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EFF Believes Search and Seizure of Gizmodo Editor's Computers Was Illegal
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They bought a tech device of unknown origin to investigate it and report on it (as is their job) and returned it to it's owner. They didn't sell it, keep it or lie about it.
That's hardly a nefarious act like some people are trying to make it out to be.
I would love to see the skeletons in the closets of all the people screaming "CRIMINALS!!!" the loudest. Me thinks they doth protest too much.
That's hardly a nefarious act like some people are trying to make it out to be.
I would love to see the skeletons in the closets of all the people screaming "CRIMINALS!!!" the loudest. Me thinks they doth protest too much.
There will be a new front page news story coming soon. Something to do with men with badges, shiny metal bracelets, and fingerprinting.
When that story hits, this topic will die down and all of the discussion will move to the new thread.
Rinse and repeat!
Mark
So why do you default to the position that they did NOT try? Absence of evidence does not equal absence of happening. Apparently Apple issued a case number when the finder called in and they blew him off. That is evidence for the people with access to those cases...which aint you
Methinks you don't have a clue and also don't know how to spell methinks!
Mark
Oh gee...the old "point out a typo as some sort of proof the poster is WRONG" tactic....got me. I made a spelling error so therefore I must be incorrect. :|
So you are claiming that the police in California takes direct orders from Apple?
So why do you default to the position that they did NOT try? Absence of evidence does not equal absence of happening. Apparently Apple issued a case number when the finder called in and they blew him off. That is evidence for the people with access to those cases...which aint you
The guy made a token call to be able to claim he contacted Apple. However, the number he called was a customer service number. The person he talked to expects someone to call who bought and therefore owns an iPhone and has some problem with it. That person gets a call from someone who has an iPhone but somehow it is not a real iPhone. I bet they get lots of calls from confused people. To the listener, it might as well have been someone with a Palm Pre who is just confused and thinks it is an iPhone (that happens). "Contacting the owner" is not making a phone call, it means contacting them and _successfully_ informing them that you have property that is theirs and that you want to return it.
And of course a phone call wasn't even necessary. Take an envelope, address it to "Apple, 1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino", put the phone on, put it in the mail. If you think that is too much work: There is an alternative when you find something. You can do _nothing_. You can leave the phone where it is and don't care about it. Once you pick it up you take responsibility for it.
You know, if you called my company's support line and you told them "I've got an iPhone and it is your iPhone" the person taking the call would have an immediate suspicion that you are talking about a stolen or lost iPhone, because we don't sell iPhones. We very rarely get calls about iPhones. If you call Apple customer support with the same line, they will make the obvious assumption that you bought an Apple iPhone and have some problem with it, because they get thousands and thousands of calls about iPhones every day. If you called them and said "I found this Canon camera and I think it is the property of Apple" (I guess Apple owns a few Canon cameras and someone might lose one), they would be hundred times more likely to figure out what you are talking about.
DAs tell the police what to pursue. The DAs are elected and therefore influenced by politics. So yeah...Apple has influence. If you were the owner of a one man lawnmower shop with a prototype blade stolen you wouldn't get a task force kicking down the door of your suspect for you...Apple can.
It's only gizmodo who has stated that Apple's employee lost the device.
Apple considered the device stolen.
I like your train of thought; what gizmodo did was illegal, *but* they returned the device.
ROTFL
Gizmodo ripped apart the iphone 4g, posted pictures for their own monetary gain. They should have just returned it to apple.
Also, why would they pay $5000 for a chinese knockoff? Once they saw the apple logo on the back, they knew it was real - hence the $5000 payment.
BTW, they only complied with Apple's request after they demanded that apple's request be on the record.
Apple considered the device stolen.
I like your train of thought; what gizmodo did was illegal, *but* they returned the device.
ROTFL
Gizmodo ripped apart the iphone 4g, posted pictures for their own monetary gain. They should have just returned it to apple.
Also, why would they pay $5000 for a chinese knockoff? Once they saw the apple logo on the back, they knew it was real - hence the $5000 payment.
BTW, they only complied with Apple's request after they demanded that apple's request be on the record.
Either way, I think Apple come off looking bad guys. Firstly, one of THEIR employees loses a prototype device. Yes, Gizmodo paid for and pulled the device apart online for everyone to see, but they complied with Apples written request for return (what was the time delay between first reveal online and the letter?). Now Apple are happy to sit quietly in the deep background, looking like the Dark Lords themselves, Microsoft allowing seizures of equipment, threats of criminal procedings, etc. Looks like other people are going to suffer for the extreme paranoia coming top down at Apple.
Sorry, I like their kit, but the corporate mentality that seems to exist there now doesn't bear any resemblance to the two young maverick phone freakers of the 70's that created Apple
Apple are the ones who come out of this looking bad, having had the largest amount of free pre-publicity for the new iPhone they could have hoped for!
Sure, I've seen it before. Steve Jobs, a liberal, simply makes the call and the state liberal hacks, on the take, do his bidding. That is how California works. There is no normal DA/Police force in the whole state that would bust into someone's house for a cell phone. Give me a ****ing break. You have to be shot to have the Police do anything for a normal person.
Apple should reimburse the people of California for all this BS.
What makes me laugh the most is everyone here thinks they know exactly what happened in the lost iPhone saga, when actually not a single person here knows what happened. All anybody knows, at best, is what Gizmodo told them (over and over) about how they claim they got the phone etc etc.
