Also they weren't asking for HIS username and password, they were asking for THE username and password. There is a difference as any competent sysadmin should know. I won't give up my password to any systems here at work. Policy requires that I do not. However my password is only for my accounts. There are other accounts I have the password for, that are not mine, share accounts. There would be root on the UNIX systems, the local administrator account on the Windows systems, the enable password on the switches, the SA password on the DB server, and so on. There is only one of those accounts (and in the case of things like root, can only be one). It isn't my password on them, it is a password all the IT staff share. That password isn't something I can change to one only I know and refuse to give out, I'd get in trouble for that.
Big, big difference. Had the city said "We want your password to log in to your personal e-mail account and bank account," well ya, I'd be supporting him for saying no. However they wanted the system passwords for various devices and services that have but one master password. If those passwords were the same as his personal password that is bad security practice on his part, however there is still a solution: Change the passwords and give them the new ones (or change the password on your account).
You miss the point. They should of had a copy of THE password to the system somewhere safe. They didn't. they failed. And they blamed Terry Childs for their fuck up.
People keep saying this but where's the proof? I haven't seen any evidence of such a policy. But I admittedly have only been partially following the case.
Childs reportedly had a fractious relationship with some of his coworkers, attorneys on both sides said. He testified at trial that he never intended to harm the network but said that other employees, including his supervisors, were not qualified to have the passwords.
Childs claimed he was merely following established industry guidelines for password protection.
"You do not ever give up your username and password," Childs said.
That doesn't sound like you make it sound. Industry guidelines are not the same as company/government policy.
To be honest I think the Slashdot community is wrong to defend this guy. He sounds like an ego-maniac driven not by security, but by the sys-admin God complex. However, that's just what I think, and I could be wrong. Sans the full transcript of the trial it's really hard to say what happened. I'd love for groklaw to take a look at it too. They probably need a break from SCO shenanigans.:)
So, we are wrong because the city didn't make any backup plans for network passwords in case of something bad happening?
Thats all this comes down to. San Franisco got butthurt because they stupidly didn't have copies of the networks passwords anywhere, but with the IT admin.
No you don't. Ever. You say "Go to the safe and get them yourself. Don't forget to sign the register." When Superintendent bleats that it is needed NOW! your answer is to point them to the safe. Terry Childs did not put the passwords in the safe and deserves to go down for that.
I disagree. The decision to put passwords in a safe in the first place is above his pay-grade. It seems nobody instructed him to do so, so you can't blame him for not following a procedure that didn't exist. If anything, the blame lies on his superior(s) who failed to adequately implement a "sysadmin gets hit by bus (or fired)" plan.
totally agree. It was the city's fault for now having a backup plan.
Sheesh, people die everyday, if Terry Childs had died, then the city would of still been with out passwords and only had it's self to blame.
In fact, Terry Childs is being punished because the city failed to provide a work around system in case they lost their admin.
Not trying to be a troll here, but... and maybe I'm not understanding the whole case correctly. I've followed the articles on Slashdot for a while. In my opinion: if the city hires you, you are subservient to the city. You do not give passwords to your inferiors. Ever. You do, however, give passwords to your superiors when asked. Always. They hired you, after all. They are your bosses. If I hire a security guard for my building, he'd damn well better give me the key if I decide to fire him, or if I get locked out, or both. You don't hide data from your superiors, plain and simple, however *technologically* less advanced they might be. Maybe the city is making a mountain out of a molehill; I'm really not qualified to comment on that, since I don't know as much about the case as some of the people on here will. Honestly, though, my original point: you get hired by someone, you do what they want to do, provided it isn't illegal. I highly doubt that giving someone the password or passwords to their own systems would have been the wrong thing to do.
Here's a hint.
DO NOT FIRE SOMEONE BEFORE YOU GET BACK ANYTHING THEY HAVE OF THE COMPANIES.
You say, hand me your keys, once they do, then fire them.
I'll tell you something, if I work for you and you fire me, chances are i'm not going to be happy about being fired. So if you come to me after that asking for something back, i'm not going to make your job easier, you just fucking fired me.
If, after you've been fired, you refuse to disclose the passwords necessary for your successor to do your job, then it is no longer something they can simply "fire" you for, (as you no longer work there) so it becomes something you need to take to court, not "theft" in this case, but "denial of service" because his action of refusing to release the passwords denied them access to administer those systems.
