8 ms·

Why Is Apple's iPhone Prototype Entitled To More Justice?

34 points by brlewis 17y ago

bradfordw 17y ago
Because in this day and age we value our gadgets more than our freedom. If <big business name> isn't happy, then no one is happy.
randrews 17y ago
"He did it and got away with it" isn't a defense for breaking the law.
Terretta 17y ago
Asking "Why were two completely different crime department cases in two completely different jurisdictions handled in two completely different ways?" is just glomming onto current news in an attempt to raise the profile of some other complaint. The complaint (her TRO should have been enforced) is valid, but has nothing to do with the handling of trade secrets investigation elsewhere in the country.
- MaxwellKennerly 17y ago
  The problem in both cases is the absence of any standards governing the exercise of the prosecutor's and investigator's discretion. The appearance of impropriety in both cases magnifies the problem. If REACT wants to make it a high priority to issue subpoenas to recover information from third parties that might relate to someone else's wrongful possession of a phone for a brief amount of time, then so be it. Last I read they were focused on major counterfeit software operations. At the moment, though, it appears REACT suddenly developed a zeal for prosecuting a trivial offense merely because the offense is high profile and involved an influential victim. That's a problem, and it's the same problem in the Gonzales case: the improper exercise of discretion. The public is entitled to know how and why REACT is utilizing its limited resources.
  - rbanffy 17y ago
    Selectively enforcing high-profile offenses is a valid strategy if you want the increased awareness to be used as a dissuader for similar offenses, so, I understand when the prosecution wants to be "overzealous" when it comes to a valuable prototype. Having said that, what happened to that woman is inexcusable. I understand police doesn't want to be used to intimidate a parent on behalf of other parent, but this inaction is absolutely shocking.
    - MaxwellKennerly 17y ago
      "Selectively enforcing high-profile offenses is a valid strategy if you want the increased awareness to be used as a dissuader for similar offenses, so, I understand when the prosecution wants to be "overzealous" when it comes to a valuable prototype." I can respect that. But that also raises a number of questions. Does REACT believe that this incident will create a wave of prototype thefts by journalists? Do they believe that public reaction and civil lawsuits arising from such incidents will be insufficient to deter future individuals contemplating such a crime? The bigger problem is that we're all doing a post hoc analysis that REACT likely didn't do at all. Maybe it saw a hot story in the news and so dashed off the broadest subpoena it possibly could. Maybe Apple made a few calls. The situation is concerning enough to warrant, at a minimum, an explanation from REACT as to what they thought they were doing. Depending on that explanation, an investigation or sanctions could be warranted. Frankly, that might happen sooner than we think. I wouldn't be surprised if the EFF or ACLU filed suit on behalf of Chen for the unlawful seizure of his property. Of all places, California is the last state in which you want to start seizing a journalist's computers on a mere hunch that a crime was committed by someone else.
      - rbanffy 17y ago
        EFF is already working on that. http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/04/gizmodo-search-warrant-illegal http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/04/gizmodo-search-warrant-...
- johSho7w 17y ago
  The question is the difference in public response at the two cases. Just FYI for the ESLs and reading-comprehension-impaired.
  - anigbrowl 17y ago
    Quite, but Gizmodo/Gawker are in the business of getting attention. It's not as if they normally toil in obscurity and suddenly found themselves singled out for publicity.
- CoryMathews 17y ago
  The complaint is that if the law is the law then every case should be handled the exact same. Regardless of who it is. A phone is a phone 3 daughters is 3 daughters. It should not matter whose phone or whose daughters. They are simply showing how bad/corrupt/failed the current law system is.
  - pohl 17y ago
    Characterizing the incident as involving "a phone" is like saying that Ms. Gonzales lost 3 mammals: true, but bereft of essential detail.
  - Terretta 17y ago
    > The complaint is that if the law is the law then every case should be handled the exact same. If every case "should be handled the exact same", explain to the LAPD they don't need seven (7) divisions and could save tax dollars: http://www.lapdonline.org/detective_bureau http://www.lapdonline.org/detective_bureau - Vice Division - Juvenile Division - Commercial Crimes Division - Detective Support & Vice Division - Robbery Homicide Division - Force Investigation Division - Gang and Narcotics Division
- ezran 17y ago
