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Search Warrant For Lost Next-Generation iPhone Ordered Unsealed

koach said:
The reason people are so bent out of shape about this is because this is further proof that our country has become a corporatocracy.

If I had lost my phone (my personal phone or even some invention I was creating in my garage as part of my plan to create a new product and start a company), and someone found/bought it and returned it back to me, I PROMISE that there would be no police investigation like this. They wouldn't be issuing search warrants, busting down doors, sealing court documents.

Corporations have more privileges than ordinary citizens with none of the responsibility. A lot of people like myself are tired of it. But as long as our government is bought and paid for by lobbying and campaign contributions, it will never change.
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How many people have held off buying an iPhone because there's *proof* that a new version exists? Apple has lost a ton of money from this. They have a right to take action. It's an unreleased product.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows CE; IEMobile 7.11) Sprint PPC6850SP)

As the spaghetti turns: I wonder... how many of the breathless anti-"corporatocracy" partisans on this thread, ever donated a dollar or an hour of volunteer time to any of the nonprofit public interest orgs that actually do fight the good fight? Somehow I doubt it. --- And "Journalist"? Recently 2 public-spirited journalists, the latter also a historian of journalism, Nichols & McChesney said when publicising their latest book ("The Death and Life of American Journalism") that the dive in jouralistic quality due to greedy publishers & broadcasters slashing budgets, means that now corporate publicists often pre-write and plant stories, through journalists no longer given the time and $ to do real reporting any more. Their stats show that the ratio of publicists to reporters gets worse every year. Now I realise, that's what the lesser gadget blogs do when they "report" lists of features on the latest toy, regurgitated from the manufacturer's press releases. Or when Chen talks of phoning Apple's PR office. --- You can spin all the snark you want, and edit out any inconvenient facts, with more emotion than Rush Limbaugh's know-nothing rants... but an orderly cross-examination will have a way of untangling the BS. Is the last chapter Chen suing his employer for the advice it provided? And the kid suing Chen for the advice he provided? And then I can sue Gawker to recover the minutes I've wasted reading their "journalism" blogs. Methinks, a tempest in a very smelly teapot.
 
Too many idiots and wannabe lawyers. Bottom line is Hogan tried to peddle the phone. He knew what he probably had and thought he could make some easy cash. WTF ever happened to doing the right thing? How the Apple guy lost it is irrelevant. If he was intoxicated that was poor judgment. But the bottom line is that Hogan didn't try to return it. And he should do time for that. He may be an immature punk who made a stupid decision, but it was his decision to try to cash in on the lost phone. Giz will regret their actions, too, but at this point, I'm thinking it sucks to be Hogan.
 
Noodlefarmer said:
But the bottom line is that Hogan didn't try to return it. And he should do time for that. He may be an immature punk who made a stupid decision, but it was his decision to try to cash in on the lost phone. Giz will regret their actions, too, but at this point, I'm thinking it sucks to be Hogan.
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If charges are ever filed, Hogan will burn up his iPhone earnings on attorney fees, even if the case never goes to court. He's probably thinking that he should have just handed his phone number to the bartender and hoped for a minimal reward. I doubt if he'll ever do time behind bars (unless he has a previous criminal record). He'd probably get a nice big fine and spend some in the sheriff's work program doing some roadside landscaping.

As for Gizmodo, Denton's so cheap, he'll probably settle out of court to keep the attorney fees down, then unceremoniously fire Chen and Lam, leaving them high and dry. Gizmodo will be the last tech media jobs those guys have in their lives.
 
ctdonath said:
Get in the car, drive the 23 miles to 1 Infinite Loop, walk in the front door, and say "I want to see Steve, I have his phone."
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Or, if you don't want to drive that far, just say, "Steve, meet me at at the place where you had coffee with Eric recently," then drive to Calafia Cafe in Town & Country Center.

But I agree that the Apple campus is a better, more secure venue. The security staff can kick out photographers off of private property.

