Slashdot Mirror
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..."
Wait, what? Journalists are immune from having their computers seized? In what dreamworld? They have the exact same first amendment protections as the rest of us. No more, no less. If Apple can get a warrant (which they obviously can), those computers are fair game, along with anything else that might be relevant to the charges.
The only reason that, traditionally, journalists had extra privileges was because they worked for large litigious media outlets who wouldn't put up with that horseshit, and the government was rightfully wary. These days, not so much.
Apple has a long history of suing people over trade secret violations, and since all you have to have to be a "trade secret" is simply to be arguably valuable, and, you know, secret, it's not hard to do. In this case I imagine they're looking in to charging them for full-on corporate espionage (which is a felony) and which the guy may be open to, depending on how he obtained the phone.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
If only this would kill the "This is just an apple PR Stunt" meme...
There is no way apple would be so outrageously stupid to bring in the police if this was just a matter of a PR stunt: the potential damage would be huge.
Instead, this really is about an inadvertant (or deliberate?) leak and did involve stolen property.
But I doubt it, those who see a Great Apple Conspiracy behind the V4 iPhone leak will not change their minds.
Test your net with Netalyzr
Gizmodo clearly. One should know that it's illegal to purchase stolen goods.
When the Gizmodo punks outed the name of the Apple Engineer who lost the phone for, as near as I could tell, no good reason other than to pile on, I lost all sympathy for them. This wasn't a whistle-blower story exposing corporate crime or government misdeeds. It was just a punk profiting off of another person's misfortune.
Enjoy your interactions with the Criminal Justice System, Mr. Chen.
Selling something that you know doesn't belong to you is against the law. Plain and simple.
... and you can enjoy yours (as long as someone doesn't sell it out from under you).
Buying something that you know doesn't belong to the person who's selling it is against the law. Plain and simple.
If those concepts are foreign to you then please let us enjoy our country
That's what it comes down to, really. Your First Amendment rights do not trump knowingly engaging in or abetting unlawful activity. Otherwise, you would have the media encouraging people to do illegal things, just so they could have their fifteen minutes of fame, then the "reporters" can protect them as confidential sources. Even if Gizmodo can make the case that they are journalists and deserve the protection of their sources, the problem is that they admitted they knowingly paid money to procure trade secrets. Would there have been any doubt about the legality of such an action had, say, Microsoft or Google bid on the phone instead of Gizmodo? Do you think a single one of their lawyers would have actually thought such a thing might be a good idea?
Journalism used to be about uncovering truth. It doesn't mean journalists are magically immune from the law and are protected from indictment and prosecution should their methods of uncovering the truth involve illegal activities, such as knowingly purchasing stolen property. No reasonable person can believe that the person who originally obtained the phone made the appropriate effort to return it to Apple. And Gizmodo dismantled the phone, presumably to confirm it was made by Apple, and published that information once it was discovered that was the case. But the fact that they knew the name of the engineer who lost the phone, and knew he was an Apple employee, means they should not have needed to dismantle the phone in the first place to confirm its provenance.
How hard would it have been for Gizmodo to call up Apple and ask "hey, did you lose a phone?" As much as I personally would have been interested in news about an iPhone 4G, even I'm not that incompetent. Then again, everyone knows such a device has been under development. They've released a new model every year around the same time. Just freaking wait and be patient like everyone else. It's just a PHONE for fuck's sake.
Gizmodo = fucked. And deservedly so, for doing something so obviously stupid and illegal, then bragging about it.
First off, he *says* he called apple. Second, The law doesn't care who you call. What matters is that you return the item either to owner, the place you found it, or to the police. This guy did not of those things and then sold it for $5,000.
Theft.
Nothing indicated that they were trying to arrest Jason. They want info as to whom sold the found iPhone. That sounds more like a felony. Gizmodo was not trying to sell it or keep it. But is a source protected in such a case of a physical item being the 'leak'? My guess is that reporters are only protected from revealing sources of info where the original info is still in the hands of the owner.
OK a new size TV
Where is the crookery?
Some selling stolen property is the criminal part here.
"Under a California law dating back to 1872, any person who finds lost property and knows who the owner is likely to be but "appropriates such property to his own use" is guilty of theft. If the value of the property exceeds $400, more serious charges of grand theft can be filed. In addition, a second state law says any person who knowingly receives property that has been obtained illegally can be imprisoned for up to one year."
Gawker threw out all the journalist reputation they may have built up by outing the guy who had lost the device in question. They posted his personal information in exchange for some page views.
