News - Police raid home of iPhone scoop journo

[HEXUS]

The backlash resulting from Gizmodo?s acquisition of a next-generation iPhone prototype has begun.

Read more.

[[GSV]Trig]

Well this should be fun.

/gets popcorn..

[cptwhite_uk]

So let's get the facts in bullet point then:

• Gizmodo break news of iPhone 4G
• Apple is on a steering commitee of this R.E.A.C.T. group, whose primary role was to stop large scale cyber crime
• R.E.A.C.T break into Jason Chen's place and take his PC stuffs (clearly outside of there remit it would seem)

Obviously this is just co-incidence and is in no-way related, and has definitely not been instigated by proxy so that Apple could distance themselves from these events to ensure plausible deniability for the raid. I just wanted to categorically state this is clearly not what happened.

[mikerr]

You forgot:

• Gimodo offers to return phone, when someone claims it (apple).
  
• Apple did claim it back (here), and gizmodo returned it

[TheAnimus]

playing devils advocate to the 100°C laptop manufacturer (I assume its great balls of fire campaign is to rid the world of people stupid enough to buy a mac through sterilisation)

If someone bought your suitcase, published on the web in graphic detail the contents, would you not be miffed?

[Phage]

playing devils advocate to the 100°C laptop manufacturer (I assume its great balls of fire campaign is to rid the world of people stupid enough to buy a mac through sterilisation)

If someone bought your suitcase, published on the web in graphic detail the contents, would you not be miffed?

Miffed - yes. Take them to court, smash down their front door and confiscate the tools of their trade ? Not really.

[watercooled]

(I assume its great balls of fire campaign is to rid the world of people stupid enough to buy a mac through sterilisation)

Tickled me that

Seems a bit much for a few pics of a next-gen phone, what about all the other 5 million leaked photos floating around the web?

[TheAnimus]

they are probably going to 'send a message' to all internet websites. I wouldn't be surprised if they are now no longer invited to any apple events ever again. And we all know how much traffic those things generate.

Apple do seam to black ball people, so extreme intimidation of anyone who commits a crime is hardly a big step.

[mikerr]

Apple is now the big brother from their own 1984 ad

[semo]

i'm all against apple but they should have just handed in the phone to the police. why was the guy that found it contacting apple? if someone finds my phone and wants to return then i don't want them calling nokia.

it's obvious all parties involved are engulfed in self interest and no on is a saint

• The guy who found it should have gone to the police, or if he was lazy, just handed it in to the owner of whatever the venue was. He called Apple for one reason only: extort money... he couldn't so did the next best thing -- self interest
• The blog saw an opportunity to generate some traffic from a device (genuine or not) and went for it -- self interest
• The fruit couldn't spin up enough secrecy around this to dazzle their sheeple at its unveiling so they tell their legal to "do something terrible" -- self interest

no one was selfless here and tried to do the right thing and everyone was/is pointing guns from all sides

[superscaper]

i'm all against apple but they should have just handed in the phone to the police. why was the guy that found it contacting apple? if someone finds my phone and wants to return then i don't want them calling nokia.

My guess was the engineer was bragging it was the 4g. I mean why on earth would he be allowed to take it outside Apple's security area? And to a beer garden of all places?

An apple engineer showed the ipad to Steve Wozniak for 2 mins just before the launch. That engineer was fired immediately. I mean that was to a former boss and co-founder of Apple!!

The 4g debacle was completely public and yet the engineer in question..... still working for Apple AFAIK.

Make of that what you will and I'm usually the first to jump onto incompetance over conspiracy, but I can't believe that this loss by an Apple engineer was completely accidental. That in itself seems so far fetched to me. I only work in a very small company but we still have pretty rigorous rules and procedures on products and IP and what can be taken off the premises and under what circumstances.

[Georgy291]

wtf is this about?

i clearly read apple wanted it back, he offered it back......i guess its the initial affects of the digital bill thats got passed. where big companies control the law

[Kirano]

i guess its the initial affects of the digital bill thats got passed. where big companies control the law

Er... so that would be the digital rights bill that got passed in britian.... not california
(unless of course a similar bill has been passed in america that I didn't know about....)

I can understand Apple wanting to protect their stuff but this... maybe they are trying to send a message to other sites like Gizmodo, but surely that's just gonna backfire. People will be even more keen now to get scoops Apple don't want them to have, just so they can piss Apple off.

Then again I don't think Apple are gonna let their engineers wander off site with their next gen stuff anymore, at least not until its ready for release....

I wonder what happened to the engineer who lost it... or do I not want to know?

[Georgy291]

Er... so that would be the digital rights bill that got passed in britian.... not california
(unless of course a similar bill has been passed in america that I didn't know about....)

I can understand Apple wanting to protect their stuff but this... maybe they are trying to send a message to other sites like Gizmodo, but surely that's just gonna backfire. People will be even more keen now to get scoops Apple don't want them to have, just so they can piss Apple off.

Then again I don't think Apple are gonna let their engineers wander off site with their next gen stuff anymore, at least not until its ready for release....

I wonder what happened to the engineer who lost it... or do I not want to know?

firstly i meant this could be the start off the companies getting away with stuff like this. If it can be done there with no bill, imagine here with a bill.

and secondly, the kind guy who found it and offered to return it had his house raided, then the guy who lost it could be .......

[Kirano]

True... though the legality of the raid is coming under fire which is something at least. As Denton said, it comes down to whether or not a blogger coutns as a journalist? If this whole affair gets pushed further, Gizmodo will look to have this question answered, in the hope of getting some legal protection. I don't know how much good it will do them though. Really, Gizmodo should have informed Apple about it immediately. Instead, they paid $5000 for it (purchasing stolen goods), blogged about it (breaking the sacred hypershield of mystery encasing Apples developing products, threatening the very fabric of the Apple space/time marketing continuum) and only then offering to return it. Then again, it's an iPhone... with the level of hype surrounding every piece of plastic with a touchscreen that comes out of Apple, its no real surprise that Gizmodo did what they did. It doesn't make them innocent though...

One would hope that it doesn't go much further though. A police raid, given that Gizmodo had offered to return it, seems unnecessary and OTT and I don't really see how Apple benifited from it. Only time will tell...

Google doesn't want to share whether the engineer who lost it (one Gray Powell) has been fired or not. Gizmodo said that Apple should go easy on him. I don't know how inclined Apple will be to listen to them though...