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Apple Security Chief Steps Down After iPhone Gaffe

Posted by timothy on from the don't-go-to-bars-any-more dept.

Trailrunner7 writes "Apple's vice president of global security has reportedly stepped down, roughly two months after the surfacing of news reports that an iPhone prototype had gone missing for the second time in less than two years. John Theriault, who came to Apple from Pfizer and was a former FBI agent, has retired in the wake of controversy regarding the device's disappearance and the subsequent efforts to track it down. Apple did not return a request for comment. Nevertheless, Theriault's departure follows a public relations dustup that began when an Apple employee left the prototype at a bar in San Francisco."

8 of 93 comments (clear)

  1. But what more could he have done? by Compaqt · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Kudos to him for taking responsibility, but:

    The one iPhone was lost at a bar.

    Is he saying that he should have had 2 security men following each Apple employee around during work and outside of work?

    I'm sure there was more than one person working on the next version of the iPhone at that point.

    And security can promulgate all the edicts they want, but people who "have work to do" either have them overturned or find a way a around them.

    Seriously, what more could he have done short of implementing a police state?

    --
    I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
    1. Re:But what more could he have done? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The better question might be "what less could he have done"?

      The 'controversy' over the handling of the lost iPhone includes the bit where Apple security flacks allegedly impersonated police officers in order to conduct an illicit search of somebody's house...

      For a company of Apple's stature, with extensive offshore manufacturing and significant interest from both highly-visible tech-rumor-bloggers and 3rd party accessory makers who want to have their tooling done before the competition, the leak level is pretty good. Getting the company embroiled in a potentially messy criminal case, though, is one of those 'career limiting' moves...

    2. Re:But what more could he have done? by obarthelemy · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The issue is not so much that a prototype was lost, but how they handled the retrieval efforts, passing themselves off as police, making immigration threats...

      --
      The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
    3. Re:But what more could he have done? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Arguably, if Apple wanted the investigation to have been conducted in accordance with US law, they wouldn't have hired an FBI agent...

    4. Re:But what more could he have done? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      This is how you end up with really shitty phones.

      The whole iPhone 4 antenna issue came about because Apple required employees to use cases during field testing, after all.

    5. Re:But what more could he have done? by turbidostato · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "Kudos to him for taking responsibility"

      How said he is taking responsibility (in the sense of "yes, it's my fault")?

      There are two kinds of responsibility-related resignations:
      1) As a way to say "I failed, I don't deserve this position".
      2) As a way to say "I tried to do my job but the higher ups don't allow me to do it properly: I won't continue under these circumnstances".

      No where in the article nor the links there's indication about what's the case here.

    6. Re:But what more could he have done? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      You don't impersonate police officers, by omission or commission. You don't pretend it is an episode of CSI or a rerun of 'Enemy of the State".

      The guy was a former FBI agent. The FBI has been breaking the law with impunity for many years. Why should Apple be any different?

  2. To my knowledge, at least 4 of the 4S's were lost by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    To my knowledge, at least 4 of the 4S's were lost.

    In addition, I know it took Apple security days to get back to the reporting person when they reported the phone lost immediately after the loss was noted.

    Apple has also been pretty arbitrary on whether or not it fires someone who loses a prototype. My expectation is that there is the strong possibility that if one of the people who was fired for the same thing another employee wasn't fired over, and the only difference was how fast Apple security reacted, they'd have a good case for wrongful termination (yes, this is a hint; you know who you are). I'm afraid I'm a little more cynical than that, and I think that the other correlating factor, how close were the persons RSUs to vesting, probably played a factor in the firings I know about.

    Ever since Steve's decline started, it's left all the former Sun middle managers they've hired driving the bus, and the likely destination is the same place Sun ended up in their bus. If their increasingly draconian employee policies don't cause their talent to flee, then Tim Cook's statement that they had "3 years worth of Steve's Ideas" should, since that clock started ticking about one and a half years ago.

    -AC