Regardless of the legality of this particular search, this confirms that the authorities are likely looking at this as a felony investigation, with all that this signifies for Gizmodo. Should Gizmodo be worried? Without question. With the REACT unit on the case (which specializes in these types of tech-related crimes), and with a potential violation of the Espionage Act of 1996 being provable and punishable by as much as a $5 million fine and up to 10 years in prison (see my comment here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1289741), they are no doubt taking this very seriously at this point.

Of course, I cannot help sympathizing with Mr. Chen - what a horrible trauma to go through. A very ugly scene for him and his family.

Ie, this lady wasn't considered a journalist.

Chen is an employee of a media organization. That the organization has a blog doesn't make it different to, say, AA Gill writing for The Times, which also has a blog. The main difference is The Times is a more recognized media outlet than Gawker media.

Interesting question: what if it were Engadget? AOL is a recognized media name (sad this was used by the judge in his definition). Or Reddit (owned by Conde Nast) started paying people to write about gadgets?

A media organization with a legal staff, I might add.

Apple has something to do with this case.

When the phone in question is a prototype of a model that is destined to sell millions, it gets noticed. But, it's important to look at this as a criminal investigation. There're is the suspiction that a criminal act occurred. A judge agreed, and issued a search warrant. Just based upon Gizmodo's coverage alone, there is enough to suspect that a crime happened. Because this is Apple property, it gets greater scrutiny, but it's not like Apple signed the warrant.

You can expect a whole other level of hurt for Gizmodo from Apple in a civil suit.

And I thought Google blocking cnet for a year was bad... Just imagine what the Apple blackout will be like for Gizmodo.

Nowadays that's standard operating procedure for any criminal investigation. There was an article on HN a while back about the police in SF confiscating the laptops of DJs at illegal raves and tying them up in paperwork to get their gear back just to punish them for helping out the raves (the DJs' laptops are their main source of income in a lot of cases).

Police love computers because people do a lot of their interaction with the world through them now. So by confiscating someone's computer they can get a lot of information.

What about photographs, emails and records relating to the person it was bought from?

they're not a state agency, but I thought they were just in Santa Clara county. per their website, they serve Alameda County, Santa Clara County, San Francisco County, San Mateo County, and Santa Cruz County.

A partnership of 17 local, state, and federal agencies, with the Santa Clara County District Attorney's Office designated as the lead agency. The REACT Task Force is one of five in the State of California and authorized under California Penal Code 13848. ... Established in 1997 by the California state Department of Justice.

I guess they went for the nearest target first, then. I think they'd still need a warrant in each county, or they'd have had the state Attorney-general's office procure the warrant...but I'm too tired to go back and look at it now.

In other words it may have some net positive effect on his career, but it seems like he was probably doing okay anyway and it's at least equally as likely to lose him a job than to gain him one.

Anyone who hasn't fucked up at least that badly hasn't been trying.

Be honest with yourself. There's no high ground to be taken when it comes to being a perfect employee.

You think?

(recruiter reads resume) "Oh, yeah, you're the guy who lost the iPhone prototype! I can't wait to hire you!" :-)

Sure, he lost a valuable prototype, and the entire world got to see it before Steve Jobs unveiled it, ruining Apple's legendary cloak of secrecy, but you know that he's one of few people in the world who will never, ever make that mistake again.

"In Lovell v. City of Griffin, 303 U.S. 444 (1938), Chief Justice Hughes defined the press as, "every sort of publication which affords a vehicle of information and opinion." Freedom of the press, like freedom of speech, is subject to restrictions on bases such as defamation law."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Amendment_to_the_United_S...

I referred to the New Jersey just to illustrate how courts that are carefully considering such issues might rule on them (this takes the discussion at least a step deeper from that of "don't bloggers and reporters do the same thing" by showing the factors a court will look at in making such a determination).

If, on the other hand, what we have here is a true online media organization (as noted by nailer), then point well taken and the issue must be analyzed on that basis as opposed to standards that might apply if only a blogger were involved.

Not surprisingly, Apple was involved that time too.

This is clearly about finding the person who stole the phone.

http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=evid&#...

I don't know much about east coast US police but the NY ones certainly don't give a shit about stuff left in public places by drunk people.

