He's clearly very angry at Google, if you've paid attention to some of his other submissions. He just doesn't have a solid grasp of the facts, and no matter how many times it gets explained to him that he doesn't understand the situation, he just submits another stupid anti-Google story and for some reason, it gets posted by Slashdot.
That's the previous, but not the only other, one. His summary in that one starts about by suggesting that Google had originally denied this story and then were forced to "reverse themselves" when in reality they were the ones who brought it to everyone's attention (admittedly after a German regulatory body had requested copies of all the data they collected causing Google to discover the accidentally captured data in the first place).
So while Google has actaully been pretty open and honest about this whole affair, he's managed to accuse them of being lying liars in just the first few words, and then just goes on and on. I simply don't understand why nobody is fact checking this crap before posting it. This is his 3rd anti-google tirade that he's gotten posted, lord knows how many he had to submit to get 3 through.
This is the not the first time he has submitted biased garbage masquerading as fact in his own personal crusade against Google and for some reason someone keeps approving his ridiculous submissions. For gods sake, can we start out discussions out with real questions instead of "So why do hate America, Google?"
Let's take a look at some of the other crap he's submitted and has subsequently been posted:
Sigh, badmouth Apple on Slashdot and get modded down, no matter how accurate your post may be. Oh well. I expect I'll suffer the same fate, but I'll weigh in nonetheless. I have karma to spare.
You also forgot to mention that if this shift is really for security reasons, MacOS is hardly an improvement over Windows -- in fact it may well be a downgrade. It derives most of its security through obscurity, but as competitions like pwn2own show us -- if people have a motivation they will find an exploit.
It's almost twilight zoneish to say it, but Microsoft has become sort of a leader in security as of late (admittedly they are extremely late to the bandwagon) as they've embraced fuzzing and other sorts of tools that many others in the industry have not yet latched on to.
It would make perfect sense if they were moving to Linux only -- an operating system that is free in both senses of the word, but allowing continued use of MacOS but not Windows seems a bit hypocritical.
They wanted to collect MAC addresses for Geolocation. Perfectly legal, totally useful, a boon to society.
They recycled code that someone had made for another purpose without carefully checking the data it was recording. They intentionally ran this software on every Google Streetview car for years, they did not intend for it to be collecting the extra data, but were unaware.
So they thought they were only collecting one type of data, but apparently collected 600 gigs worth of packets over the years. If you think about it, this is a trivial amount of data for Google. It's easy to see how they could have not noticed it.
They never connect to anyone network for more than a second, so even if they stopped next to your house, they'd only get a single packet or two. There's NO practical value in doing this. There's no commercial value in this data. If they were doing this on purpose, you think they'd be taking as much payload data as possible, not just a packet or two per network before stopping.
Their explanation makes sense in that it seems like something that could plausibly happen. Moreover, they have no motive to break the law to collect USELESS data. With those 2 things in mind, the only logical thing to do is to believe them. It just doesn't make sense to believe they are lying when they have a reasonable explanation and no motive to have done this on purpose.
It was 600 gigabytes of data out of god knows how much total. It was easy for it to not be noticed. They intentionally collected MAC addresses. there's nothing wrong with that. The problem was that they recycled some code from another project and that resulted in the entire packet (instead of just the MAC address) sometimes being saved.
But understand we're talking about a few packets per network. This is a tiny tiny tiny amount of data. The code also switched networks every second, so we're talking about less than 1 seconds worth of traffic per network. It doesn't help Google do anything. If they say this was done accidentally, you should believe them because there's NO REASON why they would collect such useless data on purpose.
You have to be a non-technically oriented or uninformed paranoid conspiracy theorist to conclude Google this was done on purpose. When you look at the facts, it's clear that they're telling the truth. Logic should make it clear that it was accidental.
When did Google "deny" this before "reversing themselves"? They were asked to turn over data by the Germans (who have an irrational fear of having pictures of their houses taken). They looked at it first, realized there was more there than they had been intending to collect and to their credit, rather than try to delete or hide it, they announced it and issued a mea culpa.
Anyways, there's apparently no new news for this story included in the summary, so why are reposting and reshashing old stuff? This is such a non-story . . .
