Apple Security Chief Steps Down After iPhone Gaffe

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."

Comments

Hmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

he should have used Find my iPhone.

But what more could he have done?

[Compaqt]

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?

Re:But what more could he have done?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

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...

Re:But what more could he have done?

[obarthelemy]

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...

Re:But what more could he have done?

[hedwards]

That's silly, the obvious answer is to just glue the phone to the employee. Also attach it via some sort of leash.

Re:But what more could he have done?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

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

Re:But what more could he have done?

[ColdWetDog]

This may have more to do with the second 'lost' iPhone which was handled very poorly by all reports.

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". Apple has never been forthcoming about what happened (if anything). Sounds like a screw up from the folks running the show.

Re:But what more could he have done?

[93 Escort Wagon]

That's silly, the obvious answer is to just glue the phone to the employee. Also attach it via some sort of leash.

Nonsense - we've seen the real solution right here on Slashdot.

Cut off one of the employee's arms and replace it with a prosthetic. Then embed the phone in the prosthetic.

Re:But what more could he have done?

[nightfell]

It wasn't the fact that the iPhones were lost. It's possible there were different policies he could have implemented, but the risk of loss is impossible to circumvent. I suspect this has to do with the way the losses were handled after the fact.

Impersonating police officers (through deceptive statements and actions, even if never explicitly claiming to be a police officer or wearing a police uniform or badge, thus technically avoiding criminal misconduct) is certainly something Apple management is not comfortable with. Given his past professional career, this seems like something ingrained into his security style, and wouldn't be a practice he would be able to sufficiently alter in the future.

Frankly, although I'm sure he's good at what he does, it's good that he left Apple. The two just weren't a good fit.

Re:But what more could he have done?

[Sancho]

They wanted them to leave the building. They needed to be tested in a variety of conditions, not just all in relatively small location.

Re:But what more could he have done?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:But what more could he have done?

[sp1nl0ck]

As far as putting the devices on a leash is concerned, maybe the employees who lost them didn't want to pay for tethering.

Re:But what more could he have done?

[turbidostato]

"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.

Re:But what more could he have done?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

The truth of the allegations is unknown, at present; but 'consent' obtained by fraud, deception, or coercion is not generally recognized as valid. And, of course, impersonation of a police officer is a crime in itself in California.
We don't know whether the situation played out as alleged; but if it did, it amounted to criminal activity...

Re:Maybe they need to rethink their policy...

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Even after this article you still believe that?

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

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Will the police help me if I lose my cell phone?

[mykos]

I would love to have Dial-A-SWAT at my disposal for losing a single cell phone like Apple does.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Will the police help me if I lose my cell phone

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

I would love to have Dial-A-SWAT at my disposal for losing a single cell phone like Apple does.

Yeah? Well, here's how you do it:

• Start an American technology company.
• Create a highly successful line of cell phones. If you're at the success level that other companies are changing their designs to be like yours, you're a good chunk of the way there.
• After three successful generations, do a complete redesign with tantalizing new features.
• Set up your release schedule to be fairly routine so people know when to expect it. The more time overseas competition will have to deaden the impact of your new device, the more SWAT team members you'll get.

Okay, once you reach this point, you'll get the 'Dial-A-Swat' service from virtually any city your HQ is in. You're free to lose your phone, then. There are other ways, too, but they all involve that phone being worth millions of dollars.