Seems to me the boss should get the passwords before he fires the person.
A man I worked for many years ago, one of my engineering mentors, told me about a mistake made during World War Two, where a large number of very large castings were discarded because the specification called for a much smaller tolerance on the location of an exhaust port than was actually necessary. As I recall, the spec allowed it to be 1/4" away from its nominal location, but it actually was connected to a flexible hose and it could have been a couple inches off in any direction without causing any problem. This mistake wasn't discovered until several millions of dollars worth of tank bodies had been scrapped and melted down unnecessarily.
-jcr
This is the sort of stuff I like.
People who read specs, see something wrong, and decides to scrap everything, without even trying it.
I'd tell someone how to fix something over the phone and they'd start arguing with me how that doesn't work, etc. And then i find out they didn't bother to do what I said because they figured it wouldn't work because of whatever reasons. Of course, once they do what I told it, it fixes/does whatever I was trying to do.
"Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea." - Douglas Adams.
There's that, and there's also the whole "the world is flat" and "disease is caused by imbalances in the four humours of the body" ideas. The article's examples seem pretty trivial in comparison.
I had a Pacman digital watch when i was in middle school. that watch was killer at it's time.
Till i figured out the game patten and it only went to like 2999 score wise.
He also had a felony pled down to a misdemeanor in the 1990s
Apparently you don't know how the legal system works.
When you get arrested, they always want to hit you with a felon. it looks better for the cops, looks better for the stats.
Then you get your public defender, or if rich, a decent lawyer to argue with the DA, who usually will say, in first case or really stupid cases that if the defendant pleads guilty to a lesser charge, they will drop the felony.
So you get a choice. Of fighting the charge and possibly getting a felony on your record, or taking a guilty charge on a misdeamoner instead of a felony.
Obviously he took the lesser charge.
So while you can try to make it seem like he was a felon, that don't count for shit. It don't matter what he was charged with, but what the he was convicted of.
The lesson here is to do whatever your boss says, even if it is incredibly stupid and will make your job entirely unmanageable...
Well, I would have to agree that my 'inner security geek', would have had to swallow really hard a few time before stating production passwords over a teleconference with unknown people. Hell, I would expect to be fired just for doing that.
Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Sometime you just have to suck it up and go look for another job. The sad part is that Terry was probably just a conscientous civil servant, and the boss was a know-nothing political appointee. Terry had probably seen more than a few of these appointed ass-hats come and go, and figured this was just another little tempest that would blow over.
Poor guy
I don't agree.
See I was brought up that you listened to adults, your parents, church leaders, and you do what they say.
What I discovered was Adults, parents, and church leaders are all stupid ass peeps that don't care about you, just themselves.
You might get on your knees and suck your boss off when he asks, but I don't. If my boss asked me to do something illegal, i'd laugh at him. Tells me to do something that isn't in my job description? Laugh at him.
If you scared of your boss that you have to do what they say, you probably have worse problems then worry about a case like this.
People only have power over you if you let them. Once your boss gets you to do something that isn't protocol or part of your job, then he's going to have no problem getting you to keep doing it.
For example, I used to cook in restaurants, but I got tired of it, so I started working out in front. I found that once a job learns that I can do anything in that restaurant, I end up doing everything. But not doing it at the pay level I would if I was working that position.
Your boss doesn't care about you, all he cares about is the bottom line, or his boss. If you don't stand up to that, you get walked on the whole time you're there.
Terry Child built this network. It was his baby and he owned it. He was the only person with access and was on call 24/7/365 and the only person familiar enough with it to work on it. He loved it so much that he applied and was granted a copyright for the network design as technical artistry. His department was going through a series of downsizes and his supervisor began to audit his work, which previously he had free reign in. He got spooked and started snooping on his bosses, which spooked his bosses and it all lead to a stand off.
If he has a copyright on the network, then whats he worried about? They'll have to pay him to use it still.
do you have any links to support this claim? First I've heard of it.
It was very probably being a jerk that got him convicted - people are much more likely to convict the headstrong than the guilty. I don't know if he really was guilty of anything, I've not really examined the evidence, but it's a well-documented psychological flaw of individuals that looks and personalities have a far far greater bearing on who is convicted than the actual evidence itself. There is no fix for this bug that is not worse than the bug itself.