Technically Google did discover it themselves. They were asked for the data they had collected, they audited it internally and realized they had made a mistake. At that point, rather than try to cover it up, they came clean and admitted the error. They had only been asked to turn over the data at that point, it was still in their hands and they could theoretically have attempted to hide their mistake or claim that the data was corrupted or lost or whatever. I believe many corporations out there would have tried some shenanigans to hide this, Google came clean. They deserve some credit for that.
This is what they did already with the Irish data. Nobody has ever looked at this data. Not Google, not any government. Google didn't even realize they had it.
That they ONLY did it with the Irish data is probably a sign that other governments, like the German government, would like google to give the data to them. I'm sure Google would *love* to have deleted it all already and put this whole thing behind them, but sadly they would be accused by the German government, and no doubt others, of destroying "evidence" of their "crimes". They're stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Frankly, I've been disgusted for a while by the way the German (and EU in general) governments use Google as a punching bag. Google makes an easy target because they do aggregate so much data. That's inevitable -- you can't avoid it in their business. But they have been, in general, fairly responsible with how they've used that data. Far more so than, say, Facebook. But because Google is big and scary, politicians can distract the public from their own misdeeds with investigations and hearings into the big bad bogeyman that is Google.
Google's explanation is that they didn't do any of this on purpose and frankly it's actually a pretty believable explanation when you read the details. They intentionally sniff out Wifi access points for Geolocation on devices with no GPS (like Skyhook). Unfortunately they apparently recycled some code written for a 20% project by another employee. What they wanted was MAC addresses they could correlate them to physical locations -- what they actaully saved instead was the entire packet which also contained payload data. Understand, however, that you could learn next to nothing from 1 - 2 seconds worth of random packets from a given network (which is about all you get if you're driving through the networks). There's absolutely no reason to believe they would have intentionally collected this data because it has no obvious value to them and they've got a perfectly reasonable explanation for how it occurred accidentally.
What will punishing them beyond the negative publicity they've already gotten really accomplish here? They were truthful and honest about their mistake and did the right thing when they realized it. Honestly, the only lesson you could hope to teach Google here is that "not being evil" doesn't pay off because you're going to get screwed either way in the end.
From what I can see, people aren't using the iPad for anything new vs what they've been using the iPod touch for (aside from maybe books, which is debatable since there's always been a Kindle app for iPhone). They're just enjoying the luxury of having a larger screen to make those activities more pleasant when portability isn't as important. We all recognize that the iPod touch exists for entertainment. People see it as a toy, not a computing device.
The iPad is no different, so why does Apple want to pretend its a revolution? If there's a revolution, then it was the iPod touch -- if that's not a revolution because it's just a toy, then the iPad isn't a revolution either. It's an old revolution in a new form factor that, despite great sales, nobody ever really considered to be a revolution. The only new market segment here is perhaps some older people who either couldn't handle the iPod touches smaller size or didn't realize what it might have to offer them -- for everyone else, it's just new version/form-factor of an existing hit product.
Some Apple defenders will get all antsy if you call the iPad a "large iPod touch" (despite how ridiculously accurate that description is) because they see it as an attack -- but frankly, far from being an attack on the iPad, it's actually a very fair assessment of everything that is *good* about the iPad. The only reason people take issue with what is otherwise a compliment is simply because Apple has told them that the iPad is supposed to be "magical" and "revolutionary" and not just "another iProduct". Apple: Nobody is buying the "revolution" -- but people are buying the iPad. Just leave the hyperbole aside and sell it for what it is. I promise people will still buy it.
So uncanny is the iPad's ability to destroy Netbook sales, it reached into the future and began causing their decline before its release and even before its announcement. That's amazing!
I don't think it's ok to sell things you don't own. I just don't think that's what happened in this case. I won't bore you by rehashing the contents of this thread, so I'll simply advise you to read the parent posts.
As a side note, it's a damn shame that whenever Apple is involved in a story, any sort of perceived criticism of Apple results in bad moderation. It seems to be the one bias that Slashdot, taken collectively, cannot overcome. Any criticism of Apple, no matter how utterly reasonable, will result in you being modded down as a troll and/or Flamebait.