(EDIT: Put another way: according to the original story, the finder claimed to think there was nothing special about the iPhone at that time. If you're at a decent bar in the middle of Silicon Valley, do you really think it's that sketchy to turn an iPhone 3G into the bartender or management?)

Actually giving the phone to a stranger, never really crossed my mind, and call NYC police? HA.

However, they obviously knew the owner SINCE HE WAS CONTACTED AFTER THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE, and they failed to return it. They did the equivalent of checking the address book when they went on Facebook and then didn't do anything to return it.

Even sending an email to sjobs@apple.com would've been more likely to get the phone back to Apple.

He is a petty criminal...but probably just an opportunist rather than having malicious intent. Paradoxically, it might have been safer for him to set up a blog called ifound-iphone.com and post pictures in a 'LOL it came from the future' fashion: naivete might be a mitigating factor.

But Gizmodo/Gawker has no such excuse. Their whole business is the exchange of reader attention for advertising. They are leaders in their market sector, with a deep understanding of the tech industry and its role in the economy. and they have already been warned by Apple's outside counsel that offering money for hot information is an incitement to criminality.

With all this knowledge and experience, when they got hold of a prototype - which they themselves say was well disguised with a 'very ingenious solution to protect future designs from lookeyloos', they chose to disassemble it and publish detailed information about its manufacture, with a completely reckless disregard for anyone's business interests but their own.

If I were an attorney on Apple's or the DA's staff, my approach would be to forget about the seller, because his testimony isn't even necessary to bring suit against or prosecute the Gizmodo/Gawker folks. In fact, if they do offer to give him up, and I bet they will, I'd say I didn't care.

(I'm not an attorney BTW! It might be professionally unethical to behave like that if the information was being offered.)

I don't know about this guy but I probably recall 5% of all names of people I meet at a bar, 0% first and last names. I have a hard time faulting him if there is evidence of him calling Apple support and detailing the situations.

Wouldn't the owner of an Apple prototype most likely be...Apple?

Surely you're not asking me to buy the idea that they thought it was the engineers's personal property, and that if they sent it to Apple, it might never find its way back to him. That's an insult to even an average intelligence.

Obviously the "finder" knew it was Apple hardware and the thug who stole my XBox knew it was Microsoft. The finder DID call the "owner" and most likely has it recorded. I'm not defending Gizmodo at all but I think the thief has a more compelling argument in court.

Besides, the guy sold the thing for $5k and apparently reached out to Gizmodo and Engadget, I find it hard to believe he ever actually tried to return it.

But personally, I doubt the story is false. A drunk guy forgetting his phone is something that happens every day.

Lest, you know, someone make a similar accusation about either:

- me

- you

- 37prime

sometime in the future. This is one of the basis' upon which society works.

1. He took money for the phone. You gotta know this is wrong.

2. He shopped around trying to dump the phone.

3. Unless the bar is keeping quiet, he didn't try to return it.

4. Apple seemed to reclaim it in a huge hurry once it got public on Gizmodo. That suggests they were taking its disclosure seriously. Did they think it WOULDN'T cause a huge uproar before it showed up on Gizmodo and then say, "Oh wait, the press _tells people about things!_ Duh, we should have seen this coming."

The story we've got so far has some pretty bizarre turns, and they really don't seem consistent with a bunch of unfortunate coincidences besetting good samaritans.

Fortunately, our opinion is meaningless. The whole point of these investigations is to determine wrongdoing.

The fact is that the finder of the iPhone Prototype "sold" the property that never belonged to him to Gizmodo.

The words of the finder was published by none other than Gizmodo, who definitely has everything to gain if the statements were true. That's conflict of interest.

To cite some others who had found this specific California Law: California law regulates what you can do when you find lost property in the state. Section 2080 of the Civil Code provides that any person who finds and takes charge of a lost item acts as "a depositary for the owner." If the true owner is known, the finder must notify him/her/it within a reasonable time and "make restitution without compensation, except a reasonable charge for saving and taking care of the property."

Now, where was the name dropping by Gizmodo came from? The finder of the phone claimed that the phoned was "remotely bricked" the day after. Certainly someone knew who the phone was assigned to.

Those are the facts.

By the time the owner contacted the finder, it was in Gizmodo's hands (which I believe was a few days after the finder contacted apple).