  The cases may be different crimes, and in different areas, but it's just illustrative of how out of balance the justice system is. When the victim is high-profile, the enforcement is swift and overbearing. When the victim is unknown or powerless, the enforcement is often nonexistent. Seizing personal computers, cameras, cell phones, servers, and paperwork, for a case where the property has already been returned, might be legal but is also a completely inappropriate response. There's already a very clear case here, and lives are not in danger. It doesn't matter if he's a journalist or not, this is just not the level of action that should have been taken. We should be able to expect fairly consistent responses to legal situations, based on the severity of the crime and the impact, rather than based on the identity of the victim or the media attention focused on the case.
fierarul 17y ago
People are ignoring the media aspect to all of this. You do not want such a public case to go unpunished or ignored by the state. If some random phone gets lost obviously you aren't going to spend too much resources on this because there aren't enough available. I'm pretty sure not all such individual cases are ignored, so it's not like only the corporations "receive justice". But, having such a public case about a presumably lost prototype, etc. be ignored is a sign that the state considers this to be ok or of low importance. You do not want that idea to spread into the mainstream. Justice isn't just about busting dors, it's also a marketing (or propaganda) issue.
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
- chc 17y ago
  If we use this logic, we must conclude that it is more acceptable in the state's eyes (or at least the state wants everybody to think it is more acceptable) to murder children than to take photos of a prototype phone. This is an extremely disturbing case if your suggested reasoning is correct.
  - anigbrowl 17y ago
    No more than we must conclude two HN comments from different posters represent yCombinator's corporate viewpoint.
    - chc 17y ago
      That's not similar, because we are not representatives of HN. Government employees using their authority do represent the government.
      - anigbrowl 17y ago
        Which government? We have thousands of them in US, in case you hadn't noticed. My point is that 'the state' is not a monolithic entity, and the comparison of two different crimes in different jurisdictions in different decades doesn't mean anything very much.
CWuestefeld 17y ago
The OP's counterexample, the Gonzales case, is just an example of "won't someone think of the children?", and I have little patience for such arguments, designed to evoke emotion rather than reason. While you might not like it, Apple's marketing plans probably do have a larger impact on our society than does OP's hypothetical lost phone. It's unfortunate, but the realities of life force us to draw lines somewhere.
- MaxwellKennerly 17y ago
  Maybe so. But if so, then REACT shouldn't have any trouble explaining why the investigation of this single phone was so important. There are thousands of IT businesses that have been cheated, defrauded, stolen from, and counterfeited, and yet Apple's already-returned single phone gets preferential treatment. Why? Your explanation might be perfectly valid, but it's not the explanation REACT has given. They haven't explained anything at all.
  - CWuestefeld 17y ago
    My point wasn't that Apple is a business, and that other businesses should be treated the same. I was working on an idea of "size of the crime multiplied by the number of people impacted" might define where the threshold lies. So murdering one person is significant in that it affects one person ultimately, and a good chunk of other people in the second order. Losing one's own phone affects a single person only, and not very significantly at that. Apple's losing their prototype is analogous in the actual act, but the effect on Apple's marketing multiplies it out big-time. Other test cases for the thought experiment: bank robbery; simple assault; rape; creating a public nuisance. I think the idea can be applied successfully across all of these. I don't know anything specific about the stolen iPhone case. I find the whole "zOMG I saw a picture of the new iPhone!!!1!!" thing to be ridiculous. So I can't address anyone's behavior in this instance.
    - MaxwellKennerly 17y ago
      That's, by and large, what most district attorneys and police departments do, and that's what's so troubling about this action and the priority it was given. No one seriously believes that Gawker Media poses a continuing threat to anyone, including Apple. There's also no question about the disposition of the property; it's in Apple's hands. Further, the damage done is questionable. (I don't mean "frivolous." By "questionable," I mean that there's a legitimate dispute as to whether or not anyone suffered legally-recognized damages from the leak, as compared to, say, someone running a counterfeit-iPhone operation.) In such a situation, most cops and DAs would put the investigation at the bottom of their pile, tell the victim to file a civil lawsuit, and then focus their resources at on-going criminal activity or crimes with substantial damages to the public. Here, however, REACT raced into action with a particularly aggressive maneuver: a subpoena and unannounced seizure of a journalist's property. That's among the most aggressive actions they could have taken, and the decision-making behind it deserves an explanation.
