Seems 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 between $1000 to $5000, there was identification of the person and there was nothing remotely as swift or stern taken here to recover.
My house got broken into a few years ago, they took everything I owned except furniture and one tv. I later found my anime collection for sale at a local used dvd store (complete with my name written inside the cases of all the DVDs). I talked with the owner, he had photocopied the guy's drivers license who came in with them. Despite this, and my continually pinging the police, nothing ever happened. He got away with it scott free. I guess you need to be a multi billion dollar corporation to get justice in this country.
EDIT: And just want to add, lesson learned. I didn't have renter's insurance at the time, dumb mistake. I'm now always fully insured, and so should you be :)
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.
I never got the information on the guy. The store owner refused to give it to me. Basically once I and the store owner realized what happened, the owner called the cops and worked with them directly. They took the DVDs (and presumably a copy of the driver's license). I asked the store owner several times if I could get the driver's license as well, and he refused. And I can't blame him. Given the situation, I'd have done the same thing.
It does feel like in cases like this the cops rely on people having insurance and thus generally don't bother unless the break ins become an epidemic.
It's possible I could have approached the cops differently and received better success. Be more persistent? Be less persistent? Have a lawyer speak with them? I have no idea. When the cops refuse to do their job for whatever reason, there's no fool proof way of reversing that.
EDIT: And also, I probably should have been there when the cops came to the store. That might have also helped. Live and learn. At the time I thought "photocopy of the driver's license! score! I'm saved!" and was pretty naive about the whole thing.
I probably would have spoken to a lawyer about this. If it was going to cost me thousands of dollars, then I would have forgotten about it. If it was a couple hundred bucks, I would pursue the issue out of principle, even if the DVDs were not worth that much.
Perhaps the driver's license was fake. Either way, it's a shame we have to live with people who do these kinds of things. After having my car broken into multiple times and eventually stolen, and home broken into (luckily I don't have much worth stealing), it sickens me.
My wife's car was stolen. When it was recovered we found ATM receipts in the car (presumably from the thief). The Toronto Police never called us back about it when we told them that we found the receipts. I mean, we had the bank account numbers of the thief (or at least someone that knew him/her). There was even a parking receipt from the Toronto Zoo and a receipt for school supplies from WalMart (along with an un-opened pencil sharpener).
I mean it was a f'ing car and the police did jack shit about it.
The trade secrets at stake here are probably worth WAY more than $5000 to Apple. Just because Gizmodo hasn't published any more details about the phone, or left out specific things, doesn't mean they don't know them. That information could be damaging to Apple and it's business relationships (say, if for example, it was shown that it's an LTE phone on VZW, and AT&T didn't know Apple was going to do that).
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.
The choice then became to either activate the GPS and track the phone (potentially making the leak worse) or wipe it. Apple chose to remotely wiped it as soon as they could.
They did what they could to adequately test the new phone and protect it at the same time.
So, how exactly is it necessary to test the phone while the user is inebriated with access to the public? They couldn't host a private party for that? Test it at workers houses? Why is access to the public so vital? It's not. If Apple condoned this form of testing they have to accept the risks. Crying for the nanny state to save you from your own actions is bullshit.
If you lose a phone in the public you should expect that any secrets become public. Apple seems to be OK with that risk. I don't understand the clamoring for gestapo police to swoop in and correct corporate mistakes.
>If you lose a phone in the public you should expect that any secrets become public
So, if you lost your wallet, it would be okay if I then knew your credit card numbers? Even if I didn't use them? I promise not to tell...
This isn't clamoring for a police state. It's recognizing that when property is lost, regardless of how, it still belongs to the person who lost it. I'm normally not one for "corporate rights", but in this case it doesn't matter that the entity that owned the phone was Apple. Hell, it could have been the next gen Blueberry (yes, I meant Blueberry) for all I care.
If you lose your wallet and assume that credit card numbers are not compromised you're an idiot.
Are you saying Gizmodo refused to return the phone to Apple claiming it was now their own property? Or that Gizmodo demanded reimbursement from Apple in exchange for returning the phone?
well, it's not that this is overkill... it's that the usual response is too weak. I wish this happened every time something of value is misappropriated.
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.
It would if Google or Microsoft lost some new "supersecret" prototype. People are making the false equivalence that this is the same as losing your phone. It is not. They lost an unreleased prototype of a phone that will likely sell millions. The information about the design of this phone would probably be worth lots of money to competitors.
Think about it for a minute. It sucks that your stuff got stolen, but it's not shaking an industry, is it?
This is bordering on accidental corporate espionage. It's not just Apple that's pissed off, but think about what it would be like for other Valley companies to look at this case and wonder "What if it were us, next time?" -- if it wasn't pursued swiftly by the police.
That's the engine of the area's economy, theoretically at risk.
Anyway, unfortunately, the people who stole your stuff probably didn't post on a highly trafficked site about the crime. Gizmodo, on the other hand, did talk about how they bought the phone, and then committed possibly other criminal acts by posting the photos and details.
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 between $1000 to $5000, there was identification of the person and there was nothing remotely as swift or stern taken here to recover.