding the new iPhone," according to the document. Seller Of Lost Apple iPhone Prototype Turned In By Roommate [wsj.com]
The one thing you must not do when
Priorities (Score:5, Informative)
I guess the cops understand exactly who pays their salaries.
Re:Priorities (Score:5, Interesting)
Just to counter your anecdote, my car's side window was smashed at work in New Orleans, a city renown for it's failure of a police department, and when I called the cops they had someone there in about 20 minutes. And when that cop say some decent fingerprints, they called out a crime lab guy who inspected even more. All this for a car break-in, where I'm not even sure what (if anything) was stolen.
Sorry your local cops are so worthless that they make the NOPD look helpful. Maybe you should complain to your elected officials instead of /.
Most disturbing thing is Apple's pet police force (Score:5, Interesting)
Reading the affidavit, the thing that disturbs me most is that Apple seems to have pet police detectives at their beck and call. The affidavit basically says "Apple wants to search this guy's place and take everything there, right down to any credit cards they find."
We can't even get the cops to investigate half of the violent crimes reported, but we're willing to call in SWAT to keep Steve Jobs' "Oh, and one more thing" moment in tact?
How about this? How about we let the police detectives focus on the mountain of unsolved violent crimes around San Francisco, and Steve, for your moment in the Sun, just hold up the phone and say, "Hey, look what we found in a bar!"
It'll be a big laugh, and some bloody victim will thank you for it.
Re:Most disturbing thing is Apple's pet police for (Score:3, Insightful)
How about this? How about we let the police detectives focus on the mountain of unsolved violent crimes around San Francisco,
They wouldn't anyway.
Although they should do both.
Funny, that's exactly what the cops told me... (Score:5, Interesting)
But you think theft(and this is, according to the law, theft-- even if Hogen didn't slip it out of the guys back pocket) shouldn't be enforced until... all violent crime is solved?
Funny, that's exactly what the cops told me. "We can't investigate the theft of your car, we're too busy chasing murderers."
They told a buddy of mine, "We can't investigate the burglary of your house, we're too busy chasing rapists."
They told a woman I know, while she was still in the emergency room, "We can't enforce your restraining order, we're too busy chasing murderers."
Following each excessive force complaint, the cops reflexively claim, "We don't have time to mess around and be polite. We're chasing killers."
So, yeah, the cops exactly argue they shouldn't investigate theft until all violent crime has been solved.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
A task force specifically created to investigate crimes against large corporations?
How is that NOT a "pet police force?"
Who said it had anything to do with "large corporations"? In fact, their most common investigations seem to involve identity theft and online computer fraud, two areas that affect individuals at least as much as "large corporations".
And those are also two areas that the "regular" police forces are not trained to investigate properly, which is the WHOLE POINT of a computer/tech crimes task
Let me try to sum things up (Score:5, Informative)
(yes, I read the entire investigation part of the affidavit)
According to Brian Hogan's room mate (pg 14) an "intoxicated male" gave him a phone believing it was his. Hogan remained at the bar "a little while longer" and no one claimed the phone.
According to Powel (the employee who lost the phone) (pg 16) he states his last memory of the phone was placing it in his bag and then placing the bag by his feet.he was there till closing at 11:00 PM local time. He left when the restaurant started to close and he thinks the phone could not have remained in the restaurant more than 15 minutes.
Brian's room mate called the police because the phone was synced to her computer and Hogan's and was afraid law enforcement could get the ip address and trace it back to her (pg 12). So she was calling to absolve herself from legal issues. Also when she was shown the phone it appeared apple may have already done a remote wipe of the phone.
George Riley says (pg 12) that the phone was invaluable and that the $8500 (yes, supposedly he got $8500 total, no source on the other $2500 though) that Hogan got the phone was worth the price of the phone if not more.
Brian Hogan and someone else (sorry, I'm getting tired of finding this in the pdf) knew the police were investigating and was in the process of destroying/hiding evidence. The police went to hogan's father's house and found Hogan with his girlfriend. He said that the other person had some of the evidence. Eventually they got a hold of him and he placed the other items in front of a church.
Only other gem I found in there is a quote as stated by brian's room mate when she urged him not to sell the phone as it would ruin Robert Powel's image he told her "Sucks for him. He lost his phone. Shouldn't have lost his phone"
Wtf? (Score:3, Insightful)
It is not reasonable to expect other people to guard your secrets. Don't put them out into the open.
Bringing litigation against Gawker Media for trade secret violations would be an abuse of the legal system and, I think, irresponsible. Apple would essentially be attempting to acquire compensation for misplacing their own device.
Thieves (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple also told the police that the publication of Gizmodo's story was "immensely damaging" to the company, because consumers would stop buying current generation iPhones in anticipation of the upcoming product. Asked the value of the phone, Apple told the police "it was invaluable."
As far as I'm concerned they're both thieves. But, that's just me.
-[d]-
Re:The cop committed perjury or he's very bad at m (Score:4, Insightful)
best of my knowledge.
There's the problem.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Last I checked, $8500 - $5000 is $3500, not $2500.