Even if he were guilty, his real "crime" would be being a little too uptight, perhaps being an a-hole a little too often, and maybe being a little obnoxious. Note that these are only true if he actually is guilty of something. I fail to see how a purely punitive system is going to be useful in correcting these issues, which are not uncommon amongst those with Geek Syndrome (aka Asperger's). In the same way drunk drivers are sometimes ordered to attend AA meetings, the most suitable punishment (again IF he is guilty) would be to require him to attend an Asperger's group and/or get checked-out by a pdoc for some sort of treatment regimen. (Asperger's is not, technically, treatable but CAN aggravate other problems that are.) This would be cheaper than prison, by a LONG way, be far more likely to be effective, AND would be more likely to increase his value to society (whereas prison rots skills and therefore decreases value).
I like what your saying, but the problem is, it's bullshit.
You didn't read the case, you didn't go to the court to see the case.
Yet your able to make assumptions based on your dislike for peeps that act like jerks.
Funny you should say that. The last jury I sat on, the woman sitting across from me was a programmer. Her exact words to the judge, when he asked her employment were, "I twiddle bits". He blinked, and she got a lot more formal afterward.
By the way, she was also the first to vote to convict when we got back to the jury room. Binary logic was not working in the defendant's favor with her.
What does that have to do with anything?
Was the jury you were in doing a case similar to terry childs?
So, they are saying because of regulation of the phone companies back in the 80's & 90's or whatnot, that because the phone companies earned 15% less then cable companies, that by leveling the playfield today (or keeping it level), they are going to lose jobs and crap?
So, for 2 decades the phone companies didn't make any money, while the cable companies raked in mass profit?
um, no.
Just because you don't make as much profit as you did before, doesn't mean you need to fire your employees to make the money difference for your stockholders.
Maybe if all corporation realized that by fireing employees, they are just making it harder for them (the corps) to make future profits?
If not as many people are working, then not as many people are going to be able to afford your product.
There's an old aphorism from Sun Tzu Wu: "When you see your enemy making serious mistakes, do not interfere!"
As an atheist I couldn't possibly be happier with the Catholic Church and the deranged B-movie villain they elected Pope.
thanks, i was trying to figure out something.
I don't believe in god, nor religions, but i don't consider myself an atheist. Now I know why. god, religons, the church isn't my enemy.
What I don't like is the stupid people who believe in that stuff. 'cause the way I see it, if it wasn't god, religion, or church that is sinking their claws into the gullable, it would be something else.
'Texting and IM-ing my friends gives me a constant feeling of comfort,' wrote one of the students, who blogged about their reactions. 'When I did not have those two luxuries, I felt quite alone and secluded from my life.'
I just thought it was a bit ironic to blog about one's Internet addiction
naw, irony would be that the blogger, who is blogging about their Internet addiction could only get help online.
I can't figure out what law giz was supposed to have broken?
Phone wasn't stolen.
Apple apparently didn't want it when the person tried to return it. (which is there fault). Giz bought it to confirm what it was, because that's what they do.
Slashdot Mirror
Also they weren't asking for HIS username and password, they were asking for THE username and password. There is a difference as any competent sysadmin should know. I won't give up my password to any systems here at work. Policy requires that I do not. However my password is only for my accounts. There are other accounts I have the password for, that are not mine, share accounts. There would be root on the UNIX systems, the local administrator account on the Windows systems, the enable password on the switches, the SA password on the DB server, and so on. There is only one of those accounts (and in the case of things like root, can only be one). It isn't my password on them, it is a password all the IT staff share. That password isn't something I can change to one only I know and refuse to give out, I'd get in trouble for that.
Big, big difference. Had the city said "We want your password to log in to your personal e-mail account and bank account," well ya, I'd be supporting him for saying no. However they wanted the system passwords for various devices and services that have but one master password. If those passwords were the same as his personal password that is bad security practice on his part, however there is still a solution: Change the passwords and give them the new ones (or change the password on your account).
You miss the point. They should of had a copy of THE password to the system somewhere safe. They didn't. they failed. And they blamed Terry Childs for their fuck up.
People keep saying this but where's the proof? I haven't seen any evidence of such a policy. But I admittedly have only been partially following the case.
From: http://www.ktvu.com/news/23283217/detail.html (emphasis mine).