I wouldn't be thrilled, but if he sells it to someone who says "We just want the story. We'll take pictures of everything in the wallet, but then return all of it to the owner" then I'd certainly prefer that to never finding the wallet again. I mean, the key point your argument seems to be forgetting is that Apple got their property back without the police having to get involved. It's kind of hard to argue theft in light of that. Clearly an effort was made to return it, because it got returned. I don't know how the courts will sort this out, but I imagine that's the bottom line that it will come down to.
If you take your time returning something, accept cash in exchange for allowing a 3rd party access to it, and then leave it to the 3rd party to return it to its rightful owner have you "stolen" that found item? Are you a thief only if they don't return it, or are you a thief either way?
If you claim you own it and then sell it, so that that the buyer is left with the impression that he now owns it -- then that's a far more cut and dry scenario. Clearly you've just sold something that wasn't yours, but that's clearly not what happened here. I don't think Gizmodo ever believed they "owned" the phone in question, so you can't really say they "bought it". It's more like they bought the "story".
Apple acts just like Microsoft, worse perhaps. Google on the other hand, says and does all the right things -- though sometimes they make silly mistakes that breed ill-will.
Still, I can't imagine Google knocking on someone's door and asking permission to search their house. That takes balls of steel. I mean, "What the hell?" How is a corporation going to ask permission to search your residence? I guess we should be glad they asked permission . . .
You're being disingenuous as you know perfectly well that I'm suggesting no such thing. If I had to guess, I'd assume that you've made this an open and shut case because you've got a personal attachment to Apple that has enabled you to feel "victimized" by extension. But whatever the reason is, you're definitely oversimplifying things.
In reality, its hardly black and white. The situation is ethically on shaky grounds and legally murky ones. I'm hardly suggesting that everything is fine, just that it's not nearly as easy to sort out as you seem to think.
It was either a very valuable Apple prototype, or a worthless knockoff that didn't even work. When the finder tried to call Apple to return it, the person he spoke to naturally assumed it was the latter and told him it was probably just a knock-off and not to worry about it.
Gizmodo was able to confirm that one way or the other and they were going to pay him $5k for the story and promised to return the phone for him. That's a win/win for the guy. Yes, turning it into the police gets it back to Apple too -- but not necessarily any faster (since they hadn't reported it missing). So why turn down the money?
Taking the money obfuscates his true motive. It makes it unclear whether he intended to do the right thing with incidental profit, or the wrong thing. But it only *obfuscates* his intent, it doesn't make it overtly sinister as some people have assumed.
1) Wrong. They paid $5000, and got the actual device itself.
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.
Again, just a matter of perspective. He got paid $5k AND he gave entrusted them to return the phone for him. If he sold them the phone, there would be an expectation on the part of Gizmodo that they now "owned" the phone, which is clearly not hte case as they contacted Apple when they published the story and said "if you want your phone back, just confirm its yours". Clearly Gizmodo did not think they "owned" the phone, so they could not have been said to have "bought" it.
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?
Why not? He had news. They pay for news. If he could get the phone returned AND get paid, why not do both? Sure, it obfuscates his true motives -- but it does not, as you seem to be suggesting, making them obviously sinister.
No kidding you're not a lawyer.
And does that put me at a disadvantage to you? I would doubt it, based on your Judge-Judyesque analysis of the facts. My point is that this situation is not cut-and-dried. Maybe on the People's Court you can cut past all the BS and just say "If you got paid, you must have been selling it", but I'm pretty sure in a real court you'd have to prove it -- and that would be a very hard thing to prove.
I suppose. He could just say he doesn't trust the police. He knows their underpaid and that an iPhone prototype is worth way more than $5k in the *wrong* hands and so he simply didn't trust that it would get back to Apple if he did that.
I don't know this guy, neither does anyone else posting here I'm guessing. I do know that he could have tried to sell it to Apple's competitors (the less reputable ones who make knockoffs, perhaps) for more than $5k. It seems like he did really want the phone to get returned to them, he just saw a way to make some money simultaneously. Two birds, one stone -- but I'm just guessing what his perspective was.
Revealing Apple trade secrets is only a crime if Apple gives them to you and says "Do not reveal this". If you read the California Statute (which has been copy/pasted a bajillion times), it clearly states this.