Calculated on an Intel chip.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Where on Earth did they get $100 US Treasury notes?! Some fives were issued in the sixties, but all I have in my pocket is this Federal Reserve junk.
-Peter
Re:Hrmm (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sure getting the house raided and the guy near arrested tops that.
Not according to Steve Jobs ;-)
She did it to avoid getting caught up in the rest of this sht. Seems like she was the only one who thought that this could come back to bite them in the ass. She was right.
Re:Hrmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Seems to me that her roommates are the ones acting in bad faith here by using her computer while dealing with something that is obviously of shady legal ground.
Re:Hrmm (Score:5, Insightful)
Read the part where the cops were allowed a warrantless entry into 247 Hillview. Dumb move. Hogan, by cooperating with the cops, ended up getting his own cell phone seized. He also ended up implicating himself. No warrant, no search. No statements unless legal counsel is present, who will tell you to SHUT YOUR F*ING MOUTH! Because nothing you say can be used to help you, but it can and will be used against you, as this case demonstrates.
Not to mention that you can't use a digital camera to "make a copy of the phone". It's a digital camera, not a replicator.
Re:Hrmm (Score:5, Funny)
Not to mention that you can't use a digital camera to "make a copy of the phone". It's a digital camera, not a replicator.
Hey, it's the new 4G iPhone - anything is possible!
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You might want to check the definition of a trade secret. It is no longer a trade secret once its leaked [wikipedia.org].
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If I find the formula for Coka-cola in a bar because an employee of Coke left it there, it's no longer a trade secret due to Coke's negligence. I can't be convicted of subsequently selling a trade secret because I obtained it legally, and it l
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The worst I ever did was explode vomit in a bathroom then fall into a drunken sleep for my female roommate to clean up.
I'm sure getting the house raided and the guy near arrested tops that.
Prioritees. I would rather be near arrested and have my 15 minutes of fame than clean up your puke.
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Prioritees. I would rather be near arrested and have my 15 minutes of fame than clean up your puke.
Indeed, this persecution is better publicity than Gizmodo could have ever bought.
Now even the regular apple joe-sixpacks who aren't hardcore fanbois know about Gizmodo.
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It's not unthinkable they'll be blackballed. Even by Apple's rivals.
Re:Hrmm (Score:4, Informative)
Lesson learned: deal with the Giz, you might be in the Shiz.
...how did anything Gizmodo did in any way cause him to be arrested? They were very discrete about his name, it was his roommate who busted him.
Re:Greedy, but now without defense (Score:5, Informative)
Unfortunately this story makes it clear that the "finder" knew that the phone belonged to someone named Powell before he sold it to Gizmodo. Did Gizmodo know? Well they knew that the seller wasn't the owner. That's what the warrant and investigation are trying to find out. If Gizmodo knew the identity of the owner before the money changed hands, then they are in trouble.
Re:Greedy, but now without defense (Score:5, Insightful)
And in their first article after taking the device they published Powell's name, suggesting they knew as well...
Re:Greedy, but now without defense (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you in second grade? (Score:5, Insightful)
First of all, I haven't seen anything that says that Gizmodo or Hogan ever talked to Powell. Citation, please.
But that's not my main point. The main point is that, god, I feel like we're talking to second-graders here. Here's some very elementary moral rules that we adults teach kids in, um, elementary school:
This is all part of basic respect for other people's property. People who follow those rules don't run into trouble with the law when they find other people's lost property. Such people, finding a lost cellphone, would look through the contents of the phone to try and identify the owner or somebody who knows the owner, and then try to return within a couple of days. If they were unsuccesful in their attempts to return it, they wouldn't claim it for their own before consulting the law. What they wouldn't do is start using the phone for their own personal calls for a whole month before returning it, because that's wrong.
If Hogan and Gizmodo had followed those elementary rules, well, they'd be clear. Hogan might have started like that on night 1 (using the phone to find out the name of the guy who lost it), but it's becoming pretty clear by this point that as he realized the value of the prototype, he stopped following those rules, and his priority became how to benefit from somebody else's property, not how to return it to them.
Re:Greedy, but now without defense (Score:4, Interesting)
The lot of you crucifying Gizmodo for doing exactly what you want them to do, are a bunch of hypocrites.
Re:Greedy, but now without defense (Score:4, Insightful)
Have you been reading anything? It is illegal to receive stolen property in all states. In California's case receiving "found" property is also a crime if the finder did not do his/her best return it to the rightful owner. By your own admission, if everyone knew that the phone was "found" then they committed crimes by transferring money and not returning it to the owner. In the latest affidavit, it seems both the finder and Gizmodo knew who the owner was but did not return it. Instead Gizmodo paid money for the phone. Instead, Gizmodo dismantled and posted it. That's possible trade secret violations. Instead, Gizmodo tried to negotiate with Apple to publicly acknowledge their phone.
Re:Greedy, but now without defense (Score:4, Insightful)
Interestingly, Gizmodo did nothing wrong here.
