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Apple’s head of security indicted in Santa Clara County CCW case

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Re: Apple’s head of security indicted in Santa Clara County CCW case

#541

Post by btilly »

ohazi wrote: post #119
paxys wrote: post #98

Can't believe all the Apple apologists here. Bribing public officials is a crime, period. It isn't an "unfortunate situation" or anything else that people are calling it. It also doesn't matter who initiated the bribe. The employee, and potentially the company itself, absolutely need to be charged and prosecuted for it.

I disagree. I dislike Apple's practices as much as anyone, but when the #2 person at the sheriff's office is the one soliciting the bribe, you have a problem with the police department that even Apple cannot be expected to fix. You can argue that they should have gone straight to the DA, and you might even be right, but the only way for this problem to get fixed is by cleaning house at the police department, not by s…

Keep in mind that it's incredibly rare for any DA to go against the police, so this case is already unusual. We'll have to wait and see if they actually have the evidence / wherewithal to see this one through rather than just settling out of court for a slap on the wrist.

Which raises the question, why did it happen this time?

My best guess is that the Santa Clara DA did the math, said, "I'm in a liberal part of a liberal state where people overwhelmingly support BLM and distrust the police. How can I best generate some positive publicity for myself?"

The concealed permits mess has been well-known for ages. So it wasn't a question of the DA having just learned about it and becoming shocked. And going to the Feds wouldn't have helped much since they don't care too much (else they would have acted ages ago). The question is why the DA decided to make an issue of it.

Re: Apple’s head of security indicted in Santa Clara County CCW case

#542

Post by hedora »

paxys wrote: post #98

Can't believe all the Apple apologists here. Bribing public officials is a crime, period. It isn't an "unfortunate situation" or anything else that people are calling it. It also doesn't matter who initiated the bribe. The employee, and potentially the company itself, absolutely need to be charged and prosecuted for it.

After going through the process of building a house in CA, I believe we should decriminalize offering of bribes, but not solicitation of bribes.

$100K’s of dollars (>> 10% of the total project cost) have been extracted from us by various bureaucratic processes that are outside what is explicitly specified by the law.

I am confident that this would not have happened if we were well politically connected, and had friends that worked at PG&E.

I honestly don’t know if we were “just supposed to know” that we needed to make some specific charitable or political donation or something like that, because no one has explicitly solicited a bribe from us.

If it were legal to offer bribes, I could go online, and search for information on who to pay off, and to what ends.

Even better, California could fix the law to eliminate these gray areas. In the Apple case, they could move from “may issue” to “shall issue”.

In my case, there could be bounds on permit review durations, and also the cost / benefit of “environmental” regulations: if some ask is too expensive homeowners could “buy credits” by doing something else that would be more effective for the same amount of money.

To be clear, the money they extracted from us for “the environment” will substantially increase our carbon footprint, impact on local wildlife and on the watershed — we planned to voluntarily spend that money to mitigate those impacts because we’re extremely concerned about the environment. Now, we’ve been forced to waste it in low impact ways. I’m not upset that we were forced to spend the money. I’m upset it was wasted.

Re: Apple’s head of security indicted in Santa Clara County CCW case

#543

Post by giantg2 »

anfilt wrote: post #507
kennywinker wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deniability. i.e. the sheriff can say the permit wasn’t issued because its at their discretion, not because someone didn’t pay a bribe. That said, even with a "shall" situation there are hoops to jump thru that can be used to set this same kinda situation up.

however the official in a shall issue state is then lying on documents, by jumping through hoops to deny applications if they are not paying the bribe.

And thus leaves a paper trail that you can use for a civil rights violation complaint to the FBI or at least internal affairs.

Re: Apple’s head of security indicted in Santa Clara County CCW case

#544

Post by function_seven »

ineedasername wrote: post #371
samatman wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it isn't. You are misinformed about the tawdry reality of asset seizure in the United States. If the police take assets from you, you might think you get them back unless you're convicted of a crime. Far from it: you must prove the innocence of your seized assets to get them back, and good luck with that. That this exists at all is a scandal and a moral hazard. Seizure should be strictly temporary until a convict…

A flaw in the legal process to easy & rapidly return assets to those found innocent does not make all seizures theft. Neither does the moral hazard of having assets retained by local jurisdictions. An abuse of a law simply does not make all uses of that law abuse.

> A flaw in the legal process to easy & rapidly return assets to those found innocent does not make all seizures theft.

How does it not? This is not just "a flaw", it's the way it's designed. If you're traveling with $5k in cash, a trooper somewhere on I-35 can seize it with the rationale that (1) I-35 is a notorious drug trafficking corridor, (2) your car is from out of state, (3) there's no legitimate reason to cross state lines with that amount of cash, other than illicit activity, and (4) "you appeared nervous"

They seize the cash, let you continue on your way, and never file any charges at all.

When you ask for it back, they say, "Nah, you have to prove your innocence first". Oh, and that would be a civil case, so you have to pony up for a lawyer and sue for it. No guarantee that you'll recover attorney's fees, so even if you win, you lose.