jvdh 17y ago
The case has lots and lots of media attention. And it may be just me, but the whole thing seems to be a pretty easy case: The California law regarding lost items is pretty clear. If you think it's stolen, you have to report it. The website shows a story admitting to buying the prototype for $5000 and showing lots of pictures holding it, disassembling, etc. They know who owned it, and you're not going to pay $5000 for something that you're not completely sure of.
- sabat 17y ago
  But it was not stolen: the Apple employee who had been in possession of the prototype, Gray Powell, admits that he got drunk and accidentally left the phone at the bar. It was not stolen. It was lost.
  - evgen 17y ago
    When the finder failed to take adequate steps to return the phone and then sold it to another party it was no longer lost, it was stolen.
    - sigzero 17y ago
      I fail to understand why people don't get that point.
      - allwein 17y ago
        I don't understand it either. Especially since everyone agrees that an analogous case is theft. "I walk into a coffee shop and see an unattended laptop sitting on one of the tables, so I decide to close it up and take it home with me." Nobody I've talked to seems to think that this scenario is okay or consider the laptop "lost". So I don't know why people are so quick to consider this iphone lost.
    - mechanical_fish 17y ago
      You even left out the part where they disassembled it, which crosses the line even more blatantly.
noonespecial 17y ago
If I just come out and say it can we move along to more newsworthy items? Because Apple has lots of money and political influence. Justice is politics and politics is money. Its ugly when it shows up so explicitly, but it should be no surprise.
- barrkel 17y ago
  Outrage and attention are also political currency. In our outrage at injustice, we draw attention to it and create incentives for something to be done about it (and of course, not always to good effect). It's a counterpoint - possibly the main counterpoint - to buying justice.
LoneCoder 17y ago
Is it just me or has HN gotten really cynical today? That murder story was just awful. Who would want to read that at the start of their day?
raganwald 17y ago
Why is this opinion Hacker News? Does the system need to be hacked? Do people think the system has been hacked? How is the presence of this story on HN different than the presence of the same story on reddit?
- Freebytes 17y ago
  Hacker News is not only about hacking. Hacker News is about delivering content that is entertaining and useful to people that are programmers or people that are planning or currently running a start-up. This is actually completely relevant because anything involving this story could involve a small business that finds itself in a similar situation. Gizmodo could have been a small startup idea that only had a few viewers, for example. It could happen to any of us that are starting a new business. However, not everything must be relevant. Sometimes stories are simply entertaining and break the monotony.
  - raganwald 17y ago
    > anything involving this story Sorry, I don't believe that anything involving the story is relevant to HN, nor do I believe that anything entertaining is HN. The acid test is "Anything that would gratify our intellectual curiosity." Some issues connected to this story do, some do not. Remember that almost everyone here reads multiple sources of information: We read reddit, we read stackoverflow, we are on twitter. Therefore, there is no need for HN to contain every story that might be entertaining or even interesting. For example, anecdotes about using dating sites are of great prurient interest to hackers, but not Hacker News. Stories about what makes some profiles on dating sites attract more responses than others: Hacker News. So besides entertainment value, what specifically about this post should gratify my intellectual curiosity? What can I learn from this post to write software? What does it teach me about running a start-up?
    - brlewis 17y ago
      When I did jury duty a couple of years ago, the division of power among police, judge and jury interesting. The legal system is more than laws. I found this post by a lawyer interesting because it addresses an important question related to that division of power. I don't know that it directly informs security of distributed systems or a startup's interaction with the legal system, but I think someone interested in either of those areas might find this story interesting.
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]