Childs reportedly had a fractious relationship with some of his coworkers, attorneys on both sides said. He testified at trial that he never intended to harm the network but said that other employees, including his supervisors, were not qualified to have the passwords.
Childs claimed he was merely following established industry guidelines for password protection.
"You do not ever give up your username and password," Childs said.
That doesn't sound like you make it sound. Industry guidelines are not the same as company/government policy.
To be honest I think the Slashdot community is wrong to defend this guy. He sounds like an ego-maniac driven not by security, but by the sys-admin God complex. However, that's just what I think, and I could be wrong. Sans the full transcript of the trial it's really hard to say what happened. I'd love for groklaw to take a look at it too. They probably need a break from SCO shenanigans. :)
So, we are wrong because the city didn't make any backup plans for network passwords in case of something bad happening?
Thats all this comes down to. San Franisco got butthurt because they stupidly didn't have copies of the networks passwords anywhere, but with the IT admin.
I'd be suing the city if I was Terry Childs
No you don't. Ever. You say "Go to the safe and get them yourself. Don't forget to sign the register." When Superintendent bleats that it is needed NOW! your answer is to point them to the safe. Terry Childs did not put the passwords in the safe and deserves to go down for that.
I disagree. The decision to put passwords in a safe in the first place is above his pay-grade.
It seems nobody instructed him to do so, so you can't blame him for not following a procedure that didn't exist.
If anything, the blame lies on his superior(s) who failed to adequately implement a "sysadmin gets hit by bus (or fired)" plan.
totally agree. It was the city's fault for now having a backup plan.
Sheesh, people die everyday, if Terry Childs had died, then the city would of still been with out passwords and only had it's self to blame.
In fact, Terry Childs is being punished because the city failed to provide a work around system in case they lost their admin.
Not trying to be a troll here, but... and maybe I'm not understanding the whole case correctly. I've followed the articles on Slashdot for a while. In my opinion: if the city hires you, you are subservient to the city. You do not give passwords to your inferiors. Ever. You do, however, give passwords to your superiors when asked. Always. They hired you, after all. They are your bosses. If I hire a security guard for my building, he'd damn well better give me the key if I decide to fire him, or if I get locked out, or both. You don't hide data from your superiors, plain and simple, however *technologically* less advanced they might be. Maybe the city is making a mountain out of a molehill; I'm really not qualified to comment on that, since I don't know as much about the case as some of the people on here will. Honestly, though, my original point: you get hired by someone, you do what they want to do, provided it isn't illegal. I highly doubt that giving someone the password or passwords to their own systems would have been the wrong thing to do.
Here's a hint.
DO NOT FIRE SOMEONE BEFORE YOU GET BACK ANYTHING THEY HAVE OF THE COMPANIES.
You say, hand me your keys, once they do, then fire them.
I'll tell you something, if I work for you and you fire me, chances are i'm not going to be happy about being fired. So if you come to me after that asking for something back, i'm not going to make your job easier, you just fucking fired me.
Seriously, what the fuck do they expect?
If, after you've been fired, you refuse to disclose the passwords necessary for your successor to do your job, then it is no longer something they can simply "fire" you for, (as you no longer work there) so it becomes something you need to take to court, not "theft" in this case, but "denial of service" because his action of refusing to release the passwords denied them access to administer those systems.
Seems to me the boss should get the passwords before he fires the person.
A man I worked for many years ago, one of my engineering mentors, told me about a mistake made during World War Two, where a large number of very large castings were discarded because the specification called for a much smaller tolerance on the location of an exhaust port than was actually necessary. As I recall, the spec allowed it to be 1/4" away from its nominal location, but it actually was connected to a flexible hose and it could have been a couple inches off in any direction without causing any problem. This mistake wasn't discovered until several millions of dollars worth of tank bodies had been scrapped and melted down unnecessarily.
-jcr
This is the sort of stuff I like.
People who read specs, see something wrong, and decides to scrap everything, without even trying it.
I'd tell someone how to fix something over the phone and they'd start arguing with me how that doesn't work, etc. And then i find out they didn't bother to do what I said because they figured it wouldn't work because of whatever reasons.
Of course, once they do what I told it, it fixes/does whatever I was trying to do.