If they do charge you with a crime, you can be acquitted of the crime and still they keep the property. (It's "civil" forfeiture, your acquittal isn't enough to get your money back)

Okay, so no, it doesn't make all seizures theft, but it also has no reason to exist as a policy if you can seize assets of charged individuals anyway.

There should, 100%, never be an asset seizure without a related criminal charge. I'm usually not one for absolutes, but I am in this regard.

Re: Apple’s head of security indicted in Santa Clara County CCW case

#545

Post by gruez »

kbenson wrote: post #475
gruez wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>In what way is disparaging anyone who is a police officer because they are a police officer any different than disparaging anyone that is a lawyer because of the numerous negative stories about lawyers? Yes, because lawyers aren't in charge of enforcing the law, and even if they weren't, there isn't some sort of "thin blue line" where they're covering for each other.

Again, this is taking actions of a group, and some within it, and applying it to all the individuals. That your excuse for doing so is that "they are police" or "they are in charge" isn't all that convincing. Last time I checked, bigotry was bad in general, not just when applied to those without power.

> Last time I checked, bigotry was bad in general, not just when applied to those without power.

You're invoking "it's bigotry!" as a reason why we shouldn't do this. Why do you think bigotry is bad? Is it bad intrinsically (aka "bigotry is bad" is an axiom), or is it bad because of its effects? If it's the latter, does the reasoning apply when applied to organizations with voluntary membership?

Furthermore, I don't see why it's bad to hate on an organization and/or its members based on the conduct of its other members. Let's say Acme, Inc is known for sales reps with high pressure sales tactics. Is it bad then, if I ignore a cold call from an Acme sales rep on that basis?

Re: Apple’s head of security indicted in Santa Clara County CCW case

#546

Post by giantg2 »

zepto wrote: post #506
anigbrowl wrote: post #465

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You just get a recording of them soliciting the bribe. Not so hard.

Private parties recording conversations without consent is illegal in California.

I've seen a few people on here state this. I really wish people knew their rights better.

Federal judges have consistently ruled that recording public officials in the performance of their duties is a right under the first amendment. As a member of the public, you can record your interactions with police without their consent.

Re: Apple’s head of security indicted in Santa Clara County CCW case

#547

Post by tesmar2 »

tshaddox wrote: post #485
ggreer wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In California, you cannot carry concealed except on your own property or on the property of a business you own.[1] Employees cannot carry concealed even if they have permission from the employer. 1. https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySectio...

We’re back to “why concealed?”

Element of surprise.

Re: Apple’s head of security indicted in Santa Clara County CCW case

#548

Post by JKCalhoun »

zionic wrote: post #438
tomatotomato37 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Named after a Republican assemblyman, supported by the NRA, passed by a 2/3 vote in a Democratic assembly & senate, and signed in by Ronald Reagan, all due to a group of Black Panthers protesting inside the capitol building while armed. Who knew all you needed was a racial incentive in order to make the stripping of rights a bipartisan effort.

Yep. Gun control legislation has deeply racist roots and the left hates talking about it.

That's orthogonal to whether or not the U.S. should have more gun control.

Does the U.S. want to join 1st countries like Australia, the U.K., Japan, (etc.) or not?

Re: Apple’s head of security indicted in Santa Clara County CCW case

#549

Post by throwaway0a5e »

jasonladuke0311 wrote: post #533
alasdair_ wrote: post #151

I thought everyone knew that the best way to bribe the police for a ccw is to buy a poor rural town a new squad car in exchange for them letting you become a police officer (with no actual hours). Once you are a cop, federal law allows concealed carry in all 50 states, regardless of state law.

A cute trick I saw when working in a gun store was getting deputized in some two-horse town so you could buy post-sample machineguns[0]. I looked up one customer's "agency" and the town didn't exist. It was like 4 abandoned houses and it looked (from Google Maps) like no one had been through there in years. [0] A machinegun manufactured after the passage of the 1986 Hughes Amendment is non-transferrable and can only…

IIRC ATF clamped down on this.

Re: Apple’s head of security indicted in Santa Clara County CCW case

#550

Post by JackFr »

FireBeyond wrote: post #488
t-writescode wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, this sounds like it's coming from someone that lives in a country where bribes aren't commonplace. It's good that you and I both live in countries like that; but, in some countries, you report your bribes on taxes, they're so common. From the other comments in this thread, it's suggesting that the CCW permit process in California is very bad and broken and these bribes have been an illegal method of actuall…

I used to work for one of the oil giants. They had codified standards for bribery, a la: "While we do not approve of bribery, we recognize that in some places we do business, they are an unfortunate necessity. To that end, we have standardized our practices to keep everyone involved as safe as possible".

I hope there standard was to not do it, because it is a US crime for any US national, citizen or resident as employee, officer or agent of a US corporation to bribe or otherwise corrupt a foreign official.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Corrupt_Practices_Ac...

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