;)
 
nwcs said:
(slightly altered)

"...Here are some results from our phone-in poll: 95% of the people believe Apple is guilty. Of course this is just a television poll, which is not legally binding; unless Proposition 304 passes, and we all pray it will."
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I see what you did there. (gotta love Kent Brockman)

The iphone/gizmodo leak threads seem to devolve pretty fast, probably because the reality is that none of us know enough to draw any real conclusions. I guess it is fun to watch though... sort of...
 
FFArchitect said:
It's Apple's phone. The problem with them reporting it is what?
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Not much. The cops wanted their snitch to be secret a while longer, but they lost on that one. Normally, a warrant is sealed ten days, but it can be longer. The judge who granted the warrant was presiding over a trial, so the judge who first heard the request wouldn't intervene, because judges don't do that unless there's an obvious error. Now the original judge came back and said, no, make it public.

If others didn't who the snitch was -- I mean, the young woman who rightly spoke to police -- then that's sort of blown.
 
koach said:
Except that is not what happened. The police went to Chen's house AFTER the phone was returned. If I went to the police station and said "John Smith at 123 Main St. bought my phone from some guy on a street corner, but then gave it back to me. will you search John's house and look to uncover evidence as to who sold it to him?" I would get laughed out of the police station for such a request.
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Dude, that is a lame analogy and you know it. If Engadget had taken some Apple employee's 3GS iPhone and then returned it I am sure that the police would have the same response as you described in your post when Apple came calling.

However, the obvious difference is Engadget bought a stolen prototype phone and then PROFITED from that crime. Also, as and aside I am pretty sure that your phone is not worth over $400 dollars, let alone 8500, to a tech blog so stealing it would not even count as a felony. However, this crime is a felony and therefore a more serious crime.

On the other hand, if someone bought your stolen bank card and then returned it to you AFTER they had removed $50 000 from your account (50,000 is just a random guess at how much Engadget could have made in profits from the increase in Ad sales from this crime) I am sure that you would expect the police to look into the matter as well.
 
TuffLuffJimmy said:
Why? With lost goods they can request proof of ownership.
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Right, and one might argue they actually have the duty to do that before handing the phone over to Apple.

But the device never should have made it into their hands in the first place. Common-sense efforts to return the phone to its owner (e.g., turning it over to the bartender when found; giving it to the police; contacting Gray Powell through his Facebook/LinkedIn, both of which they knew) were never made. Even if Gizmodo didn't know for sure that the device belonged to Apple (which is questionable, since the "finder" of the device told them that he had confirmed that it belonged to an Apple engineer), one thing they did know for certain was that the phone didn't belong to them or to the person they bought it from. That makes it "stolen" under the law. Buying and selling of stolen goods is a felony, and Gizmodo bought the device with the sole purpose of making a profit from it.

And what they can't do in the meantime, while waiting for Apple to confirm whether its theirs, is dismantle it and take photos of corporate secrets (a felony) or damage it (a felony). Gizmodo did both, and they were aware that they were doing so at great cost to Apple.
 
Dmac77 said:
Yeah well NBC announced that there aren't going to be anymore Law & Order episodes today, they canceled it:(

Don
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Yes but L&O Los Angeles is scheduled to debut next fall...

So even better...

edit: Swift beat me to it. :)

As for them wanting not to do the wrong thing by not giving the phone to someone who it did not belong to... that boat sailed when they knowingly purchased stolen property.
It is a little silly to claim they were withholding from returning it to Apple because they wanted to do the right thing. That is especially disproven by the extortion letter sent by Gizmodo where he specifically says he wants a letter from Apple so he can publish it and make money.
 
Lam deserved what he got

I ask you back for my property, and you expect me to write a formal letter requesting it back?!?!?!?!? :mad:

Lam is such an @$$-clown and deserved the stormtroopers upending his house. I wish I could have helped.

Steve TRIED to be nice. Brian LamE forced Uncle Steve's hand.

:apple: FTW
 
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