When's the last time you or someone you know reported something stolen, knew who took it and possibly had just as much evidence of who has possession, and there was no search warrant and raid done on your behalf?

I experienced several examples where there was video evidence of the theft, the value of the goods were anywhere between $1000 to $5000, there was identification of the person and there was nothing remotely as swift or stern taken here to recover.

EDIT: And just want to add, lesson learned. I didn't have renter's insurance at the time, dumb mistake. I'm now always fully insured, and so should you be :)

edit: scratch that, publicity only works because it has the potential to bring more powerful groups to your aid.

It does feel like in cases like this the cops rely on people having insurance and thus generally don't bother unless the break ins become an epidemic.

It's possible I could have approached the cops differently and received better success. Be more persistent? Be less persistent? Have a lawyer speak with them? I have no idea. When the cops refuse to do their job for whatever reason, there's no fool proof way of reversing that.

EDIT: And also, I probably should have been there when the cops came to the store. That might have also helped. Live and learn. At the time I thought "photocopy of the driver's license! score! I'm saved!" and was pretty naive about the whole thing.

I mean it was a f'ing car and the police did jack shit about it.

Can you see why this might not be the solid proof of identity that you like to imagine it was?

You have to take it out into the real world and test it in real world situations. They gave it to a trusted employee and disguised it as much as they could. And the guy lost it. It's a known risk and it happens.

The choice then became to either activate the GPS and track the phone (potentially making the leak worse) or wipe it. Apple chose to remotely wiped it as soon as they could.

They did what they could to adequately test the new phone and protect it at the same time.

If you lose a phone in the public you should expect that any secrets become public. Apple seems to be OK with that risk. I don't understand the clamoring for gestapo police to swoop in and correct corporate mistakes.

Are you saying Gizmodo refused to return the phone to Apple claiming it was now their own property? Or that Gizmodo demanded reimbursement from Apple in exchange for returning the phone?

Like going out drinking and not paying (very) close attention to its whereabouts at all times?

This is bordering on accidental corporate espionage. It's not just Apple that's pissed off, but think about what it would be like for other Valley companies to look at this case and wonder "What if it were us, next time?" -- if it wasn't pursued swiftly by the police.

That's the engine of the area's economy, theoretically at risk.

Anyway, unfortunately, the people who stole your stuff probably didn't post on a highly trafficked site about the crime. Gizmodo, on the other hand, did talk about how they bought the phone, and then committed possibly other criminal acts by posting the photos and details.

What if it's about one company illegally obtaining the trade secrets of another and then releasing that trade secret to a global media?

The whole thing smelled fishy to begin with. I honestly can't say what I believe. However, if this was some kind of setup and they find evidence that Gizmodo intended to steal that prototype then that would definitely explain the police raid.

It's true, encryption doesn't remove this ability. The reality is that the Constitution never provides this ability in the first place, and specifically prevents the government from passing any law that would provide this ability.

Refusing to testify against yourself (without a grant of immunity, anyway) is not a crime, it's your right.

So when they find a drive that passes the Chi^2 randomness test they know there has to be encrypted data on there, so you give them the key and they decrypt the outer ring (which contains nothing important). At that point they're stuck. They suspect there's got to be more to it, but they can't point to anything and say "decrypt this!", because there isn't anything to point to. So technically, they have to let you go. Or so I heard.

I remember hearing about this being used as a justification by a judge in a case relating to encryption. It's just sad that most cases involving encryption / computer crimes are related to child porn charges so people are more worried about punishing the person than they are about protecting the rights of everyone that is brought into the court system.

- a news organization

- matters of public interest

involved?

The iPhone will come out in July (or whenever) irrespective of you knowing two months in advance its specs. Nothing changes. Nothing will be hidden. There is no "public interest". It's just idle curiosity, and it's not journalism to pander to it to the extent of participating in a very dodgy transaction.

I personally don't agree with this, and you may not either, but that doesn't matter.

Reference? The ones I have been aware of have been very narrow, and there have been many public cases of the opposite (such as the recent Max Mosley case in the UK).

Generally the law seems to take a line similar to that of Wikipedia - that "public interest" means "general welfare". Note that this does not mean you can't publish details about the sex lives of celebrities, but you can't use public interest as a defense if you have participated in a crime to do so.

