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Authorities Begin Evidence Examination in Gizmodo iPhone Case
- Thread starter Mark Booth
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Dude, I work in the legal field in the area. The Santa Clara County DAs care no joke... Also, DAs generally don't take cases that are iffy. They like clear cut wins.
Nice!
You made your point, even though it is the San Mateo County DA office.
You SF folks confuse everything outside city limits don't you? (650, 510, 408, San Mateo County, Santa Clara County, BAT people, those pesky Marin people with 415 phone numbers, et cetera).
You made your point, even though it is the San Mateo County DA.
You SF folks confuse everything outside city limits don't you? (650, 510, 408, San Mateo County, Santa Clara County, BAT people, those pesky Marin people with 415 phone numbers, et cetera).
Good Catch, I keep thinking this happened in San Jose for some reason. Jxx belongs to San Mateo then. DAs care about their bating averages more than anything else in the whole world, esp. in public cases. The fact that they took this case seems to indicate that 1) they're gonna teach someone a lesson and 2) they're confident that they're gonna be the ones doing the raping and not the other way around. Also, I'm not sure how wealthy Gawker is as a company, but a really good team of lawyers from MoFo (for instance) will cut through even the bulkiest bank accounts like a hot knife through butter.
San Mateo County is one of the more affluent counties in California. The DA's office has a pretty high conviction rate, considerably better than that of SF (if I recall correctly).
Lam and Chen have essentially disappeared off the planet since the iPhone incident. I doubt that cheapskate Nick Denton will pony up for a pricey lawyer for those guys. With Gizmodo's silence, they're basically insinuating guilt. I have no doubt that Denton will distance himself from his erstwhile minions and have no hesitation dropping them like hot potatoes when they settle out of court.
It will be interesting to see if civil charges are eventually filed. Even an out-of-court settlement by Gawker Media might be enough to severely curtail operations or even shut down the whole thing.
What do I think of that possibility? No comment.
Several things.
First of all, mainstream journalists are unlikely to be sympathetic, not because the phone was or wasn't stolen, but because Gizmodo paid for it at all. Such "checkbook journalism" (paying for stories of whatever kind) is despised by real reporters.
Second, it is incredibly implausible that Hogan (the "thief/finder") stole the iPhone knowing or believing it to be the iPhone 4G (or whatever its end up being called). Is the hypothesis that he's been waiting around outside the Apple campus then tailing people who go to bars and rifling through their bags to find iPhones? I mean, seriously, that's just ridiculous. If he did steal it, then it seems most likely that he stole it believing it to be a regular 3GS with a value of a few hundred bucks. This makes him an ordinary thief, not some kind of mastermind. From what I've read about him, it seems possible, but unlikely, that he's the sort of guy that would steal an ordinary iPhone. People that steal things like that usually have a prior criminal record.
Third, if Hogan's actions make him seem guilty (and they do seem to give that appearance), then it's equally true that Chen's actions make him seem innocent. He made so secret whatsoever of possession of the phone, nor a serious attempt to disguise its origins. The traditional test of legal insanity is whether the accused would have done exactly the same thing "with a policeman standing at his elbow". Chen basically did what he did with a policeman at his elbow given his public and voluntary disclosure of his actions. This is not to say that I think he's insane (or that a court would find similarly) but it does show that he had a good-faith belief in his own innocence.
Who cares? The problem is that he sold it.
It seems he sold it.
He bought it.
The law believes otherwise.
Well, except that Cameront9 actually did use "your" correctly.
"You're" is a contraction of "you are". Had Cameront9 used "you're" rather than "your", his sentence would have expanded to this:
That doesn't make much sense, now does it?
Now, the fact that Cameront9 forgot to terminate his sentence with a full stop (period), on the other hand... ;-)
(I make no staunch claims to the grammatical inerrancy of my post, though I'm fairly certain it's entirely 'a okay'. Correct me if I'm wrong.)
Find me the statute in CA penal code that applies in making a stolen iPhone prototype more of a crime than another type of phone. The concept of "yeah, well you know how it *really* works (wink, wink)" is not on the law books in CA. Sort of like seeing cops pull over a black man in a ritzy neighborhood for DWB (driving while black) and saying "yeah, well, its wrong to do that, but we all know how the system *really* works (wink, wink)". Its reprehensible to accept wrongdoing by the authorities as something that's just the way it is.
Sorry, but bustiong down a guy's door with a multi-unit task force to gather evidence over a phone that may have fallen under the "lost" catagory morethta "stolen" was a clear abuse of power by the police.
The law being you? No one has been charged with, much less convicted of, a crime so it's quite a leap to speak of the law believing anything at all.
