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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..."
enGadget is owned by Time Warner... they have lawyers, and those lawyers told them not to touch this story.
Gawker apparently didn't check before the leaped... and Apple's got much bigger bucks than they do.
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.
It was only a matter of time before this happened. iPwned.
Cheers, Chris
So, does being a journalist entitle you to full immunity from the law? The police are investigating a possible purchase of stolen goods. It's not like they are trying to arrest him simply because he wrote an article about it, or because they want to censor him.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
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
Gawker media's COO has replied claiming that the warrant was served illegally due to Mr. Chen's status as a journalist.
I didn't realize that being a journalist protected you from prosecution for knowingly purchasing stolen goods. This is not about protecting sources of information, this is buying a product that is known to belong to someone else.
Nothing to worry about.
Move along.
Sent from my iPad.
I guess we can now say this whole thing was not a publicity stunt? It's seems a bit insane to go so far as engaging real-life policecops for a publicity stunt.
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
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 (the "finder" did not: after all, he never talked to the BARTENDER!) or to the police. Otherwise, it is considered stolen.
So the iPhone in question was stolen property, and Gizmodo has effectively admitted to purchasing stolen property, and knowingly having purchased stolen property.
Given that Gizmodo paid $5K for it, they could be on the hook for felony receiving of stolen property.
Test your net with Netalyzr
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.
Apple was being too quiet last week. I knew the other shoe would drop, it was just a matter of time. If Chen is lucky, the police are really more interested in the identity of the thief (if they don't know it already).
However, my guess is that the police are trying to build a strong case that Giz definitely knew it was stolen prior to paying $5000 for the device. Not sure who goes down in a situation like that: whether it's Jason Chen or Nick Denton.
http://i40.tinypic.com/29m55i9.png
Gawker media's COO has replied claiming that the warrant was served illegally due to Mr. Chen's status as a journalist.
There are two falsehoods in that statement.
Do you think ANYONE is going to buy a 3G or 3GS iPhone in the next few months, with the "V4 is in final prototype, it has a much better screen, a flash, a front camera, etc" on everybody's lips?
The value of the existing stock of iPhones easily dropped $50 a phone thanks to this, a price drop which would have been postponed by a month or two if this leak didn't happen.
This is why apple is so leak paranoid: leaks like this really contribute to the Osborne Effect
Test your net with Netalyzr
Better yet, did you read the inventory? Among other items, they "seized" a box of business cards. I can only imagine what horrible forms of evidence will be hiding there! Why, it might have his email address on them! Holy cow, better call CSI!!!
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
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.
Being a journalist doesn't protect him from charges of receiving stolen property. However, they already had written evidence to convict him of that. The only reason to subpoena all computer data is to try to discover who gave him the phone. But in doing so, they are violating the confidentiality of the journalist's source, so journalistic privilege arguably applies to protecting the identity of the original finder of the phone.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
His life is not ruined. He won't win no medal, but he's a young engineer now with a lesson burned into his brain, and that's no reason for HR to blackball him.
Gizmodo clowns, on the other hand...
Interestingly, I think Gizmodo clowns unintentionally have done the guy a favor by publicizing his name - he would surely have been canned otherwise.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
Apple has a long history of suing people over trade secret violations
Apple lost its trade secret protection when their employee left the phone at the bar. If someone had picked it up and reported on it there and then, Apple would have no legal recourse. It is not the responsibility of the world at large to protect Apple's trade secrets for them. The only thing that could result in a charge here is the fact that Gizmodo paid $5000 for the prototype.
How about emails that incriminate Jason, Jesus, or Denton that they did in fact know that the phone was stolen when they paid for it? That's a felony right there.
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!
Just like corporations expect privacy, and individuals are told that we should have no expectation of privacy. Too bad we can sue TRW for providing every creditor in the world our "trade secrets".
