unfuckwithable.ca

Since Gizmodo turned off comments on this post for prudent legal reasons, I’ll just make my own thoughts known here.

As most of you know by now, police entered Jason Chen’s home, seizing his computers and gadgets. While the investigation’s in process, we can’t comment much on this. We stand by our colleague and our coverage of the lost iPhone.

I stand by Jason Chen/Gizmodo/Gawker Media on this.  Journalism is not illegal (despite the flawed legal reasoning of those that work in our justice system).

If placed in that situation, I would’ve done the same thing.

• Computers Seized From Home of Blogger in iPhone Inquiry [New York Times]
• What is Apple Inc.’s role in task force investigating iPhone case? [Yahoo News]
• EFF Lawyer: Seizure of Gizmodo Editor’s Computers Violates State and Federal Law [Laptop Magazine]
• Expert: Invalid Warrant Used in Raid on iPhone Reporter’s Home [Wired]
• OverREACTing: Dissecting the Gizmodo Warrant [Electronic Frontier Foundation]
• Apple asked for ‘lost’ iPhone criminal probe [San Jose Business Journal]

Maybe Gawker shouldn’t have paid $5000 for an item that they knew belonged to Apple.  But other tech blogs would’ve jumped at the chance for that kind of exclusive and would’ve paid a similar amount.  Did Jason Chen steal this property?  (No.)  He merely performed the duties of his job by reporting the hell out of it and working in the best interest of the public - to do otherwise would be negligent as a journalist. And anyway, the phone was rightfully returned to Apple as soon as they gave formal notice wishing for it to be returned.

The risk involved with testing a “top-secret” prototype in public is that someone, anyone could’ve stumbled onto the phone and blogged the shit out of it.  Our mystery source could’ve shared the phone with friends, family and/or strangers en masse; they also could’ve sold it on eBay for a ridiculous price.  They even could’ve resorted to extortion from Apple to get the phone back.  But this person didn’t - even after calling Apple to notify them of the missing device - and ended up passing it along to the media.  These circumstances (read: complete fuckup) are all on Apple.  Period.

At least we know how overzealous Apple’s legal department is, and how heavy-handed (and probably illegal) the Rapid Enforcement Allied Computer Team is in regards to this situation, especially when a major, locally-based corporation is involved.  Corporate welfare at its finest.

So I guess the new order of things is “be a journalist who scoops Apple, have your belongs seized and have the government come seize your things” (déformation professionnelle) and extremely unconstitutional laws (les lois Jim Crow nouvelle!) in Arizona that promote racial profiling.

Either way, as a customer for roughly 25 years, I’m not buying any more Apple products (I was looking forward to getting a new iPhone, MacBook Pro and an iMac this summer) or downloading anything from iTunes until this is fully resolved in a satisfactory and legal manner.  (Hooray clichéd liberal protest!)