There's that, and there's also the whole "the world is flat" and "disease is caused by imbalances in the four humours of the body" ideas. The article's examples seem pretty trivial in comparison.
I had a Pacman digital watch when i was in middle school. that watch was killer at it's time.
Till i figured out the game patten and it only went to like 2999 score wise.
That's the Tacoma Narrows bridge. And it wasn't a mere breeze, it was a 40 mph wind, i.e. a gale on the Beaufort scale.
Apart from that, I agree.
Ya, but it was in an area that is known to get high speed winds.
> Yeah, war is bad, but why not take economic advantage / only take economic disadvantage from it?
It's called ethics, and I know for a fact that not all swedes lack that trait.
I'll do ya 1 better, I know not all humans have that trait.
The feds hate geeks, unless we work for them.
Feds hate everything they don't understand.
He also had a felony pled down to a misdemeanor in the 1990s
Apparently you don't know how the legal system works.
When you get arrested, they always want to hit you with a felon. it looks better for the cops, looks better for the stats.
Then you get your public defender, or if rich, a decent lawyer to argue with the DA, who usually will say, in first case or really stupid cases that if the defendant pleads guilty to a lesser charge, they will drop the felony.
So you get a choice. Of fighting the charge and possibly getting a felony on your record, or taking a guilty charge on a misdeamoner instead of a felony.
Obviously he took the lesser charge.
So while you can try to make it seem like he was a felon, that don't count for shit. It don't matter what he was charged with, but what the he was convicted of.
The lesson here is to do whatever your boss says, even if it is incredibly stupid and will make your job entirely unmanageable...
Well, I would have to agree that my 'inner security geek', would have had to swallow really hard a few time before stating production passwords over a teleconference with unknown people. Hell, I would expect to be fired just for doing that.
Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Sometime you just have to suck it up and go look for another job. The sad part is that Terry was probably just a conscientous civil servant, and the boss was a know-nothing political appointee. Terry had probably seen more than a few of these appointed ass-hats come and go, and figured this was just another little tempest that would blow over.
Poor guy
I don't agree.
See I was brought up that you listened to adults, your parents, church leaders, and you do what they say.
What I discovered was Adults, parents, and church leaders are all stupid ass peeps that don't care about you, just themselves.
You might get on your knees and suck your boss off when he asks, but I don't. If my boss asked me to do something illegal, i'd laugh at him. Tells me to do something that isn't in my job description? Laugh at him.
If you scared of your boss that you have to do what they say, you probably have worse problems then worry about a case like this.
People only have power over you if you let them. Once your boss gets you to do something that isn't protocol or part of your job, then he's going to have no problem getting you to keep doing it.
For example, I used to cook in restaurants, but I got tired of it, so I started working out in front. I found that once a job learns that I can do anything in that restaurant, I end up doing everything. But not doing it at the pay level I would if I was working that position.
Your boss doesn't care about you, all he cares about is the bottom line, or his boss. If you don't stand up to that, you get walked on the whole time you're there.
Why Did He Refuse?
Terry Child built this network. It was his baby and he owned it. He was the only person with access and was on call 24/7/365 and the only person familiar enough with it to work on it. He loved it so much that he applied and was granted a copyright for the network design as technical artistry. His department was going through a series of downsizes and his supervisor began to audit his work, which previously he had free reign in. He got spooked and started snooping on his bosses, which spooked his bosses and it all lead to a stand off.
If he has a copyright on the network, then whats he worried about? They'll have to pay him to use it still.
do you have any links to support this claim? First I've heard of it.
It was very probably being a jerk that got him convicted - people are much more likely to convict the headstrong than the guilty. I don't know if he really was guilty of anything, I've not really examined the evidence, but it's a well-documented psychological flaw of individuals that looks and personalities have a far far greater bearing on who is convicted than the actual evidence itself. There is no fix for this bug that is not worse than the bug itself.
Even if he were guilty, his real "crime" would be being a little too uptight, perhaps being an a-hole a little too often, and maybe being a little obnoxious. Note that these are only true if he actually is guilty of something. I fail to see how a purely punitive system is going to be useful in correcting these issues, which are not uncommon amongst those with Geek Syndrome (aka Asperger's). In the same way drunk drivers are sometimes ordered to attend AA meetings, the most suitable punishment (again IF he is guilty) would be to require him to attend an Asperger's group and/or get checked-out by a pdoc for some sort of treatment regimen. (Asperger's is not, technically, treatable but CAN aggravate other problems that are.) This would be cheaper than prison, by a LONG way, be far more likely to be effective, AND would be more likely to increase his value to society (whereas prison rots skills and therefore decreases value).