America has gone the wrong way. Even the tea party movement has it wrong. We don't need to fear and change the government, we need to fear and change the power corporations have over us.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
No: If there's a conviction, the government is going to want the ill-gotten gains and then some -- like several times the total. You don't send a company to jail; you fine the heck out of it. A criminal is not supposed to keep the profits, and the conviction is supposed to deter others.
I wonder what Apple wants in all this? They can bring a civil claim as well, and a conviction would make that a quick fit b/c the facts would already be established against the defendant.
Depends on where you find it, eh? California penal code 485 says that it is:
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.
"Finders keepers, losers weepers" doesn't apply in the real world.
actually it does in a great deal of cases.
http://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
Finders keepers isn't the rule generally. Even small children are taught that. Treasure in shipwrecks leads to big arguments over ownership centuries later. You don't lose you property rights just because you misplace or are deprived of something (in the old days the big problem was property that departed on its own, i.e., livestock ... the owner had to pay damages for what the critter ate or broke, but it was still his). Only if something is *abandoned* is it up for grabs. Would any reasonable person things the prototype was abandoned? Reportedly they even sought legal counsel, knowing they were pushing it.
The only reason the iPhone was worth $5k to them was that even possessing it was wrongful. Buying something from a thief, even unknowingly, also gives you no prperty right, and it's just silly for them to say it was "lost." They knew what they were doing by paying that much alone, and I'm sure more evidence will pop up when the suspects squeal on each other.
Arguably Apple's profit could be damaged here. I have no idea how they could prove that (and Apple can sue for civil damages, using the conviction as a slam-dunk proof of the facts), and I assume it will go to settlement anyway given the legal fees it would cost to defend it. It could get ugly.
Gizmodo did a very dumb thing. (Not to mention the party who found and sold the phone, knowing it wasn't his, either.) Remember though that it's the gov't not Apple that decides whether to bring criminal charges. Apple could ask them to drop it, but it sounds like they're OK with the brute force approach, or else the prosecutor wants to do what the prosecutor wants to do.
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?
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.
I can't figure out what law giz was supposed to have broken? Phone wasn't stolen.
According to CA law, selling it before giving it to the police and within 90 days while they try to contact the owner means it was stolen. Further, receiving stolen goods is also classified as theft. Now don't you think if you find an expensive device you should at least check the applicable law BEFORE you sell it. And if you find out someone has an expensive device that does not belong to them you should find out the law BEFORE you buy it?
Giz bought it to confirm what it was, because that's what they do.
Too bad that's a crime. Oh and publishing the info, probably also a violation of UTSA.
And Apple made no effort to get it back.
Actually the Apple employee who lost it went back to the bar, but the person who took it did not contact them or bring it back. As soon as Apple found out Gizmodo had it they formally requested it back. Gizmodo is screwed.
4. Apple files a police report.
Several comments here presume Apple has filed a police report. I haven't seen that stated in any of the news reports.
It's my understanding that the police don't need a complain to investigate this as a possible crime. The public nature of the event (and maybe a gentle phone call from some power broker) might be enough to capture their attention.
So if they believed the phone was a cheap knockoff, why was it worth to pay $5,000 to have it change hands?
Whatever the Apple call center rep told them, the phone finder and Gizmodo correctly concluded that he was wrong, and that this truly was a very valuable Apple prototype phone, and acted according to that belief. You don't get to claim Joe's cell phone just because you asked some dude who works for Joe and he didn't think that was Joe's phone.
Except that by California law he's required to turn it in to the police if he can't return it to the owner. So accepting money in exchange for the phone is a crime, which you're not supposed to do.
Look up the relevant California Civil Code sections. When he turns it in to the police, he makes an affidavit describing the circumstances whereby he found it, and his reasons for believing that this phone belongs to Apple. The police then contact Apple to tell them that they have received an item that may be their property.
Contrary to your implicit assumption, Apple doesn't have to go to the police and report the item missing or stolen. The process doesn't even require them to know that they lost anything. The finder must make a reasonable attempt to return it to the owner, or else, turn it to the police in a reasonable amount of time. The police then contacts the likely owner(s). And you can be sure that by getting the police involved, Apple's going to respond.