Lindsay Lohan steals an Escalade, goes on a high-speed chase up PCH, shows up at jail with a load of blow in her pants, and two years later the cops are all "hey, if you could show up for a deposition or something that would be, kind of, you know, cool and stuff."
One hardware nerd loses a phone and suddenly it's a goddamned national disaster. ZOMGMANTHEBATTLESHIPS!
Under California law, lost property over a given value (and a prototype iPhone certainly qualifies), you are obligated to make a credible effort to return it to the owner
He did: he published the fact that he found an iPhone 4G prototype on Gizmodo in great detail, and as soon as Apple called, they got their prototype back.
Neither the finder nor Gizmodo are obligated to respect Apple's trade secrets.
"...and knowingly having purchased stolen property."
I'm not getting how you concluded this part. Up until the time Gizmodo examined and concluded the device was actually Apple's property, they could not have known it was a lost prototype and who knows whether they had verified that a credible effort had not been made to return it.
1. go to Apple campus and lose my wiped-out phone there?
2. Apple campus janitor puts it in their lost&found, notifies the police (or just sends it to the police's lost&found)
3. If nobody collects (within whatever time lost&found store things, a couple weeks?), the janitor/Apple campus/police are one phone richer.
4. Profit!
My sig will be released in 2015 third quarter. Rating pending.
Ok, you are absolutely right and the person in questions deserves some jail time. But what the fuck is up with pound me in the ass prison glee?? Do you think that people going to jail (for purchasing stolen goods, mind you!), should be raped? Should we make this an official part of the jail sentence, to be fair?
1) Wrong. They paid $5000, and got the actual device itself.
2) A thief would say that. And we know he's a thief because he sold the device that he didn't actually own.
You're in fantasy land now. If the possessor of the phone's intention was to use Gizmodo to find the true owner of the phone, why did he ask and receive $5000 from Gizmodo?
iPhones are not designed to be opened by end users. Doing so can cause damage. Yet Gizmodo opened the case to take photographs. Thats no more the action of someone taking on a responsibility to return a phone, than the payment of $5000 was. Gizmodo's only concern was to buy a stolen phone so they could photograph is and make a story bout it. The offer to return it only came AFTER they published, at which point they weren't in a position NOT to offer to return it.
The payment of $5000 for a phone that was not owned by the seller is plenty enough evidence to convict on. That much is clear even from what is publicly known. The search warrant may provide further evidence.
No kidding you're not a lawyer.
Unless Gismondo signed a "Non Disclosure Agreement" they are entitled to reveal "trade secrets". There is no more a law forbidding that than a law forbidding me to reveal where my cat hid the dead budgie.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
If it was a trade secret, probably shouldn't have been off campus in a bar, huh?
Seriously, is this story bringing out the worst Apple apologists? They're using the law to intimidate (again), because something didn't go their way. Steve Jobs is basically evil, and those of you with a huge confirmation bias need to check your heads.
There's people getting scammed on the internet daily that have ALL of the information on the criminal at hand, and the police, 9 times out of 10, tell you it's a civil matter and that they can't help. I've experienced it first hand.
Except in those cases, the "thief" doesn't actually give you your stuff back... Reality is, if this weren't' a large corporation who clearly influenced the raid, absolutely nothing would have happened from a criminal/law enforcement perspective.
Name me *ONE* case of someone "stealing" $5,000 worth of goods (read: it was left somewhere by its rightful owner), returning it, then being raided by police.
Rather than entrusting the phone to a 3rd party such as the bartender at the bar where the phone was found, the finder believed a 3rd party like Gizmodo was more likely to be trustworthy and more likely to be able to ascertain the true owner. It's not an unreasonable assumption to have made.
His choices were more like "turn it in to the police and get a pat on the head (if that), or give it to Gizmodo and get a fat check".
Gee, I wonder why he chose Gizmodo.
At any no time, as money was changing hands, did anyone believe that they owned the phone in question.
I don't think you understand how "selling stolen property" laws work. You don't get out of it just by saying "neither of us believed we were transferring ownership of the property in question". Or do you think the "I'm not guilty of selling stolen property - my buyer and I both knew the painting belongs to the museum!" excuse should fly?
By your logic, it's not possible to be guilty of buying or selling stolen property unless you're actually innocent. In other words, you've got it exactly backward.
If you know the device is not yours, and you give it to a third party in exchange for money - I don't believe for a second he would have given it to Gizmodo for free - then you've sold stolen property. It doesn't matter whether either party believes you're transferring ownership or not. The guy who found the phone shouldn't have given up after he couldn't get a hold of anyone at Apple who would know whether it was missing; he should have given it to the police.