In other words, you can charge an Apple engineer with revealing trade secrets -- but if he accidentally cc's you on an email containing trade secrets, you can tell anyone you like.
You and I and Gizmodo are under no obligation to help Apple keep Apple's secrets. That's not our job. It would be an unfair burden to place upon us -- a limit to our freedom. Imagine if I emailed you 1000 of Apple's trade secrets and now the law compelled you to keep them a secret. Imagine how you have to edit yourself to avoid accidentally spilling the beans. Do you understand now why this isn't a crime? If you are not employed by Apple, you shouldn't have to do their job (protecting secrets) for them.
1) The owner was unknown 2) The bartender could not necessarily be trusted to return something he believed might be valuable.
Instead of the bartender, a different 3rd party in the form of Gizmodo seemed like a better option. Gizmodo could definitely be trusted to return the phone to Apple (if it was indeed theirs) and they would have the resources to confirm that it was truely Apple's phone.
In other words, rather than "stealing" it, he simply outsourced his duties as finder to a 3rd party -- much as if he'd left in the car of the bartender. Moreover, he didn't sell the phone itself, but rather the "story". Both he and Gizmodo knew full well neither owned the phone and that the plan was to return it -- and, for the record, the phone was returned before the police were involved.
I'm not saying that's exactly how it went down, just that there's clearly more than one side to this. It's not as cut and dry as you say.
But lets face it, that's most likely what this is all about -- finding out his source. Calling it stolen goods seems like a bit of a stretch, given what we currently know.
It's a dreamworld called California. You know how sometimes Journalists go to jail for refusing to disclose their sources? Well some states have laws that actually protect Journalists from that, even though courts have upheld that the first ammendment does not necessarily afford them that protection.
Also, Apple doesn't get warrants. I don't know what country you live in that Corporations are empowered not just to be treated as individuals, but also as independent law enforcement branches -- but I do NOT want to visit.
Also, to be charged with revealing "trade secrets" you have to have been given those secrets with an expectation that you would keep them. In other words, you could charge an Apple executive with revealing trade secrets, but if they accidentally left some trade secrets on the bus and you posted them on the internet, they can't do anything to you. It's the same thing with "Confidential" material from the government. If the government gives it to you, and you reveal it, that's treason. If you find it on the bus and publish it, that's just being a journalist.
Of course, IANAL, and I welcome corrections from someone who says they are, but I have a vague enough understanding of the law to know that you really have none whatsoever.
The only reason they would waste their time prosecuting Gizmodo or any of its editors would be pure intimidation. I mean, the story is simple:
They didn't buy the phone itself. They bought the story. The finder wanted to return the phone to its rightful owner and couldn't confirm it was Apple and didn't trust that the bartender wouldn't just sell it once he realized it was valuable. When Gizmodo bought the story, he asked them to take on the task of returning the phone to it's rightful owner -- which they did. The phone was returned before the police were involved.
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.
At any no time, as money was changing hands, did anyone believe that they owned the phone in question. Both parties understood the phone belonged to neither of them and that Gizmodo would take on the responsibility of returning the phone, which they did.
Now here's your challenge as a prosecutor. Prove thats not true.
Unless you can find video tape of Jason Chen accepting the phone and then exclaiming "Hell yeah, we totally own this phone now and do not intend to return it unless contacted by the lawyers of a large consumer device corporation. High Five!" then I suspect that's going to be a hard thing to prove. But of course, the standard IANAL disclaimer applies here.
Gawker has lawyers on staff and they clearly signed off -- moreover, word is that Gizmodo and Engadget were in a "bidding war" over the story, so its hard to confirm that Engadget's lawyers told them "hands off".
More than likely they're just after his computers to find out the identity of the guy who sold the phone to them (or if you prefer, the guy who sold them the story and asked that they return the phone on his behalf), not really to go after Gizmodo directly. Oh sure, it probably doesn't hurt that it functions as a helpful bit of intimidation for the next gadget blog that finds a lost prototype on their doorstep.
Slashdot Mirror
He's clearly very angry at Google, if you've paid attention to some of his other submissions. He just doesn't have a solid grasp of the facts, and no matter how many times it gets explained to him that he doesn't understand the situation, he just submits another stupid anti-Google story and for some reason, it gets posted by Slashdot.