I like what your saying, but the problem is, it's bullshit.
You didn't read the case, you didn't go to the court to see the case.
Yet your able to make assumptions based on your dislike for peeps that act like jerks.
Funny you should say that. The last jury I sat on, the woman sitting across from me was a programmer. Her exact words to the judge, when he asked her employment were, "I twiddle bits". He blinked, and she got a lot more formal afterward.
By the way, she was also the first to vote to convict when we got back to the jury room. Binary logic was not working in the defendant's favor with her.
What does that have to do with anything?
Was the jury you were in doing a case similar to terry childs?
No?
Then STFU
The police do not have the authority to force you to disclose passwords. You see, here in the US we have these things called rights.
I think Terry Childs would disagree with you. He didn't tell the police his passwords, and he went to jail for 5 years.
Really? dude already did his 5 years?
Hey, next time read the article before you spout whatever you want.
He's been in jail for 2 years, and his sentence is actually 2-5 years.
Most likely, he's going to get timed served.
But he hasn't been in jail for 5 years, so next time learn to read.
in one of the comments, someone asked why didn't dude give it to the police.
Um, police isn't lost and found, and they have more serious work to even take time for something as stupid as that.
Dude got a hold of apple, they dropped the ball. End of story.
I know the 4th amendment applies to US citizens, but does it apply to foreigners?
And how do you tell americans from foreigners?
Cause it's not against the law to not carry ID if say, your a mexian born american, but the cops won't know where your born at.
And considering "profiling" is illegal from what i understand, how can they actually enforce this law?
I don't live in AZ, but I'm not going to carry my ID around much anymore just in protest of stupid ass laws like this.
So, they are saying because of regulation of the phone companies back in the 80's & 90's or whatnot, that because the phone companies earned 15% less then cable companies, that by leveling the playfield today (or keeping it level), they are going to lose jobs and crap?
So, for 2 decades the phone companies didn't make any money, while the cable companies raked in mass profit?
um, no.
Just because you don't make as much profit as you did before, doesn't mean you need to fire your employees to make the money difference for your stockholders.
Maybe if all corporation realized that by fireing employees, they are just making it harder for them (the corps) to make future profits?
If not as many people are working, then not as many people are going to be able to afford your product.
All it will do is make a few Atheists happy.
There's an old aphorism from Sun Tzu Wu: "When you see your enemy making serious mistakes, do not interfere!"
As an atheist I couldn't possibly be happier with the Catholic Church and the deranged B-movie villain they elected Pope.
thanks, i was trying to figure out something.
I don't believe in god, nor religions, but i don't consider myself an atheist. Now I know why.
god, religons, the church isn't my enemy.
What I don't like is the stupid people who believe in that stuff. 'cause the way I see it, if it wasn't god, religion, or church that is sinking their claws into the gullable, it would be something else.
'Texting and IM-ing my friends gives me a constant feeling of comfort,' wrote one of the students, who blogged about their reactions. 'When I did not have those two luxuries, I felt quite alone and secluded from my life.'
I just thought it was a bit ironic to blog about one's Internet addiction
naw, irony would be that the blogger, who is blogging about their Internet addiction could only get help online.
I agree. And also, I doubt that most of his floppies from the 80s are still readable.....
Not true at all, I have a ton of floppy disks for C64, Apple II's and Amiga Computers.
5.25", 3.5" SD, DD. and even HD's. (Thats Single Density, Double Density, and of course High Density)
Most the disks I have work just fine.
And you know how hard it is to find SD & DD disks these days? Without paying out the nose for them?
True, however I was reffering to 91, 92... The early 90's. That is when I got a Zip drive, the mid 90's is when I got a CD Burner.
This is the internet, next time type what you mean.
the phone wasn't stolen. It was left behind.
Person who found it, tried to return it.
I can't figure out what law giz was supposed to have broken?
Phone wasn't stolen.
Apple apparently didn't want it when the person tried to return it. (which is there fault).
Giz bought it to confirm what it was, because that's what they do.
And Apple made no effort to get it back.