But it would be hard to argue that this story was presented with the aim of improving the public welfare, as you might if the contents of some confidential government documents were reported or publicized.

To me, the point of this law is that the finder's-keepers attitude is encouraging theft. I think "I found it" is a common alibi for theft. If you get rid of that alibi (which doesn't harm people who would return the items) then you discourage actual theft by making it harder to buy and sell.

The only people who are inconvenienced are those who truly did find an item and keep it. There's an exemption for items of small value so as not to burden those people too much. That's just my view of it.

Gizmodo never disputed that the phone was Apple's property and they returned it to Apple as soon as Apple claimed it. If Gizmodo physically damaged the phone they should be responsible for the damage caused to the device.

I actually don't see a huge problem if I lose my phone, someone else pays $5000 to the finder and then turns around and returns it to me when I demonstrate that it is mine.

Taking photos of the device isn't the issue. Anyone could easily have taken a photo of the phone at the bar. If you are saying the visual appearance of the product is a trade secret then it should not be paraded about in public by employees.

I want to see Gizmodo get penalized for this, but if the choice is between that and ignoring the rights of journalists, it's not worth it.

Except that's not a carte blanche shield. If a computer used for journalism was also used to store, say, records of a drug-running ring, would that computer be inviolable? Or seizable, with a warrant, as evidence in the commission of a crime?

IOW: Running a blog or being a journalist doesn't protect your computers from being impounded when you break the law and happen to also blog about doing so.

Well said. I'm surprised Gizmodo people are making 'I'm a news organization' noises at the moment - it's a flaky excuse, and has little to do with the charges.

BTW, was it really stolen? It's obviously wrong to sell something you found before doing a reasonable effort to return it to its owner, but where is the line between finding and stealing?

Essentially, there is a California law that says if you find something, you're compelled to either return it to its owner, or turn it over to the police if the rightful owner can't be found. So the very fact that he failed to turn it into the police converted it from an act of "finding" to an act of "stealing".

Actually...

Appendix B, paragraph 4: 'Printed documents, images, and/or notation pertaining to the sale and/or purchase of the stolen iPhone prototype and/or the sale and/or transfer of trade secret information pertaining to the iPhone prototype.'

Hmm, I don't know, I think I'm going to lean slightly towards stolen-property-bad side of the equation. If the editor wasn't a journalist, we wouldn't be having this discussion at all - if the head of engineering at another company bought a stolen trade-secreted device we'd be calling for his head. Buying obviously stolen property to profit from it is a bad thing and ought to be criminal - should there be exemptions made for doing it for journalism?

No. That would mean that journalists could steal anything, write a story about it, and not face justice.

Suppose that you became famous for fifteen minutes (this happens to people from time to time: see Susan Boyle, etc.) The exemption you propose would allow the press to enter your home, steal things, and plaster images of you and those things everywhere, without any regard for your rights.

Apparently the government department in question didn't like the more likely explanation that whistleblowers were handing her brown envelopes full of photocopied papers (which, as it happens, was what was going on).

Thre was talk of her being taken to court to try to compel her to reveal her sources, but the whole scandal resolved itself before then.

It was a rhetorical question, I actually mostly agree with you and see it the same way, just some minor lingering doubt about letting authorities search and seize from people doing journalism. While I think stolen property probably outweights it, I'm still of two minds about it and will think about it over the next couple days as more discussion and commentary comes out.

<edit>oops, didn't mean to downvote you. Can someone fix that for me?</edit>

The triangles are too close; I've also accidentally downvoted someone before.

Long before we get to the question of how hard the so-called finder tried to return the phone to Apple, I think that wrongdoing occurred the moment he left the bar with the phone in his pocket.

Since you're a good person who wants to call the owner and give it back the next morning before someone less scrupulous steals it? What do you want them to do, leave it there? Give it to the bar staff who you don't know? Give it to the cops who'll simply tell you to contact the owner yourself?

