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Police raid Gizmodo editor's house

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Re: Police raid Gizmodo editor's house

#271

Post by [deleted] »

mbreese wrote: post #259
johSho7w wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If these secrets are so valuable maybe Apple should rethink its policy of letting them walk out the door to go to a bar.

Okay, this type of reasoning really is starting to get to me. You aren't the first to mention it in this thread, but it is wrong. Let me ask you this: if you are designing a phone , how else would you test it? 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…

[deleted]

Re: Police raid Gizmodo editor's house

#272

Post by evgen »

iamjustlooking wrote: post #119
slackerIII wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is your plan for when the judge tells you to supply the decryption key?

Does the 5th amendment not apply in this situation?

Still undetermined at the federal level. Are the contents of your computer evidence (like papers in a safe) or testimony. Most precedent points to the former, and if the Boucher case actually gets appealed to the circuit level (or even the supremes) then the odds are strongly against it being protected by the 5th.

Re: Police raid Gizmodo editor's house

#273

Post by houseabsolute »

anigbrowl wrote: post #53
grellas wrote: post #20

An important New Jersey appellate court decision, interpreting New Jersey law, just came down ruling that bloggers are not journalists and are not entitled to the protection afforded by the shield laws. (See the write-up here: http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202451742674&No_R... ). Regardless of the legality of this particular search, this confirms that the authorities are likely looking at this as a felony in…

It's certainly traumatic. What's worse is that Brian Lam, Gizmodo's editor-in-chief, apparently chose to leave Chen holding the bag; in their flippant response to Bruce Sewell, they directed him to recover the device from Chen, rather than at their editorial offices in San Francisco - I presume the REACT unit don't have jurisdiction in SF and a separate warrant will need to be issued.

Why would a state agency like REACT not have jurisdiction in a city that's in California?

Re: Police raid Gizmodo editor's house

#274

Post by habitue »

Lazlo_Nibble wrote: post #191
eli wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, that Gizmodo acted wrong and should be punished. They bought stolen goods, period. 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, d…

We already protect one and not the other. If the seller had only provided Gizmodo with the information they published (photos, teardowns, etc.) instead of the phone itself, Gizmodo probably wouldn't be in any legal trouble and the seller's identity would likely be protected by the shield laws.

Yeah I think they were pretty dumb to disclose all of the details of the story, they should have just taken it apart, taken their pictures, given it back to the seller and washed their hands of it. Telling everyone how they got it, who it came from, how much they paid etc is only going to get them into trouble.

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

Re: Police raid Gizmodo editor's house

#275

Post by anigbrowl »

houseabsolute wrote: post #273
anigbrowl wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's certainly traumatic. What's worse is that Brian Lam, Gizmodo's editor-in-chief, apparently chose to leave Chen holding the bag; in their flippant response to Bruce Sewell, they directed him to recover the device from Chen, rather than at their editorial offices in San Francisco - I presume the REACT unit don't have jurisdiction in SF and a separate warrant will need to be issued.

Why would a state agency like REACT not have jurisdiction in a city that's in California?

We're both wrong :)

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.

Re: Police raid Gizmodo editor's house

#276

Post by gizmo »

showerst wrote: post #117
jrockway wrote: post #103

Earlier 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.)

I believe in the US you can still be legally compelled to give up the encryption key(s), and simply held in contempt (indefinitely?) until you do.

Yes, but only if they know there to be an encrypted partition. Because all encrypted data passes a Chi^2 randomness test you cannot (really cannot) distinguish between empty space on an encrypted partition and a different encrypted partition inside an encrypted partition.

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.

Re: Police raid Gizmodo editor's house

#277

Post by joubert »

kjhgfghjknbv wrote: post #188
ahoyhere wrote: post #63

I'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…

So what about photos of a new car prototypes? There are a bunch of magazines devoted to those. Or reviews of to-be-released movies? Or photos of celebs in public? Not terribly happy about companies using the Police to break down doors to manage their PR.

I don't think a celeb in public would fall within the gambit of trade secret protection, unless you mean the latest lactic surgery technique the celeb sports.

Re: Police raid Gizmodo editor's house

#278

Post by catch23 »

metamemetics wrote: post #268

A surprisingly easy way to get a phone back is to text-message that phone and say, "If you find this phone, please call this Number: XXXXXXX Thanks!". It's worked for me twice, I don't know how many people do this simple step after loosing a phone.

How many unreleased iPhones have you lost and gotten returned using this method? I think the person who found the lost phone knew exactly who it belonged to, but decided to resell it for $5000 instead of returning it.

Re: Police raid Gizmodo editor's house

#279

Post by kragen »

Lazlo_Nibble wrote: post #191
eli wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, that Gizmodo acted wrong and should be punished. They bought stolen goods, period. 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, d…

We already protect one and not the other. If the seller had only provided Gizmodo with the information they published (photos, teardowns, etc.) instead of the phone itself, Gizmodo probably wouldn't be in any legal trouble and the seller's identity would likely be protected by the shield laws.

Holy crap, Lazlo Nibble..

Been a long time since knowing you on System Exclusive.

Re: Police raid Gizmodo editor's house

#280

Post by nailer »

danieldon wrote: post #253
nailer wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I find it pretty despicable they made no honest attempt to get the prototype back to Apple. Apparently they did, and were ignored. Nobody has come up with anything that refutes this so far. I look at it as: someone made an innocent mistake losing a phone, someone found a phone and called a company, Apple's bureaucracy fucked up and didn't respond as soon as it should have.

"Apparently they did" Nope. He had Gray Powell's information but didn't contact him. He took it from the bar and then didn't check back, despite that being the obvious first place it would be looked for. He didn't take it to the police, despite that being both common sense and the law. Instead, he claims he tried calling a public apple number or two and then sold it.

From what I've been told it was Gizmodo who pieced together Gray Powells identity. The finder knew part of the info, Gizmodo did some detective work to find the rest.

Again, I'm not quite sure the californian police care items left by drunk people in public places.

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