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/05/29/0818219/Google-Describes-Wi-Fi-Sniffing-In-Pending-Patent
That's the previous, but not the only other, one. His summary in that one starts about by suggesting that Google had originally denied this story and then were forced to "reverse themselves" when in reality they were the ones who brought it to everyone's attention (admittedly after a German regulatory body had requested copies of all the data they collected causing Google to discover the accidentally captured data in the first place).
So while Google has actaully been pretty open and honest about this whole affair, he's managed to accuse them of being lying liars in just the first few words, and then just goes on and on. I simply don't understand why nobody is fact checking this crap before posting it. This is his 3rd anti-google tirade that he's gotten posted, lord knows how many he had to submit to get 3 through.
This is the not the first time he has submitted biased garbage masquerading as fact in his own personal crusade against Google and for some reason someone keeps approving his ridiculous submissions. For gods sake, can we start out discussions out with real questions instead of "So why do hate America, Google?"
Let's take a look at some of the other crap he's submitted and has subsequently been posted:
Here we have: Are Googlers too smart for their own good?
http://developers.slashdot.org/story/10/05/21/1427245/Are-Googlers-Too-Smart-For-Their-Own-Good
And here we have the first "expose" on the conspiracy that Google has perpetrated on us all by intentionally collecting payload data on Accident:
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/05/29/0818219/Google-Describes-Wi-Fi-Sniffing-In-Pending-Patent
Sigh, badmouth Apple on Slashdot and get modded down, no matter how accurate your post may be. Oh well. I expect I'll suffer the same fate, but I'll weigh in nonetheless. I have karma to spare.
You also forgot to mention that if this shift is really for security reasons, MacOS is hardly an improvement over Windows -- in fact it may well be a downgrade. It derives most of its security through obscurity, but as competitions like pwn2own show us -- if people have a motivation they will find an exploit.
It's almost twilight zoneish to say it, but Microsoft has become sort of a leader in security as of late (admittedly they are extremely late to the bandwagon) as they've embraced fuzzing and other sorts of tools that many others in the industry have not yet latched on to.
It would make perfect sense if they were moving to Linux only -- an operating system that is free in both senses of the word, but allowing continued use of MacOS but not Windows seems a bit hypocritical.
You clearly didn't read the full explanation.
They wanted to collect MAC addresses for Geolocation. Perfectly legal, totally useful, a boon to society.
They recycled code that someone had made for another purpose without carefully checking the data it was recording. They intentionally ran this software on every Google Streetview car for years, they did not intend for it to be collecting the extra data, but were unaware.
So they thought they were only collecting one type of data, but apparently collected 600 gigs worth of packets over the years. If you think about it, this is a trivial amount of data for Google. It's easy to see how they could have not noticed it.
They never connect to anyone network for more than a second, so even if they stopped next to your house, they'd only get a single packet or two. There's NO practical value in doing this. There's no commercial value in this data. If they were doing this on purpose, you think they'd be taking as much payload data as possible, not just a packet or two per network before stopping.
Their explanation makes sense in that it seems like something that could plausibly happen. Moreover, they have no motive to break the law to collect USELESS data. With those 2 things in mind, the only logical thing to do is to believe them. It just doesn't make sense to believe they are lying when they have a reasonable explanation and no motive to have done this on purpose.
It was 600 gigabytes of data out of god knows how much total. It was easy for it to not be noticed. They intentionally collected MAC addresses. there's nothing wrong with that. The problem was that they recycled some code from another project and that resulted in the entire packet (instead of just the MAC address) sometimes being saved.
But understand we're talking about a few packets per network. This is a tiny tiny tiny amount of data. The code also switched networks every second, so we're talking about less than 1 seconds worth of traffic per network. It doesn't help Google do anything. If they say this was done accidentally, you should believe them because there's NO REASON why they would collect such useless data on purpose.
You have to be a non-technically oriented or uninformed paranoid conspiracy theorist to conclude Google this was done on purpose. When you look at the facts, it's clear that they're telling the truth. Logic should make it clear that it was accidental.
When did Google "deny" this before "reversing themselves"? They were asked to turn over data by the Germans (who have an irrational fear of having pictures of their houses taken). They looked at it first, realized there was more there than they had been intending to collect and to their credit, rather than try to delete or hide it, they announced it and issued a mea culpa.