"California law regulates what you can do when you find lost property in the state. Section 2080 of the Civil Code provides that any person who finds and takes charge of a lost item acts as "a depositary for the owner." If the true owner is known, the finder must notify him/her/it within a reasonable time and "make restitution without compensation, except a reasonable charge for saving and taking care of the property." Id. 2080. If the true owner is not known and the item is worth more than $100, then the finder has a duty to turn it over to the local police department within a reasonable time. Id. 2080.1. The owner then has 90 days to claim the property. Id. 2080.2. If the true owner fails to do so and the property is worth more than $250, then the police publish a notice, and 7 days after that ownership of the property vests in the person who found it, with certain exceptions. Id. 2080.3."
That's what the law says. Is that what happened? No? Then maybe you shouldn't crack wise.
You can't possibly be stupid enough to think that making a perfunctory phone call (even if he's telling the truth) relieved him of the obligation not to sell someone else's property. That's not the way the law works. Whoever the thief was clearly knew what he had and he sold it to Gizmodo because he knew its value. An honest man would have at least given it to the bartender at the bar when it was found. Period.
Just because you can't contact the owner doesn't mean you get to sell something that doesn't belong to you, otherwise every thief would just say "well I wrote them a letter! Not my fault they didn't get it.". If you find something you're suppose to try and contact the owner and if you can't turn it over to the police. Gizmodo is completely guilty of buying stolen goods. They knew without a doubt that the item they bought did not belong to the person they bought it from. That's the definition of receiving stolen goods.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
Is it stealing if you return a lost item to the owner before said owner reports it stolen?
Because that's exactly what happened here.
What kind of asshole reports a lost item as stolen after he gets it back?
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
No, it's a matter of law. Framing your excuse in just the right way doesn't generally get you off the hook.
"prove that's not true"
/.er. I found your car keys so I drove your exotic sports car around for a few weeks to find you. I then sold it to a dealer who said they'd return it to you. They drove it, dismantled it, and published some photos and videos before they finally gave it back to you even though they knew it was yours the whole time. I wasn't selling the car, I was selling a story about the car. Prove that's not true.
dear
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
"He reached for a phone and called a lot of Apple numbers and tried to find someone who was at least willing to transfer his call to the right person, but no luck. No one took him seriously and all he got for his troubles was a ticket number."
That's a start - and more effort than I had previously heard about - but still is not really enough considering what the finder had. Not because it was some precious unreleased Apple device, but because it was a GSM cellphone. A finder could easily have popped out the SIM card to look at its labeling.* From there, a finder could have contacted the carrier and asked that the carrier request the subscriber to give him a call for return of the device. It defies belief that none of these experienced tech journalists would have realized this possibility existed.
The finder and the journalists had ample opportunity to do this right, but they chose not to. Now the consequences are upon them, and it's hard for me to work up much sympathy.
[*: Given there's only one carrier in the US which is known to use that SIM form factor, it shouldn't have been much of a challenge to discover the carrier even absent a SIM label.]
With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter. -- William Lloyd
Oh, we know none of them owned it. It was never owned by anyone but Apple. The fact that you don't own something you have in possession is not a defence against having stolen it, nor having bought stolen property. It's NEVER owned by those people.
The fact that money changed hands in one direction, and stolen property came the other way is quite enough to establish the fact that they bought stolen goods. Regardless of whether they were eventually going to return it to Apple.
If I steal your car / "find it", pass it onto another person, who then promises to give it to you if you go pick it up, 4 weeks after it was stolen. 1 week after it was sold. Having been dismantled in the meantime, and used to make money in a photoshoot. That still counts as theft and buying stolen property.
He did his due dilligence, and got no response whatsoever. So nothing illegal happened here.
Your list does not contain the final act that is required for due dilligence (and to not be breaking the law), which is to give it to the police.
That is the ONLY acceptable step after attempting to return it, even if you skip attempting to return it.
If the final step is not returning it to the police, you committed a crime.
Crimes are indeed illegal there.
Then I suggest you find the inconsistancies.
I prefer it the way it is: The police are investigating inconsistencies.
Finally, would your response be the same if this was Microsoft?