Once I exit the property with the phone, I've done wrong. The onus is now on me to follow through and get it back to the owner, not take a half-hearted effort to get through to Apple on the phone before selling it to someone else who is also not the owner.

p.s. I see you've replied to my points in your message. This makes the thread of conversation hard to follow. Yes, give it to bar staff you don't know. It's not your phone, it's not your bar. It's not up to you to sit in judgment over them and find them wanting, especially when you end up selling the phone for your own gain. Likewise, try giving it to the police and see what they say. That would be a lot more convincing than not doing so and selling the phone later.

Actually, I'm allowed to judge anyone, even if I don't employ them. So are you. We make judgements about others all the time.

I trust I will do what I judge to be the right thing 100% of the time. I trust a stranger less so. This is logical.

Suggesting otherwise reminds me of one of those 'don't judge my OSS app unless you wrote it' arguments.

Human beings don't need permission to make decisions.

But if you find something on somebody else's property, you can find the owner while still on the property or give it to the person in charge of the property. Taking it off the property puts a very big responsibility on your shoulders to do the right thing in a tearing hurry or be judged a thief.

To me it is very simple. You can find lost property in a public place. You cannot find lost property on somebody else's property. The owner may have lost it, but you can't take it away. Going onto somebody else's property and taking something home that doesn't belong to you is pretty clear-cut.

We called a couple numbers on her cell trying to get her to call back. Eventually she did - turns out she was running away from her family with her ex; and we "ruined her life" by calling them. She never came back to pick it up.

Next time the phone will remain on the ground.

"These are Jason Chen's computers" http://topherchris.com/post/551530253

If you're on a mac, go, right now, and tick the FileVault checkbox. Windows users go download TrueCrypt and turn on whole-disc encryption.

The law in this country is so complicated that, increasingly, it doesn't matter if you've broken the law or not. I don't side with Gawker. But I do know that if you have years of browsing history lying around, surely there's something somebody can pin on you if they want to.

Seriously. Go tick the checkbox.

Once you've committed a crime though, definitely be smart about asserting your civil rights, using encryption, etc. And even if you haven't committed a crime, assert your civil rights and use encryption. But probably the #1 thing you can do to not get harassed by police is to obey the law.

You can always decrypt your drive when asked. But you can't encrypt it after the police take your computer.

Unless you're hiding evidence of something particularly heinous, refusing to provide a means of decryption may land you in more trouble than the crime of which you're suspected.

Either way, the Constitution is clear on this issue: "no person ... shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself". If a safe is found in your house, the government can do whatever they want to open it. They can blow it up, or they can ask your friends for the combination, or even just try every combination. But they can't punish you for not giving them the combination.

Cryptography is a very strong safe.

(A quick reading of related cases leads me to believe that this one is more relevant: http://supreme.justia.com/us/487/201/case.html. It holds that "In order to be "testimonial," an accused's oral or written communication, or act, must itself, explicitly or implicitly, relate a factual assertion or disclose information." Since reveling the decryption key is a factual assertion and discloses information, it is protected. Note that in Boucher, it is not clear that the key would disclose information.

But honestly, I think my Google skills are just better than the Appeals court in that case. I doubt that the decision would hold up in the Supreme court. And I especially doubt that one could be compelled to give up his or her key in normal, non-customs, criminal proceedings. IANAL.)

Yes, they can. If the judge has reasonable grounds to believe that you are withholding evidence or the knowledge necessary for law enforcement to collect this evidence then the judge can hold you in contempt of court and place you in jail until you agree to provide the information. While there have been a couple of aberrations in the general flow of case law to a standard consensus on the matter, the general consensus (at least at the federal level) is that being compelled to provide an encryption key is not covered by the 5th amendment's protection against self-incrimination.

Either way, if you are paranoid, the solution is hidden volumes. If the government can't prove you have an encrypted disk, they can't compel you to reveal its contents.

Anyway, that doesn't really change the basic fact — if law enforcement has a warrant for information that's locked away, a defendant can be compelled to provide the information.

(And I'm not asking to be snarky. I need more information before I decide to run for public office and change the law :)

That page has a link to the District Court ruling in Boucher.

That's a little different than "we think you might possibly have something on this computer", which is still untested.

Also, they appealed. Considering child porn gets you more time than homicide these days, I would wait until the case if over before deciding that encrypting your hard drive is a waste.

You can always decrypt, you can't always encrypt.