34 points by brlewis 17y ago

Because in this day and age we value our gadgets more than our freedom. If <big business name> isn't happy, then no one is happy.

randrews 17y ago

"He did it and got away with it" isn't a defense for breaking the law.

Terretta 17y ago

Asking "Why were two completely different crime department cases in two completely different jurisdictions handled in two completely different ways?" is just glomming onto current news in an attempt to raise the profile of some other complaint. The complaint (her TRO should have been enforced) is valid, but has nothing to do with the handling of trade secrets investigation elsewhere in the country.

MaxwellKennerly 17y ago
The problem in both cases is the absence of any standards governing the exercise of the prosecutor's and investigator's discretion. The appearance of impropriety in both cases magnifies the problem. If REACT wants to make it a high priority to issue subpoenas to recover information from third parties that might relate to someone else's wrongful possession of a phone for a brief amount of time, then so be it. Last I read they were focused on major counterfeit software operations. At the moment, though, it appears REACT suddenly developed a zeal for prosecuting a trivial offense merely because the offense is high profile and involved an influential victim. That's a problem, and it's the same problem in the Gonzales case: the improper exercise of discretion. The public is entitled to know how and why REACT is utilizing its limited resources.
- rbanffy 17y ago
  Selectively enforcing high-profile offenses is a valid strategy if you want the increased awareness to be used as a dissuader for similar offenses, so, I understand when the prosecution wants to be "overzealous" when it comes to a valuable prototype. Having said that, what happened to that woman is inexcusable. I understand police doesn't want to be used to intimidate a parent on behalf of other parent, but this inaction is absolutely shocking.
  - MaxwellKennerly 17y ago
    "Selectively enforcing high-profile offenses is a valid strategy if you want the increased awareness to be used as a dissuader for similar offenses, so, I understand when the prosecution wants to be "overzealous" when it comes to a valuable prototype." I can respect that. But that also raises a number of questions. Does REACT believe that this incident will create a wave of prototype thefts by journalists? Do they believe that public reaction and civil lawsuits arising from such incidents will be insufficient to deter future individuals contemplating such a crime? The bigger problem is that we're all doing a post hoc analysis that REACT likely didn't do at all. Maybe it saw a hot story in the news and so dashed off the broadest subpoena it possibly could. Maybe Apple made a few calls. The situation is concerning enough to warrant, at a minimum, an explanation from REACT as to what they thought they were doing. Depending on that explanation, an investigation or sanctions could be warranted. Frankly, that might happen sooner than we think. I wouldn't be surprised if the EFF or ACLU filed suit on behalf of Chen for the unlawful seizure of his property. Of all places, California is the last state in which you want to start seizing a journalist's computers on a mere hunch that a crime was committed by someone else.
    - rbanffy 17y ago
      EFF is already working on that. http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/04/gizmodo-search-warrant-illegal http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/04/gizmodo-search-warrant-...
johSho7w 17y ago
The question is the difference in public response at the two cases. Just FYI for the ESLs and reading-comprehension-impaired.
- anigbrowl 17y ago
  Quite, but Gizmodo/Gawker are in the business of getting attention. It's not as if they normally toil in obscurity and suddenly found themselves singled out for publicity.
CoryMathews 17y ago
The complaint is that if the law is the law then every case should be handled the exact same. Regardless of who it is. A phone is a phone 3 daughters is 3 daughters. It should not matter whose phone or whose daughters. They are simply showing how bad/corrupt/failed the current law system is.
- pohl 17y ago
  Characterizing the incident as involving "a phone" is like saying that Ms. Gonzales lost 3 mammals: true, but bereft of essential detail.
- Terretta 17y ago
  > The complaint is that if the law is the law then every case should be handled the exact same. If every case "should be handled the exact same", explain to the LAPD they don't need seven (7) divisions and could save tax dollars: http://www.lapdonline.org/detective_bureau http://www.lapdonline.org/detective_bureau - Vice Division - Juvenile Division - Commercial Crimes Division - Detective Support & Vice Division - Robbery Homicide Division - Force Investigation Division - Gang and Narcotics Division
ezran 17y ago
The cases may be different crimes, and in different areas, but it's just illustrative of how out of balance the justice system is. When the victim is high-profile, the enforcement is swift and overbearing. When the victim is unknown or powerless, the enforcement is often nonexistent. Seizing personal computers, cameras, cell phones, servers, and paperwork, for a case where the property has already been returned, might be legal but is also a completely inappropriate response. There's already a very clear case here, and lives are not in danger. It doesn't matter if he's a journalist or not, this is just not the level of action that should have been taken. We should be able to expect fairly consistent responses to legal situations, based on the severity of the crime and the impact, rather than based on the identity of the victim or the media attention focused on the case.

