Lost iPhone prototype spurs police probe
Silicon Valley police are investigating what appears to be a lost Apple iPhone prototype purchased by a gadget blog, a transaction that may have violated criminal laws, a law enforcement official told CNET on Friday.
Apple has spoken to local police about the incident and the investigation is believed to be headed by a computer crime task force led by the Santa Clara County district attorney's office, the source said. Apple's Cupertino headquarters is in Santa Clara County, about 40 miles south of San Francisco.
Editors at Gizmodo.com, part of Gawker Media's blog network, said in an article posted Monday that they paid $5,000 for what they believed to be a prototype of an impending iPhone 4G. The story said the phone was accidentally left at a bar in Redwood City, Calif., last month by an Apple software engineer and found by someone who contacted Gizmodo, which had previously indicated it was willing to pay significant sums for unreleased Apple products.
The purpose of an investigation is to determine whether sufficient evidence exists to file criminal charges. Spokesmen for Santa Clara County and San Mateo County--home to the Redwood City bar--declined to comment. Representatives for Apple and Gawker Media did not immediately respond to interview requests.
CNET has not been able to confirm whether the investigation is targeting Gizmodo.com, its source who reportedly found the iPhone in a bar, or both. Apple acknowledged that the lost device is their property and asked for its return; Gizmodo has since said that it has returned the device.
Late Friday, Bloomberg reported that it spoke to Gaby Darbyshire, Gawker's chief operating officer, and she said that law enforcement officials had not spoken with anyone at the company. The wire service also reported that a San Mateo County prosecutor would not confirm an investigation but said that, "if there is a case that is investigated and able to be submitted for prosecution, it will be handled by this office."
The tale of a lost iPhone may sound trivial, but Apple goes to great lengths to protect the secrecy of its products, and the company has not been afraid to take aggressive legal measures in the past. It filed a lawsuit against a Mac enthusiast Web site, for instance, to unearth information about a leak. A state appeals court ruled in favor of the Web sites.
Apple argued in that case that information published about unreleased products causes it significant harm. "If these trade secrets are revealed, competitors can anticipate and counter Apple's business strategy, and Apple loses control over the timing and publicity for its product launches," Apple wrote in a brief.
Under a California law dating back to 1872, any person who finds lost property and knows who the owner is likely to be but "appropriates such property to his own use" is guilty of theft. If the value of the property exceeds $400, more serious charges of grand theft can be filed. In addition, a second state law says that any person who knowingly receives property that has been obtained illegally can be imprisoned for up to one year.
Any prosecution would be complicated because of the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of the press: the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2001 that confidential information leaked to a news organization could be legally broadcast, although that case did not deal with physical property and the radio station did not pay its source.
The computer crime task force is called REACT, which stands for Rapid Enforcement Allied Computer Team, and was established in 1997 with a goal of working closely with Bay Area technology companies. In the past, for instance, Apple has contacted REACT to report an employee who sold over $100,000 worth of computers on eBay. REACT also has investigated denial-of-service attacks targeting local firms.
Updated at 7:48 p.m. PDT Friday: To include statements from Gawker Media.
Greg Sandoval, who writes about digital media for CNET, can be reached at Greg.Sandoval@cbs.com. Declan McCullagh writes about the intersection between law and technology for CNET and can be reached at Declan.McCullagh@cbs.com.
Like the fake lines full of drones who wait to buy the latest thing at Apple stores and who get high fives as if they just cured cancer as they pay $600 for a pad !!
Give us a break from this nonsense already !!!!!
Agreed ????
Either way, taking it home is theft, selling it is theft. Calling the tech support line is not a reasonable effort to find the owner, but it is convenient as those calls may be recorded, and it gives him what he believes a protection because he "looked" for the owner for an hour. Apple has main switch boards and business offices, and he should have called there.
When I need to talk to someone employed by an airline, do I call reservations? Of course not. When I need to talk to the mayor, do I call the parking ticket dispute hotline? Of course not. When I want to talk to an engineer at apple in Cupertino, do I call tech support located in Canada? No...
Apple could decline to press charges, but this an obvious report/broadcast of a crime (via Gizmodo's own reporting).
So - either Gizmodo's owners/reporters get arrested (for knowingly receiving stolen goods), or Gizmodo would have to publicly say that their story is a lie, and come up with some other excuse.
Hiding behind the First Amendment won't help, since journalists aren't normally shielded from arrest and prosecution if they commit a crime to get a story.