No, the money in this case reveals the two parties' true motives:
Are you adequate?
Gizmodo is nothing more than a meeting place of Apple fanbois.
You forgot to read this part:
Since there is probable cause to believe Chen received stolen property, the San Mateo County Sheriff is in the clear.
This ain't rocket surgery.
Bzzzt. Thanks for playing.
He sold it for $5000 to a third party with no control over what they did with the device. Once the phone had been removed from the premises at which it was 'found', the best people to get it back to the rightful owner would have been the police.
The person who found it repeatedly tried to contact Apple, and they ignored him. If he'd kept it for himself, you still might have a point, but he didn't. He handed it over to the people best able to get the attention of the owner.
No excuse. All he had to do was put the phone in an envelope, address it to Apple Computer, 1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino, CA 95014, and off it goes. He didn't contact "Apple", he contacted Apple customer services, who get calls from hundreds of people everyday in various degrees of confusion. If someone calls "I have your phone, and it doesn't work, I want to return it to you", how on earth are they supposed to guess that someone has found a phone that isn't _made_ by Apple, but one that is actually _owned_ by Apple?
That phone call wasn't "contacting the owner", that was an attempt to create an alibi and excuse for not returning the phone.
I have tried to deal with Apple on a number of occasions, every time it was not something I HAD to do, but something I felt obliged to do. I dutifully called them up, recorded the process, recorded the messages I left (try to get a real person there, I dare you!), and gave them more then enough time to get back to me (several days). I also left the same message on a number of relevant voice mails.
Apple just won't deal with you, they are Apple, and you are beneath them. If you are not a known kiss-up, they won't return your calls, emails, or anything else. Try, don't try, it doesn't matter, they won't get back to you. Insiders have told me that this is policy, not a fluke.
What did I contact them about? This:
http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1049921/inquirer-confirms-apple-macbook-pros-have-nvidia-bad-bump-material
Nope, no calls back. Could have saved them a big black eye though.
-Charlie
Speaking as a reporter who deals in such things, it is hard to feel any sympathy for Mr Chen. If the phone was paid for, he broke the law, period. It is one thing for someone to break an NDA and tell you something, show you something, or let you use something that they are entitled to have. It is quite another to know something is stolen, and use it. To know it is stolen, then to PAY for it, nope, no chance that this is right.
Before you say, "You don't know what you are talking about", I can point you to literally dozens of times I have seen info/roadmaps/prototypes/whatever, but not once did I ever pay for the information, or knowingly (even suspecting) break the law to do so. Others may have before they got to me, but when things were obviously not legit, I have politely declined the info.
Once you are 'known' in the industry, and have a good reputation (I think I do), you can ask for almost any info and get it, If you burn bridges, that also gets known, and nothing ever comes your way. After a short while, it is painfully obvious what is legit and what is not. No where, no way, and no how is paying for information, or worse yet prototypes, legit. Period. Hard line.
When I first heard about this, I knew it was only a matter of time before the hammer came down on Gizmodo. It was a stunningly stupid thing to do, and how any editor, much less higher ups if they knew, would have touched this with a 10 foot pole is beyond me. Unless there is something really profound that has not made the media yet, Gizmodo did wrong.
When I have similar offers/gifts/whatever come into my life, I politely decline, and usually call the company involved, tell them in general terms what happened, and tell them directly that it was declined. You usually get profound thanks, and a good deal of karma, and you don't even have to rat out your sources because nothing happened. Win/win/win/win/lose/win/win, or something like that. :)
All this said, of all the companies I have dealt with in this type of situation, the only one that are complete bastards about it are Apple. They won't return phone calls or emails even if you are really trying to help them. Not a chance.
In this case, I can't see how the Gizmodo guys didn't do wrong in the most basic way. I reserve the right to update that opinion if more evidence comes out, but the $5000 pretty much seals it. I would expect Gizmodo to go down. Hard.
-Charlie
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!