Yes. If someone found a super-secret XBox Phone on the floor of a bar disguised as a regular SideKick and took it home, took off it's disguise, discovered it was a super-secret prototype, called MS tech support in a paper-thin-CYA move, then sold it to Gizmodo... I would feel the exact same way I do now. Especially if they found (and kept!!) the name and work information of the actual owner of the phone on it
We only have Gizmodo's word for that. This is a site that seems to specialize in stealing stories from others to generate ad revenue. Other than this iphone crap, 9 out of 10 front page gizmodo stories are via via stories. When I saw these stories I was shocked to learn that Gizmodo actually made their own content.
They also claimed this guy's facebook app was on there and logged in. Did he try calling any numbers listed "home", "parents"? Publicly naming the guy was a dick move, and as others have pointed out they have more options to try and return it.
I studied criminal law in California in college. There is no crime without intent. If you do not intend to deprive someone of their property indefinitely, then you are not committing a crime. If I find your wallet and contact you, twice, and you REFUSE to accept it back, how am I now a thief?
You obviously didn't do very well in college law since California law (and many other states btw) say that if you find something of value (over $250) you must turn it over to the police. They did not. It is also illegal to purchase stolen goods, which Gizmodo did.
Gizmodos actions were clearly illegal.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
Due diligence, absolutely!
After all, he gave it to the bar for its lost and found.
Oh, wait, he didn't. He just took it.
Oh, but he called the bar later to see if the guy had been looking for it!
Oh, wait, he didn't. He called two news outlets to see if they wanted to buy it.
Clearly Gizmodo's source stole the phone. Given the amount the phone is worth, this is likely a felony charge. Add in some possible industrial sabotage or other statutory crimes, the thief is in trouble if he is found out. Hope he spent that $5k on some tickets out of the country.
The question is whether Gizmodo can be considered on the hook. They had to knowingly receive stolen goods.
This is a difficult question to answer. There are a lot of inferences that must be made. A jury could probably go either way, but my gut tells me they'd get off.
Still, it is likely there is enough to get this to the jury. The calculus is do you want to put your trust in twelve people, or plea out?
And Gizmodo can't rely on the First Amendment. This isn't stalking a celebrity like Gawker's used to.
Cry me a river about bloggers as journalists. You want to be called a journalist? Fine. Have the nuts to go to jail to cover a source. Also, have the ethics to cover a story like this properly.
Being a journalist comes with duties and responsibilities. If you don't want to take on those burdens, then you can't hide behind the protections journalists receive.
You took a criminal justice class on crime and think you understand criminal law?
You are correct. Generally crimes require intent. Even so, some crimes are strict liability crimes and require no intent. These are typically citation crimes (like speeding, or parking tickets).
Here, this crime requires intent. What you don't understand is what meets this intent requirement.
For example, what are the required elements of the crime of theft? Taking the property of another person without permission or consent.
But we still need intent. Adding intent might leave us with something like this: Knowingly taking the property of another person without permission or consent.
But then, there are also different levels of intent. For example, perhaps we don't want the standard for intent to be knowingly. Perhaps we want it to be purposefully. This is a stronger requirement: Not only did you need to know, but you had to do it with purpose. This is akin to premeditation.
Or, perhaps we want a lesser standard. Recklessly taking the property of another person without permission or consent. Or negligently taking it.
But all of this is academic and varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. So let me explain how intent might be found here.
A phone is sitting on a bar stool. It is not your phone. You know it is not your phone. You do not see the owner of the phone nearby. So, you take the phone.
The phone didn't fall into your pocket on its own. It wasn't there by accident. You intended to bend over and grasp the phone with your hand, carry it out of the bar, and back to your residence. You intended to do all of that.
So, there you go, your basic intent. It exists. Do me a favor -- if you get in trouble, call a lawyer and don't rely on your undergrad criminal justice course.
The real fun begins when they have to make the evidence of intent meet the standard for the specific crime. (The purposeful, knowing, reckless, negligent spectrum.) I doubt many people will view the original taker as innocent considering he didn't give it to the bar, didn't call the bar later, didn't leave it with the police, and instead sold it to someone for $5000.
But, then again, maybe someone at Gawker thought they understood "intent" because they, too, had taken an undergrad criminal justice course.
Phone number:
(510) 501-1829
Spouse:
Dixie Chen (née Xua)
Current address:
40726 Greystone Terrace
Fremont, CA 94538
Year home built:
2007
Assessed home value:
$580,000 (note: home was refinanced January 19, 2010)
Annual property tax:
$5,999.08
Note:
Jason, if it was okay to post personal information about Gray Powell to protect his job, it's okay for anybody else to post your information to protect you from getting fired. It's only fair that we do this for you!