Anyways, there's apparently no new news for this story included in the summary, so why are reposting and reshashing old stuff? This is such a non-story . . .
Technically Google did discover it themselves. They were asked for the data they had collected, they audited it internally and realized they had made a mistake. At that point, rather than try to cover it up, they came clean and admitted the error. They had only been asked to turn over the data at that point, it was still in their hands and they could theoretically have attempted to hide their mistake or claim that the data was corrupted or lost or whatever. I believe many corporations out there would have tried some shenanigans to hide this, Google came clean. They deserve some credit for that.
This is what they did already with the Irish data. Nobody has ever looked at this data. Not Google, not any government. Google didn't even realize they had it.
That they ONLY did it with the Irish data is probably a sign that other governments, like the German government, would like google to give the data to them. I'm sure Google would *love* to have deleted it all already and put this whole thing behind them, but sadly they would be accused by the German government, and no doubt others, of destroying "evidence" of their "crimes". They're stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Frankly, I've been disgusted for a while by the way the German (and EU in general) governments use Google as a punching bag. Google makes an easy target because they do aggregate so much data. That's inevitable -- you can't avoid it in their business. But they have been, in general, fairly responsible with how they've used that data. Far more so than, say, Facebook. But because Google is big and scary, politicians can distract the public from their own misdeeds with investigations and hearings into the big bad bogeyman that is Google.
Google's explanation is that they didn't do any of this on purpose and frankly it's actually a pretty believable explanation when you read the details. They intentionally sniff out Wifi access points for Geolocation on devices with no GPS (like Skyhook). Unfortunately they apparently recycled some code written for a 20% project by another employee. What they wanted was MAC addresses they could correlate them to physical locations -- what they actaully saved instead was the entire packet which also contained payload data. Understand, however, that you could learn next to nothing from 1 - 2 seconds worth of random packets from a given network (which is about all you get if you're driving through the networks). There's absolutely no reason to believe they would have intentionally collected this data because it has no obvious value to them and they've got a perfectly reasonable explanation for how it occurred accidentally.
What will punishing them beyond the negative publicity they've already gotten really accomplish here? They were truthful and honest about their mistake and did the right thing when they realized it. Honestly, the only lesson you could hope to teach Google here is that "not being evil" doesn't pay off because you're going to get screwed either way in the end.
From what I can see, people aren't using the iPad for anything new vs what they've been using the iPod touch for (aside from maybe books, which is debatable since there's always been a Kindle app for iPhone). They're just enjoying the luxury of having a larger screen to make those activities more pleasant when portability isn't as important. We all recognize that the iPod touch exists for entertainment. People see it as a toy, not a computing device.
The iPad is no different, so why does Apple want to pretend its a revolution? If there's a revolution, then it was the iPod touch -- if that's not a revolution because it's just a toy, then the iPad isn't a revolution either. It's an old revolution in a new form factor that, despite great sales, nobody ever really considered to be a revolution. The only new market segment here is perhaps some older people who either couldn't handle the iPod touches smaller size or didn't realize what it might have to offer them -- for everyone else, it's just new version/form-factor of an existing hit product.
Some Apple defenders will get all antsy if you call the iPad a "large iPod touch" (despite how ridiculously accurate that description is) because they see it as an attack -- but frankly, far from being an attack on the iPad, it's actually a very fair assessment of everything that is *good* about the iPad. The only reason people take issue with what is otherwise a compliment is simply because Apple has told them that the iPad is supposed to be "magical" and "revolutionary" and not just "another iProduct". Apple: Nobody is buying the "revolution" -- but people are buying the iPad. Just leave the hyperbole aside and sell it for what it is. I promise people will still buy it.
So uncanny is the iPad's ability to destroy Netbook sales, it reached into the future and began causing their decline before its release and even before its announcement. That's amazing!
I don't think it's ok to sell things you don't own. I just don't think that's what happened in this case. I won't bore you by rehashing the contents of this thread, so I'll simply advise you to read the parent posts.
As a side note, it's a damn shame that whenever Apple is involved in a story, any sort of perceived criticism of Apple results in bad moderation. It seems to be the one bias that Slashdot, taken collectively, cannot overcome. Any criticism of Apple, no matter how utterly reasonable, will result in you being modded down as a troll and/or Flamebait.