Remind me to never hire you as my attorney. You apparently haven't read the relevant California criminal and civil code sections that have been reprinted all over the Web since this thing first hit:
In other words, if you take charge of a found object, you are as responsible for taking care of it as you would be if the owner had placed it in your care. Selling it off to the highest bidder hardly satisfies that, nor does disassembling it (and damaging it in the process), as Chen did.
They got a tip about a possible newly leaked product, they did what every news agency does, they went after it. They got it. Then they gave it back to the rightful owner, as soon as that owner was confirmed.
Nope:
The minute the finder offered it up for auction to the highest bidder, as per his room mate's statement, he was "[appropriating] such property to his own use, or to the use of another person not entitled thereto" and guilty of theft. Gizomodo, by bidding on it, was guilty of buying stolen property.
EVERYONE involved knew it didn't belong to any of the parties involved. However, that doesn't make it "stolen" and it doesn't make it illegal.
Actually, under California law, it does make it illegal. The relevant law:
In other words, the only legal thing for someone who finds lost property to do is either make a good-faith attempt to return it to it's owner or turn it over to the local law enforcement agency. If you don't wish to do either of those things, then you should just let it lie there.
If apple wanted to protect their secrets, they wouldn't have let the phone out of the building. PERIOD.
That's totally absurd. It was a cell phone. Cell phones need extensive testing out in the real world before they hit the market. Would you want to buy one that hadn't been tested out on the street first?
The lot of you crucifying Gizmodo for doing exactly what you want them to do, are a bunch of hypocrites.
No, I want Gizmodo to do good tech journalism, not write checks stolen goods. Print leaked info, by all means but do not commit felonies in the name of page hits.
Re:Greedy, but now without defense (Score:4, Insightful)
"But to his defense he can claim he was trying to verify ownership of the item."
No he can't. He specifically requested that the recognition be made *public*. Ownership could easily be verified privately, and even this was unnecessary because Gizmodo had already established to their own satisfaction that it really was an Apple device. He wanted *public* recognition for his own personal gain, and he suggests that he is unwilling to return property that he knows belongs to Apple unless he gets that recognition.
So in summary:
1. An Apple employee lost a prototype at a bar
2. A college student obtained the phone, became aware of its owner by looking at the Facebook app on the phone, yet made no effort to contact the owner. He further violated California law by failing to turn it over to the bar's proprietor (the place where the true owner was most likely to look), the police, or make truly reasonable attempts to contact Apple. Therefore, under California law, THIS WAS A STOLEN PHONE.
3. Gizmodo purchased the phone with the obvious hope that it was in fact stolen (in the sense that they hoped they would be able to discern that it truly belonged to Apple and would be able to use it for their own benefit before returning it.) After discerning that it belonged to Apple, they published information that was highly damaging to Apple's sales and their advantage over their competitors. Even though they were admittedly SURE that it was an Apple product, they were hesitant to return it until they got PUBLIC (not PRIVATE) acknowledgment, once again for their own personal benefit.
Solution? Asshole student who found the phone goes to prison. Asshole "journalist" who bought a device with the hope that it was stolen and the intent to use it for his own benefit goes to prison. Gawker Media is held liable for civil damages to Apple--likely they go bankrupt because of it.
They're all criminals, they should all pay.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Would you be this vehement if it weren't an Apple prototype?
I certainly would. Whether it was stolen from Palm, Google, or Nokia. The circumstances were still a criminal act regardless of who it was stolen from.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It would be considered stolen by any rational people.
FTFY. Because I'm a rational person and I would consider it stolen. I'm also a resident of California and I know what the law says about found property; as fellow CA residents, Mr. Chen and Mr. Hogan should have known too.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It doesn't have to be Apple's. It was certainly someone's. They didn't turn it over to the police immediately. They disassembled it and made a public show out of it. End of story. Do not pass go, do not collect $200.
Re: (Score:3)
He has Apple's internal gestapo police force mixed up with REACT which is a high tech major crimes force run by the District Attorney. What he does have right is that Steve Jobs pushed them to act on this even though the phone had been already returned. Steve Jobs got a major crimes high tech force involved to persecute the journalist because of a cell phone that he already had back in his possession.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Except that they knew it was Apple's already, so the claim is simply bullshit.
Re: (Score:2)
But to his defense he can claim he was trying to verify ownership of the item.
I've said it before and I'll say it again If Woody had gone right to the police, this would never have happened.
Re:Apple just needs to stand down (Score:5, Insightful)
Jobs is going to end up (if not already) looking like a real jerk in this whole case. He just needs to swallow his pride and leave well enough alone. Apple will gain nothing by taking revenge on these people. And it is revenge. Sad.
The thief, Brian Hogan, was asked by his friends to return the phone, because the loss would likely destroy the career of Gray Powell. His answer: "Sucks for him. He lost his phone. Shouldn't have lost his phone." So to Brian Hogan I would say "Sucks for you. You stole the phone. Shouldn't have stolen the phone".
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Their only communications regarding this are through legal documents. They've not released any statements thus, they're not getting into a war of words. As time goes on, the only extra information coming out is details of the crime.
It's possible a public trial will force them to start publically laying into the people involved though.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
the room-mate was the only individual to come out of this with integrity. Good on her, is what I say.
Simon