Lol, of course not. It is illegal to sell others' people stuff and it is illegal to knowingly buy it. Very clear, hardly a leap. They will be charged, don't worry.
Well, considering that Steve Jobs already said as much in a well-publicized interview, oh, Tuesday, they wouldn't need to sift through Steve Jobs personal records to glean that whopper. Not that they'd successfully subpoena his records either way.
An affidavit requesting a search warrant is not the same thing as a criminal complaint.
Apple did not write the affidavit; the detective on the case wrote the affidavit (under oath) based on interviews with several witnesses, including Brian Hogan and his roommate, not just Gray Powell.
The request was also based on Brian Hogan and his friend Thomas Warner deliberately attempting to conceal evidence, and then admitting as much to the detective. (I.e. they told the detective where they hid the evidence after he confronted them.)
Even if you discount the part of the affidavit where the detective documents Gray Powell's and Apple's side of the story, the fact that Jason Chen publicly stated that he had purchased the stolen (i.e. illegally commandeered mislaid) iPhone is reason enough for any judge to grant the search warrant.
Apple didn't need to paint Gizmodo in an unflattering light. Gizmodo and its accomplices did quite a fine job without them.
Apple did locate the phone. Apple personnel visited Brian Hogan's apartment and requested that they be allowed to search for the phone. For obvious reasons, they were not permitted to do so.
Of course, whether or not Apple attempted to locate the phone has no bearing on whether or not the phone was stolen and subsequently sold.
You must be new here.
(CA state law says commandeering mislaid property for your own gain == theft. A million and one people hear have already quoted the actual law, and I'm to lazy to look it up. Of course there's also always trade secrets, extortion, yada yada yada...)
I'm not talking about whether or not a crime was committed. That is to be determined. I am talking about the manner in which law enforcement and the DA charged ahead in this case, like they were apprehending a terrorist. How does that compare to what would have happened if *my* phone was lost. And what influence did Apple have in how the case was investigated.
Yes. Let's expand the analogy even more:
You claim that you doubt that the diamonds aren't even real, even though you're a jewelry industry gossip blogger, and you wouldn't have your job if you weren't able to positively identify a fake upon sight.
Further, you claim that "you just didn't know they were stolen", despite the fact that you are intimately familiar with the products of the diamond dealer whose name is embroidered on the bag, and you know that said dealer would never let secret diamonds like these be shown, much less sold to anyone.
You publish an expose on your blog in which you identify the diamonds as an unannounced product of the diamond dealer. You attempt to extort a written confirmation of authenticity from the diamond dealer before you return the diamonds to him. In the extortion letter, you admit that you know that the diamonds are real. You then publish the written confirmation to your blog.
Jason Chen isn't an idiot, at least when it comes to the authenticity of Apple products. Neither is Brian Lam. Nor Brian Hogan.
On the other hand, Jason Chen *sucks* at plausible deniability.
California Penal Code Section 487. Theft of value exceeding four hundred dollars is classified as "Grand Theft". Theft of a commercially sensitive prototype is almost always going to be "Grand Theft".
Man, some of this pretzel logic is giving me a headache.
Some of the twisted thinking reminds me of the stuff you might tell your parents to get out of trouble. And when they "buy it" you think you really pulled one over on them. Most of the time they knew it was BS and just didn't want the aggravation. Have a feeling that the "finder" and the "buyer" think they are going to weasel out of this with some convoluted "story". They won't. This is the real world. Which is why parents who let their kids slide on transgressions aren't doing them any favors. They end up enabling the kids and having the kids think they are smarter than they really are.
Some of the twisted thinking reminds me of the stuff you might tell your parents to get out of trouble. And when they "buy it" you think you really pulled one over on them. Most of the time they knew it was BS and just didn't want the aggravation. Have a feeling that the "finder" and the "buyer" think they are going to weasel out of this with some convoluted "story". They won't. This is the real world. Which is why parents who let their kids slide on transgressions aren't doing them any favors. They end up enabling the kids and having the kids think they are smarter than they really are.
"Almost Always" seems to be the guiding principle in this case, just like "maybe" and "could be". Right now, the phone has no determined value, though the DA has operated like it has. Sorry, this is government overreaction at best, misconduct at worst.
Surely you aren't suggesting that your phone is equally important as a multi-million dollar iPhone prototype? If that is what you are suggesting, then please explain what important secrets you have contained in your phone!*
You are just another member of the "it's just a phone" crowd. Get over yourself. It was a multi-million dollar prototype device that was illegally taken, illegally sold, illegally damaged, and illegally taken apart and displayed to the world. All of which are FELONIES.
* Nude photos of yourself in compromising positions don't count!
Mark