I wouldn't be thrilled, but if he sells it to someone who says "We just want the story. We'll take pictures of everything in the wallet, but then return all of it to the owner" then I'd certainly prefer that to never finding the wallet again. I mean, the key point your argument seems to be forgetting is that Apple got their property back without the police having to get involved. It's kind of hard to argue theft in light of that. Clearly an effort was made to return it, because it got returned. I don't know how the courts will sort this out, but I imagine that's the bottom line that it will come down to.
If you take your time returning something, accept cash in exchange for allowing a 3rd party access to it, and then leave it to the 3rd party to return it to its rightful owner have you "stolen" that found item? Are you a thief only if they don't return it, or are you a thief either way?
If you claim you own it and then sell it, so that that the buyer is left with the impression that he now owns it -- then that's a far more cut and dry scenario. Clearly you've just sold something that wasn't yours, but that's clearly not what happened here. I don't think Gizmodo ever believed they "owned" the phone in question, so you can't really say they "bought it". It's more like they bought the "story".
Apple acts just like Microsoft, worse perhaps. Google on the other hand, says and does all the right things -- though sometimes they make silly mistakes that breed ill-will.
Still, I can't imagine Google knocking on someone's door and asking permission to search their house. That takes balls of steel. I mean, "What the hell?" How is a corporation going to ask permission to search your residence? I guess we should be glad they asked permission . . .
You're being disingenuous as you know perfectly well that I'm suggesting no such thing. If I had to guess, I'd assume that you've made this an open and shut case because you've got a personal attachment to Apple that has enabled you to feel "victimized" by extension. But whatever the reason is, you're definitely oversimplifying things.
In reality, its hardly black and white. The situation is ethically on shaky grounds and legally murky ones. I'm hardly suggesting that everything is fine, just that it's not nearly as easy to sort out as you seem to think.
It was either a very valuable Apple prototype, or a worthless knockoff that didn't even work. When the finder tried to call Apple to return it, the person he spoke to naturally assumed it was the latter and told him it was probably just a knock-off and not to worry about it.
Gizmodo was able to confirm that one way or the other and they were going to pay him $5k for the story and promised to return the phone for him. That's a win/win for the guy. Yes, turning it into the police gets it back to Apple too -- but not necessarily any faster (since they hadn't reported it missing). So why turn down the money?
Taking the money obfuscates his true motive. It makes it unclear whether he intended to do the right thing with incidental profit, or the wrong thing. But it only *obfuscates* his intent, it doesn't make it overtly sinister as some people have assumed.
1) Wrong. They paid $5000, and got the actual device itself.
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.
Again, just a matter of perspective. He got paid $5k AND he gave entrusted them to return the phone for him. If he sold them the phone, there would be an expectation on the part of Gizmodo that they now "owned" the phone, which is clearly not hte case as they contacted Apple when they published the story and said "if you want your phone back, just confirm its yours". Clearly Gizmodo did not think they "owned" the phone, so they could not have been said to have "bought" it.
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?
Why not? He had news. They pay for news. If he could get the phone returned AND get paid, why not do both? Sure, it obfuscates his true motives -- but it does not, as you seem to be suggesting, making them obviously sinister.
No kidding you're not a lawyer.
And does that put me at a disadvantage to you? I would doubt it, based on your Judge-Judyesque analysis of the facts. My point is that this situation is not cut-and-dried. Maybe on the People's Court you can cut past all the BS and just say "If you got paid, you must have been selling it", but I'm pretty sure in a real court you'd have to prove it -- and that would be a very hard thing to prove.
I suppose. He could just say he doesn't trust the police. He knows their underpaid and that an iPhone prototype is worth way more than $5k in the *wrong* hands and so he simply didn't trust that it would get back to Apple if he did that.
I don't know this guy, neither does anyone else posting here I'm guessing. I do know that he could have tried to sell it to Apple's competitors (the less reputable ones who make knockoffs, perhaps) for more than $5k. It seems like he did really want the phone to get returned to them, he just saw a way to make some money simultaneously. Two birds, one stone -- but I'm just guessing what his perspective was.