Either way, it's gonna suck to be Mr. Denton and/or the Gizmodo reporter who broke the story.
Someone knew it was a prototype and that that made it valuable. Either it was a bar full of IT, techs and engineers, or someone who knew what it is stole it, or the engineer was short on bucks and sold it himself with the "found in a bar" story.
In any case, whoever "found" it could have returned it to Apple. Since they have a law covering this I don't see why charges would not be laid unless they paid the guy in cash and didn't get a name.
i say greed, because someone might end up in jail over an iPhone, that had no business in a bar! ;]
offtopic: i rememeber seeing on tv some story that the iPhone was going to record video too -after a few updates, etc. in my desk i still have my old nokia 6600 (stopped production in 07) and it has lots of tird party app, not to mention video recording, spy-mode cam, and so on.. so the argument that the competitors might ?steal? the Apple?s technology is sort of a joke.
"offtopic: i rememeber seeing on tv some story that the iPhone was going to record video too -after a few updates, etc. in my desk i still have my old nokia 6600 (stopped production in 07) and it has lots of tird party app, not to mention video recording, spy-mode cam, and so on.. so the argument that the competitors might ?steal? the Apple?s technology is sort of a joke."
A Toyota Corolla and a Nissan GT-R both have internal combustion engines, 4 wheels and tires, a transmission, and a steering wheel... and the Nissan GT-R was introduced AFTER the Corolla. Does that mean Nissan stole Toyota's technology? American consumers are so into "features" that they forget about capabilities. They may have the same features but can they really do the same thing?
i get your point. still it seems a joke to me the argument Apple uses in this case. let's also take into consideration that Apple did 2 big mistakes, and they try now to blame it on some1 else:
1. they lost the device
2. they kept it a secret to the support team.
the guy that got the new iPhone, has a case # from the Apple support trying to return the found phone. they dismissed him, considering it a 'joke' hence having no info that they should exect some phonecalls regarding the incident.
how far must one go in order to return a found item? i mean if i lose my wallet, i make sure at least i have o good batt in my phone, just in case some1 calls; in no way i turn off or put my phone on silence. as i've said before, at this point it seems greedy to me what Apple's doing.
ps i found last summer a phone in SF... i've spent 2 hrs on the phone trying to return it, almost lost a flight and was accused of 'taking the phone' by a stupid young girl. the airport security wouldn't take it because they were 'too busy' w/ other important stuff. so i ened up 'working' half a day for a 100$ lost phone. next time i am sure i'm not going to go the extra mile for returning a found phone. i'll just spend 5min trying to do the right thing, then leave it on the ground and go my way - but who knows, im a nice guy, i might act 'stupid' again ;]]
And if the property crossed state lines - well, the feds might get involved.
Even so a stolen iPhone prototype can do some harm for competition as competitors now know what Apple will release. Motorola, Nokia, and HTC now have a product road map to base their own products by. A two month headstart.
I lived there for almost 3 years and though I was not in any way inconvenience, money tend to help in that, but I would not call it a freedom state. On top of that we are talking about a State who is bankrupt but has its own task force that from what I have been reading is its own FBI but just for a small area of California. The valley.
Now what was very interesting was that Texas law who has some really funky sex laws, and don't get me started on religion here, does not consider what happen as theft. It would seem that theft and its meaning is up to the individual states. As for the DA, oh please remember the whole Duke incident, that DA got canned and disbarred for abuse of power.
There is no crime here unless of course someone wants there to be one, that how our court system work.
But as a news organization, it is their job to report on something. It is their business. They make money on reporting things-through advertising- and an exclusive can bring in alot of new site traffic and many new users. I dont feel apple has much of a case unless Gizmodo didnt return the item immediatelty.
If the already suspicious story IS 100% accurate, Apple has little case here. The phone went missing in mid-March and they seemed to make NO attempt to retrieve it. The possessor of the phone did attempt to return it. It is like a lost dog. You dont have to hold on to it, you opt to do so. After a few weeks of trying to contact the owner, you have to decide what to do- get rid of the dog and lift a burden? or wait forever? . So the guy sold the phone. When Gizmodo paraded the phone around, it was like taking a secret hidden dog with special never before seen talents and putting him in a circus. When gizmodo opened up the phone it was like figuring out how the dog acted so differntly. BUT when the original owner (apple) came for the dog (phone) it was promptly returned.
Terrible analogy or sad disney movie? YOU DECIDE!
? On their report, Gizmodo said that the 'finder' of the phone saw the person's name (I believe on the Facebook app) before the phone bricked.
