Earlier quoted context omitted.
No such thing as bad publicity. Imagine gizmodo's ad revenues for today!
They pre-sell their ad space.
True (and upmodded) but they had more space (impressions) today and hence sold the extra space.
Police raid Gizmodo editor's house
131–140 of 306 posts
Re: Police raid Gizmodo editor's house
#132Seems a bit overkill? JUST for a moment, forget about the your bias on Gizmodo or 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 bet…
And that is my main problem with the story. I do not have a dog in the fight since I have a feeling that the whole story has yet to be told. But if this was anyone else cell phone, there would be no cops kicking down doors.
Re: Police raid Gizmodo editor's house
#133I'm glad. 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…
"And learn that 'checkbook journalism' just flat-out doesn't count. Even when they're paying people for interviews, instead of buying hot goods."
Why is this?
Re: Police raid Gizmodo editor's house
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
You may want to read up on U.S. v Boucher, 2009. 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.
This is a little different. The laptop was searched while unencrypted, and child porn was found. Only then did Boucher refuse to provide the key. This was also a customs case; where the courts have routinely held that your Constitutional protection against searches does not apply. (The courts are wrong, of course, but this issue remains unsolved pending new legislation.) Either way, the Constitution is clear on this…
But they can't punish you for not giving them the combination.
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.
Re: Police raid Gizmodo editor's house
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
Reading that warrant makes me not regret the full-disk encryption on every computer in my house. It makes the computer slower, but it removes any incentive to remove the device from my home. (And it removes the ability of my own computer to incriminate me.)
It does not remove the ability of law enforcement to serve a search warrant and carry your computers out the door, nor does it remove the ability of a judge to plant you in a jail cell until you cough up the passwords. What it does do in create an incentive for anyone who does serve a search warrant upon you to look very, very closely at the contents of the drive once you do provide the password -- if you thought the…
nor does it remove the ability of a judge to plant you in a jail cell until you cough up the passwords
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.
Re: Police raid Gizmodo editor's house
#136Everyone is debating the whole "Good Faith" thing again. Here's a suggestion: Ask how it is "Good Faith" to "find" something in a bar? This isn't your house, your place of work, or a public space, it's somebody else's property (a phone) inside somebody else's property (a bar). Since when do you leave a bar with something that doesn't belong to you unless it's somebody else's spouse?
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.
Re: Police raid Gizmodo editor's house
#137Earlier quoted context omitted.
What happened to the DVDs?
The police confiscated them as evidence. I'm sure they ultimately just threw them away. Towards the end when I started to accept they were never going to pursue the case, I started to ask if I could at least get the DVDs back. No dice.
I think you should have sought remedy in the civil courts. For $20 (or whatever), you probably could have at least gotten a default judgment against the guy and sold the case to a collection agency.
Re: Police raid Gizmodo editor's house
#138Let this possibly be a lesson. Use encryption. 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…
What is your plan for when the judge tells you to supply the decryption key?
Truecrypt supports plausible deniability: http://www.truecrypt.org/docs/?s=plausible-deniability
I don't do anything remotely heinous enough to warrant a court order to reveal my encryption key, however.
Re: Police raid Gizmodo editor's house
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
Friendly reminder: Everyone should always have an offsite backup! (one which they've practiced restoring!)
How do you practice a restore on a backup that you don't quite know for sure is a usable backup? That's a big fear of mine. I'm not about to wipe my system clean and hope the test works 100%.
If you backup to a hard drive, you can simply swap your main and backup drives every now and then. If you have three drives, you can always be using one as main, one as local backup, and the third locked up offsite as the "house burns down" backup. Then swap the offsite and local backups every month.
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.
Re: Police raid Gizmodo editor's house
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
Five bucks says there's a post on Gizmodo referencing the Pentagon Papers in the next 12 hours. 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.
Pentagon Papers was in the public interest. Tech specs of a new gadget probably isn't.
Oh, I completely, totally agree. But don't think that will stop the grandstanding and martyrdom.