Revealing Apple trade secrets is only a crime if Apple gives them to you and says "Do not reveal this". If you read the California Statute (which has been copy/pasted a bajillion times), it clearly states this.
In other words, you can charge an Apple engineer with revealing trade secrets -- but if he accidentally cc's you on an email containing trade secrets, you can tell anyone you like.
You and I and Gizmodo are under no obligation to help Apple keep Apple's secrets. That's not our job. It would be an unfair burden to place upon us -- a limit to our freedom. Imagine if I emailed you 1000 of Apple's trade secrets and now the law compelled you to keep them a secret. Imagine how you have to edit yourself to avoid accidentally spilling the beans. Do you understand now why this isn't a crime? If you are not employed by Apple, you shouldn't have to do their job (protecting secrets) for them.
He'll say:
1) The owner was unknown
2) The bartender could not necessarily be trusted to return something he believed might be valuable.
Instead of the bartender, a different 3rd party in the form of Gizmodo seemed like a better option. Gizmodo could definitely be trusted to return the phone to Apple (if it was indeed theirs) and they would have the resources to confirm that it was truely Apple's phone.
In other words, rather than "stealing" it, he simply outsourced his duties as finder to a 3rd party -- much as if he'd left in the car of the bartender. Moreover, he didn't sell the phone itself, but rather the "story". Both he and Gizmodo knew full well neither owned the phone and that the plan was to return it -- and, for the record, the phone was returned before the police were involved.
I'm not saying that's exactly how it went down, just that there's clearly more than one side to this. It's not as cut and dry as you say.
But lets face it, that's most likely what this is all about -- finding out his source. Calling it stolen goods seems like a bit of a stretch, given what we currently know.
It's a dreamworld called California. You know how sometimes Journalists go to jail for refusing to disclose their sources? Well some states have laws that actually protect Journalists from that, even though courts have upheld that the first ammendment does not necessarily afford them that protection.
Also, Apple doesn't get warrants. I don't know what country you live in that Corporations are empowered not just to be treated as individuals, but also as independent law enforcement branches -- but I do NOT want to visit.
Also, to be charged with revealing "trade secrets" you have to have been given those secrets with an expectation that you would keep them. In other words, you could charge an Apple executive with revealing trade secrets, but if they accidentally left some trade secrets on the bus and you posted them on the internet, they can't do anything to you. It's the same thing with "Confidential" material from the government. If the government gives it to you, and you reveal it, that's treason. If you find it on the bus and publish it, that's just being a journalist.
Of course, IANAL, and I welcome corrections from someone who says they are, but I have a vague enough understanding of the law to know that you really have none whatsoever.
The only reason they would waste their time prosecuting Gizmodo or any of its editors would be pure intimidation. I mean, the story is simple:
They didn't buy the phone itself. They bought the story. The finder wanted to return the phone to its rightful owner and couldn't confirm it was Apple and didn't trust that the bartender wouldn't just sell it once he realized it was valuable. When Gizmodo bought the story, he asked them to take on the task of returning the phone to it's rightful owner -- which they did. The phone was returned before the police were involved.
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.
At any no time, as money was changing hands, did anyone believe that they owned the phone in question. Both parties understood the phone belonged to neither of them and that Gizmodo would take on the responsibility of returning the phone, which they did.
Now here's your challenge as a prosecutor. Prove thats not true.
Unless you can find video tape of Jason Chen accepting the phone and then exclaiming "Hell yeah, we totally own this phone now and do not intend to return it unless contacted by the lawyers of a large consumer device corporation. High Five!" then I suspect that's going to be a hard thing to prove. But of course, the standard IANAL disclaimer applies here.
Gawker has lawyers on staff and they clearly signed off -- moreover, word is that Gizmodo and Engadget were in a "bidding war" over the story, so its hard to confirm that Engadget's lawyers told them "hands off".
More than likely they're just after his computers to find out the identity of the guy who sold the phone to them (or if you prefer, the guy who sold them the story and asked that they return the phone on his behalf), not really to go after Gizmodo directly. Oh sure, it probably doesn't hurt that it functions as a helpful bit of intimidation for the next gadget blog that finds a lost prototype on their doorstep.
Sorry Steve, -1 Flamebait.