? Gizmodo offered $10k for use of an iPad before it was released.
Because of the Finder saw the person's name (and knew he could be found on the web), he should have made a greater effort attempting to return the phone. Contacting customer support is not good enough, especially when you know the guy's name. Or how about swinging by Infinite Loop to drop it off. Obviously he knew it was a prototype, which is why he contacted Gizmodo. And he did not do this for the spirit of an open society - wanted to get paid.....
As far as Gizmodo, while they are probably more shielded because they call themselves 'journalists' they should not be compared to Woodward and Bernstein at all. They were not paying a whistleblower for info to show some sort of coverup, they paid some lecherous thief for lost or stolen property of a phone. THey weren't saving lives. And their bounty on the iPad before launch is almost inciting theft.
I have no problem breaking Apple's code of secrecy. Get your leaked images of the next product from an employee, get tech specs from the factory. Get that info and report it before Apple wants, I don't care. But if you have to pay for something that clearly was not the 'finder's' property, you should really ask yourself if this is ethical.
They do, it's called Mobile Me and it can track & remote wipe the phone from your computer. The apple employee used it once they realized the person who had it wasn't giving it back.
Seriously... Apple needs to pull its head out of its posterior orifice and wake up and smell the coffee! No harm, no foul! Cry me a freaking river, then build a bridge and get over it!
/jp/
BTW, RTFA.
For all you know, the guy who "found it" aquired it in much the same way someone "finds" someone elses car in a parking lot and drives off.
If he can prove that he tried to return it then he has no problem. If he called tech support there should be a call record if not a recording.
The "finder" mew exactly what he/she was doing. Gizmodo knew exactly what they were doing.
They had an unreleased iPhone and were going to make the most of it, law and right or wrong be damned.
It appears they may end up sorry for that behavior. Apple isn't asking questions, the Santa Clara Police Dept is.
Granted, it's possible that this "finder" was too stupid to figure out how to return this property to its owner, however... I once found a phone in a B&N. It never occurred to me to: 1) take it home and try to figure out how valuable it was and whether I could sell it to someone; or 2) call Motorola's help line and ask them if they could find the owner. I simply gave it to the front desk, where its owner reclaimed it within an hour. I also once left my purse in a bar and didn't notice 'til I was almost home. Lucky for me, the person who found it neither took it home to check out how valuable it was, nor called the manufacturer to see if they could find the owner. They simply turned it in to the bartender, who gave it to me when I went back. Both parties to the sale of this prototype knew that they were committing industrial espionage, and they should be prosecuted for it.
I think Apple may have figured out a way to get back at them... and Gizmodo fell for it. Either way Apple wins, not much information was released about the supposed iPhone 4G, and Apple has gotten plenty of free ad time.
By finding an iphone, if he attempted to make contact with the owner he is fine legally. According to giz, the "finder" got the phone and attempted to find out who the guy was. They didnt know each other and, aside from sitting near each other, never met.
The "finder" attempted calling apple support supposedly, who thought he just had some chinese knock off and told him it as fine. This is when the "finder" became the "keeper" and the "loser" (apple) became a "weeper".
I feel that as he had the thing for a while and attempted to make contact, and no contact was made on apple's behalf, the iPhone became his property. Had Apple ever came and said-thats ours- this might be different.
It doesn't become your property only after a few days. And certainly not when you know the name of the owner.
So if I 'find' your car keys, drive away in your car, call Ford/Chevy/Toyota and claim that I 'just found it', but then turn around and sell the car the next day after getting nothing from the manufacturer... that's okay, right?
I'm pretty sure the word "theft" would apply to whatever I get charged with for doing that.
Can they prove that?
There are folks who make a living stealing technology in locations around the centers of this industry. They will wait and look in bars, in stores, in malls, in garbage dumps, and places we cannot think of to find this stuff. They will sell it to the press, to competitors, and to anyone else who is willing to part with the bucks.
I suspect that there was very little luck and coincidence involved in the iPhone's trail from a German bar to the Press's camera.
Police officers: Please do something useful! Million citizens need your help to save their lives.
Very good perspective!!! The almighty Jobs is a joke !!!!
Further, it is a high-profile case that has been in all the national news media. It is a great opportunity to educate the public on the law surrounding lost property. From some of the comments here, there is obviously a lot of educating that needs to be done.