The fifth amendment applies to words you say, not evidence. The "pass phrase" is access to the evidence, not testimony against yourself. It's a losing battle anyways, a judge demands you turn over the passphrase or unlock the data and throws you in jail until you do. You could attempt to take it to the supreme court or something, but you're in jail during that process. Likewise, you could try to give them the wrong key with truecrypt or something but that assumes that they are idiots. If you find yourself in court in this situation, you've already lost, you're almost certainly going to spend time in jail.

They then need to go back to the judge, and get a court order to compel you to supply your encryption key. By which time you've gotten a lawyer, and can fight back.

http://volokh.com/posts/1197670606.shtml

I don't do anything remotely heinous enough to warrant a court order to reveal my encryption key, however.

Um...that kid in Tennessee that accessed Sarah Palin's email did a secure erase, but enough of his activity was revealed by some malware on his machine, as well as ISP records etc., that he also got charged with obstruction of justice for having deleted stuff germane to the crime of unauthorized access. Just sayin'.

So we can add fraud to the potential charges, which requires a material misrepresentation of fact (his potential personal criminal liability), made with scienter (a reckless disregard for the truth), justifiably relied upon (by an employee listening to the company's self-identified legal representative, Gaby Derbyshire, who is not qualified to practice law in the US), and which has resulted in an injury (the confiscation of all his electronic stuff).

If I ever end up in court I want you there too. On the other side.

Hah, deal. If you run for District Attorney, I will vote for you.

Gizmodo definitely saw this coming. If the pre-written legal defense doesn't give it away, they very publicly bought stolen property and (very likely) profited by doing so.

I don't agree with what Gizmodo did, but I definitely support strong shield laws for online journalists. I really hope they don't end becoming poster children for a free online press.

Tech specs of a new gadget probably isn't.

Hope he has an offsite backup.

It's the police/prosecutors that cause all the hold ups.

The whole thing kind of makes sense (holding equipment to make sure no potential evidence is released without a final decision)—but it's still frustrating and it doesn't seem like there's a good solution that makes it easier for both parties.

Turn around is pretty good; we serve a mid to large police force in the UK (around 5000 computer investigations a year). Average return time for evidence where no charges were brought last year was about 2 1/2 months. Complaints over delays were in the 10's.

Of the rest; the vast majority were legitimately suspected of a crime (I can count on my fingers the number who were not - to my mind anyway). Proving it either way is, I feel, reasonable.

It's weird to think that at any given moment, you're subject to a search and seizure (or any other kind of law enforcement ...enforcing) which will interrupt your life for sometime around one month to (in most cases) a year or so. Really kind of makes you want to hustle and get to work when you're not being served a warrant :P

It's the definition of "illegal" that worries me.

I'm surprised there are any journalists left there at all.

(which isn't to say they are correct - just not related)

Unless you refuse to comply with a court order related to a civil matter.

That's a big fear of mine. I'm not about to wipe my system clean and hope the test works 100%.

I'm just starting to do this and it feels great. I thought about the money I pay for renters insurance, and then I realized that something much harder to replace than my furniture and other physical possessions was vulnerable not only to fire/natural disaster but plain old disk failure.

There's externally bootable drives, and I guess that's my only easy option.

This explains mostly how if we left a cellphone in a bar, why we could not get the police to even take a report, let alone raid the house of the person who bought it from someone who found it, but Apple can.

Therfore giving you legal immunity regardless of the content that you are tweeting?

Illegal drug use, felony activities etc? Or blind ignorance of common ethics and civil code?

Would be an interesting outcome and an explosion of online journalisim if this proves to be the case... Don't you think?

I see grellas has also posted a reply on this point, with a legal citation. Most definitions of "journalist" boil down to a definition something like "a reporter who writes for an editor," (a definition, as noted by the journalist who proposed it, that excludes Matt Drudge and most other bloggers). I wouldn't expect the typical blogger to be regarded as a journalist, legally, because the typical blogger doesn't maintain the standards of professional journalism.

(Note: I was a minor-league journalist, a reporter for a trade magazine, years ago. Big-league journalism is MUCH harder than blogging, by at least two orders of magnitude, and much more constitutionally important.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Espionage_Act_of_199...

http://www.sitemeter.com/?a=stats&s=sm7gizmodous&r=3...