It also never ceases to amaze me how many people here suddenly become legal experts by either googling, wiki browsing or repeating what some guy before him had said. It's fun to speculate, but don't act like the all-knowing techno-lawyers that you're clearly not.
In my opinion, and that's all it is, an opinion, is if there was any wrong-doing by anybody in this whole lost iPhone saga, then it warrants an investigation one way or another, clearly this should be done in a legal way.
Carry on.
It also never ceases to amaze me how many people here suddenly become legal experts by either googling, wiki browsing or repeating what some guy before him had said. It's fun to speculate, but don't act like the all-knowing techno-lawyers that you're clearly not.
In my opinion, and that's all it is, an opinion, is if there was any wrong-doing by anybody in this whole lost iPhone saga, then it warrants an investigation one way or another, clearly this should be done in a legal way.
Carry on.
It's actually not the police who are to blame, it's the judge who signed the search warrant. If the police have a signed search warrant, they can search and seize what they need according to the terms of the warrant. The police essentially submit a search warrant and the judge either signs it or rejects it.
So it's not wrong for Apple to do things for monetary gain...but it IS for Gizmodo. You know I think Apple SHOULD charge reasonable prices, and use up to date components etc...but that doesn't mean they will.
The argument here is not about right and wrong....it is about fans vs reasonable people. If Apple had come across something of Gizmodo's and acted the same way people would be going on about how Apple did nothing wrong.
So you are saying that DAs in California are corrupt?
And of course there was no "task force kicking down the door". When the police comes with a search warrant, and nobody is at home, they don't have to wait until you come. They are allowed to get in. And then they have to tell the owner how to get reimbursed for fixing the door, which they did.
If I came home to find police with a search warrant, I think I would have repairmen in before they even left my home.
So imagine this. You are a very wealthy man, and one day a noted jewel thief, aware that your new young wife has an appreciation for large diamonds, approaches you saying that he is short on funds and will let you have his latest heist, consisting of $3 million market value of diamonds-- just the sort your wife adores--for a mere $1 million. You love the idea, but you are concerned about being charged with a crime. So you consult with your best friend who just happens to be an ex-solicitor from England who moved to the U.S. to take a job here. She thinks a moment and hatches a clever plot: she advises you to go into the blogging business. You blog about jewelry, who is designing what, what the mines are doing, and how jewel thieves operate. You even include some little tidbits about jewel thievery picked up during your chats with the cash-strapped thief. Naturally your "researcher" does much of the real work, but you look it over, and put your by-line on the blog. You then conduct feverish negotiations with the jewel thief via email from your MacBook Pro, and ultimately take the jewels and pay the money. You then publish a feature on your blog with photos of your wife proudly modeling her new diamonds.
Someone who had the diamonds stolen from him thinks he recognizes several pieces as being the ones he once had and calls the police. The police, in the company of an expert jeweler, carefully examine the photos on the blog and compare them to the archival photos of the jewels provided by the victim. The jeweler swears out an affidavit saying that in his professional opinion, the jewels are the same. The District Attorney takes the affidavit and an application for a search warrant to a judge asking him to issue a warrant for the sheriff to search your home and your MacBook Pro for diamonds and for any evidence of emails, appraisals, business cards, etc. Do you seriously think that the fact that you wrote a blog about your stolen jewels is going to protect you from being searched?
Someone who had the diamonds stolen from him thinks he recognizes several pieces as being the ones he once had and calls the police. The police, in the company of an expert jeweler, carefully examine the photos on the blog and compare them to the archival photos of the jewels provided by the victim. The jeweler swears out an affidavit saying that in his professional opinion, the jewels are the same. The District Attorney takes the affidavit and an application for a search warrant to a judge asking him to issue a warrant for the sheriff to search your home and your MacBook Pro for diamonds and for any evidence of emails, appraisals, business cards, etc. Do you seriously think that the fact that you wrote a blog about your stolen jewels is going to protect you from being searched?
Ugh...again a REASONABLE person would not need to force entry for this kind of thing. Yes they CAN but it is an abuse of power. No legit reason to not exhaust all efforts to have someone with a key open it. There was no NEED to be in RIGHT NOW like life safety or a danger to anyone. And yes the DA's are influenced by politics all the time...so are judges...and all other elected officials. They do not apply the same standards to everyone.
Apple take money for their own products, Gizmodo (allegedly) did not.
And no, it's not an argument over fans vs reasonable people, reasonable people respect the law, I should imagine there are a lot of reasonable people owning Apple products. It's about investigating whether a law has been broken.
Well ok only got peoples word to go on but again it is only a phone. A shiny fancy industrial designed phone. What constitutes a viable reason for the law to come in and take some ones property if the said mentioned item was returned to apple. On those grounds shouldn't this have just stopped there and then. I don't understand uk laws let alone any other laws what i find inresting is the amount of fuss and hype all of this is getting over a phone. Ah well never mind
I guess Apple see it as something other than an ordinary, available for consumers, phone. Maybe it's that?
Correct. That multi-billion dollar follow-up to the the 3GS is more than just a phone.
And if this had been something allegedly stolen from a normal person there would not be such aggressive investigation. Apple has clout and average joe doesn't.
Normal people don't produce iPhone prototypes either. Normal people own normal phones.