Kudos to the Santa Clara police and D.A. for giving this case the attention it deserves. Anything else would have sent the wrong message. "Find it, it's yours, wink, wink..."
a phone is just a phone. If you lost your prototype product (sex toy), are they going to use their resources to find it for you?
Is a car worth looking for? How about a diamond necklace? Or is it only missing people? I just need to know the rules in the world you've created for us. In the world that exists, Police departments have divisions devoted to property theft. So obviously, many people think it's worth investigating...
You bet your sweet arse they are.
Of course, Apple might delay and change the design, now that everyone knows what it looks like, if they're so paranoid.
buying leaked information != buying stolen tangible goods.
"Ill-gotten information" is also not codified under criminal law, save for things like federal/military secrets and similar information.
We'll see how this shakes out. His phone records should show whether he really called Apple or not.
Sure enough, some responsible journalist contacted the bar owner. He told them the the person who "found" the item didn't even inform them.... Read here: http://www.dailyfinance.com/story/why-apple-could-sue-gawker-over-lost-iphone-story/19447570/
Five minutes on hold listening to some hollow reassurance that your call is important.
Explain why you are calling and being told they need to transfer your call to someone else.
The someone else is still not the right person, transferred again.
"Hello, I'm Mr. Bigshot, please leave me a message and I will get right back to you."
Leave a long detailed message.
Two days later, "This is Mr. Bigshot, what do you want?" (Your message is of no use.)
Explain it again.
"We are not missing anything."
Think I am kidding? This is my experience on two ocassions over the past ten years.
1. Drive 10 minutes to Apple headquarter and drop off at the front desk.
2. Call Apple's main number and ask to transfer to the engineer who lost the phone (he had the name).
3. Leave a note with the Facebook app saying "I have your phone! Call me at ...."
4. Bring up the phone app and call the last recent call number, and say "hey, your friend lost his phone. Ask him to call..."
5. Leave the phone at the bar.
6. Tell the bar manager that you have the phone. If anyone's looking for it, call ....
7. Go to the email app and get the owner's email address. Send him an email "call me"
8. Drop it off at the nearest police station. File a report. If nobody claims it, it is yours after 180 days. (That's the legal way to "finder's keep")
Any one of the above takes less work than looking for a buyers for the phone, so you cannot say that he has made "reasonable" attempt.
And I will bet that this "theft" will never be found. Gizmodo probably paid him in cash at the street corner.
Paaa-leeeze.
If you're smart enough to figure out that you might have a prototype iPhone on your hands, you SHOULD be smart enough to figure out how to get it back to Apple, no?
2) California (like most states') laws say you're wrong.
So I don't think the finder is covered at all by this story.
Furthermore, I find myself wondering whether he found it or, having seen the Apple engineer using it, looked for and found an opportunity to just take it (an iPhone! Cool!). After taking it he realized its unusual nature and that he could get more than the value of an actual iPhone from it. So he shopped it to Engadget and Gizmodo. The very fact that he DIDN'T hand it over to the bartender or the police, or take REAL steps to get it back to Apple, argues persuasively that the intent of the guy was to steal it in the first place.
He gets NO sympathy from me; he is a thief, and I hope Gizmodo is required to reveal who he is so he can be prosecuted for this theft.
And the more people who thereby come to understand the laws governing found property, the better for me in case I ever lose anything of value.
Perhaps the finder thought Gizmodo would have better luck getting it back to Apple (which they clearly did). I think it all comes down to whether Gizmodo really paid for the phone, or just for the right to have a look at it.
Criminals murder, rob and commit other violent crimes on a daily basis, and you want the police to waste time on a stupid iPhone.
Your priorites are completely out of whack.
That's complete BS, and you know it. Police have limited resources and they have to prioritize; they can't and they won't pursue every crime. Someone break into your car and steal $1000 worth of equipment? File a report and that's it; they won't even send out someone to check for fingerprints.
If it were just a stupid phone i'd be with you. but it's not. it's a prototype worth thousands of dollars.
And since this is becoming a high profile issue, I don't think they have a choice but to look into it.
You're here too... if you don't like pumping up the "Apple hype machine" then stop posting about Apple. Its people like you who complain but keep posting anyway....
If this is indicative of apples engineers, they don't sound so bright to me.
I'll think I'll pass on any new release apple stuff if this is how smart their engineers really are!
- by B-Ri April 23, 2010 1:30 PM PDT
- Too bad this didn't happen in Santa Barbara, they could have had Spencer and Gus solve the case psychically. :)
- Like this Reply to this comment 2 people like this comment
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