fierarul 17y ago

People are ignoring the media aspect to all of this. You do not want such a public case to go unpunished or ignored by the state. If some random phone gets lost obviously you aren't going to spend too much resources on this because there aren't enough available. I'm pretty sure not all such individual cases are ignored, so it's not like only the corporations "receive justice". But, having such a public case about a presumably lost prototype, etc. be ignored is a sign that the state considers this to be ok or of low importance. You do not want that idea to spread into the mainstream. Justice isn't just about busting dors, it's also a marketing (or propaganda) issue.

deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
chc 17y ago
If we use this logic, we must conclude that it is more acceptable in the state's eyes (or at least the state wants everybody to think it is more acceptable) to murder children than to take photos of a prototype phone. This is an extremely disturbing case if your suggested reasoning is correct.
- anigbrowl 17y ago
  No more than we must conclude two HN comments from different posters represent yCombinator's corporate viewpoint.
  - chc 17y ago
    That's not similar, because we are not representatives of HN. Government employees using their authority do represent the government.
    - anigbrowl 17y ago
      Which government? We have thousands of them in US, in case you hadn't noticed. My point is that 'the state' is not a monolithic entity, and the comparison of two different crimes in different jurisdictions in different decades doesn't mean anything very much.

CWuestefeld 17y ago

The OP's counterexample, the Gonzales case, is just an example of "won't someone think of the children?", and I have little patience for such arguments, designed to evoke emotion rather than reason. While you might not like it, Apple's marketing plans probably do have a larger impact on our society than does OP's hypothetical lost phone. It's unfortunate, but the realities of life force us to draw lines somewhere.

MaxwellKennerly 17y ago
Maybe so. But if so, then REACT shouldn't have any trouble explaining why the investigation of this single phone was so important. There are thousands of IT businesses that have been cheated, defrauded, stolen from, and counterfeited, and yet Apple's already-returned single phone gets preferential treatment. Why? Your explanation might be perfectly valid, but it's not the explanation REACT has given. They haven't explained anything at all.
- CWuestefeld 17y ago
  My point wasn't that Apple is a business, and that other businesses should be treated the same. I was working on an idea of "size of the crime multiplied by the number of people impacted" might define where the threshold lies. So murdering one person is significant in that it affects one person ultimately, and a good chunk of other people in the second order. Losing one's own phone affects a single person only, and not very significantly at that. Apple's losing their prototype is analogous in the actual act, but the effect on Apple's marketing multiplies it out big-time. Other test cases for the thought experiment: bank robbery; simple assault; rape; creating a public nuisance. I think the idea can be applied successfully across all of these. I don't know anything specific about the stolen iPhone case. I find the whole "zOMG I saw a picture of the new iPhone!!!1!!" thing to be ridiculous. So I can't address anyone's behavior in this instance.
  - MaxwellKennerly 17y ago
    That's, by and large, what most district attorneys and police departments do, and that's what's so troubling about this action and the priority it was given. No one seriously believes that Gawker Media poses a continuing threat to anyone, including Apple. There's also no question about the disposition of the property; it's in Apple's hands. Further, the damage done is questionable. (I don't mean "frivolous." By "questionable," I mean that there's a legitimate dispute as to whether or not anyone suffered legally-recognized damages from the leak, as compared to, say, someone running a counterfeit-iPhone operation.) In such a situation, most cops and DAs would put the investigation at the bottom of their pile, tell the victim to file a civil lawsuit, and then focus their resources at on-going criminal activity or crimes with substantial damages to the public. Here, however, REACT raced into action with a particularly aggressive maneuver: a subpoena and unannounced seizure of a journalist's property. That's among the most aggressive actions they could have taken, and the decision-making behind it deserves an explanation.