They will probably milk more traffic from this new iteration to this drama.

Whats the worst possible scenario for Gawker? Will they get fined or will the editor go to jail?

Granted, I guess if you want to see someone's email correspondence, this is the only way to do it.

I bet the police waited until they saw him leave the house.

Good luck if you think that hardware is coming back to you this decade, even if charges are dropped, or if you think you'll get the door paid for.

Funny how I have no sympathy for them whatsoever now.

Around this whole thing, there seemed to be this aura of "teehee, it's ok, we're on the internet!"

It seems like they don't believe they could have possibly done anything wrong.

It's not that I can't imagine the glee they'd feel when they were offered the opportunity to buy the prototype. But since that glee was not followed up by any second thoughts -- for exmaple, about receiving stolen property, or trade secrets, or hey, ethics -- then they deserve what they get, legally speaking.

Anybody who thinks about it for a minute would realize that buying a prototype device that "got found at a bar" ("fell off the back of a truck"), made by a company with notoriously tight seals, and a huge legal team, and then explaining to the world that you bought it off some dude… well, that's gonna have consequences.

If bloggers aspire to be journalists, they're going to have to learn to have those second thoughts.

And learn that "checkbook journalism" just flat-out doesn't count. Even when they're paying people for interviews, instead of buying hot goods.

The problem is that them hiding behind a shield law isn't totally nuts. What if someone leaked them something that was actually in the public interest--something important for people to know, but that could still be considered a trade secret. We certainly don't want the courts deciding what's "important" news and what isn't, do we? If not then how do we protect one without the other?

On the other hand, with the police knocking down his door, at least it's totally clear it wasn't a fake

No amount of "leaked pictures by an anonymous source" posts could compete with laying down a perfect controversy as Gizmodo did with this story.

Instead, he sold it for a profit to a company (Gizmodo) who believed that it was real. Misappropriation = theft.

"failure to care for property you were entrusted with"

If the phone was returned, in order, to Apple - maybe it was in a contract he signed with Gizmodo, I don't think misappropriation occurred here as the found phone was eventually returned.

I'm not saying that Gizmodo is in perfect legal standing, but if this case wasn't so high profile, it would have already been dropped by now.

I don't mean to sound glib, but I'm fairly certain that wikipedia is not an expert on California legal codes.

But making fun of a company, satire, should be protected by journalistic rights. Should, for instance, the Daily Show be prosecuted if they go after an interview and someone at the pentagon accidentally reveals classified information? It could be argued that Gizmodo knew the phone had 'fallen off the back of a truck' so to speak -- but their story seemed as much about the falling off of the back of the truck as the item itself.

At what point is there some (perhaps small) burden of responsibility on the people who messed up and lost the prototype? It doesn't seem like complete justice that suddenly Apple gets to come down hard with laws that aren't exactly clearly adjudicated yet. I mean if there were precedent -- if it were clearly known that anytime you come across a prototype, you run the risk of being prosecuted for not returning it to the company immediately, then OK, Gizmodo would be at fault. Maybe there is and I just don't know.

I get the sense that Apple has decided not to fault Gary Powell because that would be sort of a ridiculous move (see Steve Wozniak's thoughts at gizmodo). But that doesn't necessarily give them the right to take out their frustrations on Gizmodo. An engineer made a mistake. If anything, it's added publicity. Move on.

But the teardown showing the internals? That's got to be of significant interest to competing manufacturers.

What? I don't think not returning the device immediately when Apple asked for it was right, but Gizmodo aren't obligated to protect Apple's trade secrets. Nobody is but Apple. Do you want every rumor site to be shut down?

"... (b) Misappropriation" means: ... (2) Disclosure or use of a trade secret of another without express or implied consent by a person who: ... (C) Before a material change of his or her position, knew or had reason to know that it was a trade secret and that knowledge of it had been acquired by accident or mistake.

In detail - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1286907

This is "Finder's keepers, loser's weepers" hiding behind freedom of press. It isn't by any means in the territory of whistle blowing. And you certainly don't have to steal in order to post an opinion. Suppose I find someone's credit card and I want to laugh at the silliness of the design on the card, do I really need to post pictures of the card along with the 16 digit number, expiration date, and security number before giving it back to them and hiding behind "Freedom of the Press"?