jvdh 17y ago

The case has lots and lots of media attention. And it may be just me, but the whole thing seems to be a pretty easy case: The California law regarding lost items is pretty clear. If you think it's stolen, you have to report it. The website shows a story admitting to buying the prototype for $5000 and showing lots of pictures holding it, disassembling, etc. They know who owned it, and you're not going to pay $5000 for something that you're not completely sure of.

sabat 17y ago
But it was not stolen: the Apple employee who had been in possession of the prototype, Gray Powell, admits that he got drunk and accidentally left the phone at the bar. It was not stolen. It was lost.
- evgen 17y ago
  When the finder failed to take adequate steps to return the phone and then sold it to another party it was no longer lost, it was stolen.
  - sigzero 17y ago
    I fail to understand why people don't get that point.
    - allwein 17y ago
      I don't understand it either. Especially since everyone agrees that an analogous case is theft. "I walk into a coffee shop and see an unattended laptop sitting on one of the tables, so I decide to close it up and take it home with me." Nobody I've talked to seems to think that this scenario is okay or consider the laptop "lost". So I don't know why people are so quick to consider this iphone lost.
  - mechanical_fish 17y ago
    You even left out the part where they disassembled it, which crosses the line even more blatantly.

noonespecial 17y ago

If I just come out and say it can we move along to more newsworthy items? Because Apple has lots of money and political influence. Justice is politics and politics is money. Its ugly when it shows up so explicitly, but it should be no surprise.

barrkel 17y ago
Outrage and attention are also political currency. In our outrage at injustice, we draw attention to it and create incentives for something to be done about it (and of course, not always to good effect). It's a counterpoint - possibly the main counterpoint - to buying justice.

LoneCoder 17y ago

Is it just me or has HN gotten really cynical today? That murder story was just awful. Who would want to read that at the start of their day?

raganwald 17y ago

Why is this opinion Hacker News? Does the system need to be hacked? Do people think the system has been hacked? How is the presence of this story on HN different than the presence of the same story on reddit?

Freebytes 17y ago
Hacker News is not only about hacking. Hacker News is about delivering content that is entertaining and useful to people that are programmers or people that are planning or currently running a start-up. This is actually completely relevant because anything involving this story could involve a small business that finds itself in a similar situation. Gizmodo could have been a small startup idea that only had a few viewers, for example. It could happen to any of us that are starting a new business. However, not everything must be relevant. Sometimes stories are simply entertaining and break the monotony.
- raganwald 17y ago
  > anything involving this story Sorry, I don't believe that anything involving the story is relevant to HN, nor do I believe that anything entertaining is HN. The acid test is "Anything that would gratify our intellectual curiosity." Some issues connected to this story do, some do not. Remember that almost everyone here reads multiple sources of information: We read reddit, we read stackoverflow, we are on twitter. Therefore, there is no need for HN to contain every story that might be entertaining or even interesting. For example, anecdotes about using dating sites are of great prurient interest to hackers, but not Hacker News. Stories about what makes some profiles on dating sites attract more responses than others: Hacker News. So besides entertainment value, what specifically about this post should gratify my intellectual curiosity? What can I learn from this post to write software? What does it teach me about running a start-up?
  - brlewis 17y ago
    When I did jury duty a couple of years ago, the division of power among police, judge and jury interesting. The legal system is more than laws. I found this post by a lawyer interesting because it addresses an important question related to that division of power. I don't know that it directly informs security of distributed systems or a startup's interaction with the legal system, but I think someone interested in either of those areas might find this story interesting.

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]