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Comment by TomOfTTB | Hacker News Reader

As much as I hate to defend Gawker I don't think you can blame them for the negative impact on his career. Say what you will he is guilty of what they claim he did. I would hope future employers would be willing to look past it and realize it was an innocent mistake but they have a right to know. In the end this incident is relevant to how much you trust him with prototypes in the future.

Beyond that Gawker is a news source. It's their job to report on stories. So while it was dishonest to buy the stolen prototype this post is just reporting the story and I'm not sure it's out of the bounds of what a news organization should do.

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After this event, I'll bet you can trust him with future prototypes more than anyone else on this planet.

Yet no one ever would want to

Only a boss who is not worth working for would think this guy is incapable of learning this lesson after all that.

Showing the guy's name, photo, and facebook page is gratuitous and wrong. Dude's already having the worst week of his life, and now they're splaying "this guy was the idiot who lost an iPhone prototype" all over the web? I buy that celebrities should get that treatment because they signed up for it going in[1], but this is just some average guy in a normal profession who was just trying to keep his head down.

[1] - unless your film or music career literally pre-dates Charlie Chaplin, you knew what you were getting into.

Guilty? As in, culpable? I am baffled by your willingness to burn someone at the stake for an honest mistake. Have you never misplaced anything valuable, left something behind by accident?

Also, Gawker could have easily reported on this story and kept the engineer's name private. For example, read the NY Times article re-reporting the story, you won't see the engineer's name. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/20/technology/companies/20app...

No. I've never misplaced something that could cost my company thousands of dollars and I'd like to believe I wouldn't be foolish enough to even bring something like that into a bar with me.

I did not ask if you ever misplaced a top secret prototype device, and quite honestly I'm a little appalled that you feel you would be above making "foolish" mistakes.

I asked if you ever misplaced anything valuable or anything that mattered to you. A wallet could be something valuable, or your keys. Most valuable, however, would be your sense of compassion, which right now you have clearly misplaced.

There's a difference between what is valuable to me and what is valuable to someone else (like my company). Yes I've misplaced things that are valuable to me but when I did I only hurt myself. I did not have an obligation to someone else that I did not fulfill.

This engineer had an obligation to his company that he disregarded and his only excuse is "I was drunk and thoughtless" (which really isn't an excuse at all).

Again, I'm not advocating he be fired because I think people should have the right to make mistakes but I find it appalling that the attitude in this comment thread has been that being drunk makes it ok to be derelict in your duties.

> Yes I've misplaced things that are valuable to me but when I did I only hurt myself.

What a responsible human being you are. You probably don't have kids though :)

People lose their kids in places like supermarkets all the time ... I haven't (yet) but it's a possibility (because kids by definition don't stay put) and I'd appreciate that if you found my child instead of stealing it from me to sell it to the highest bidder, you'd return it to me, because otherwise I might just burn down your house with you in it :)

Yeah, it's a bad analogy because for most people a phone is not equal to a child, but for passionate engineers the line is kind of blurry, isn't it?

> the attitude in this comment thread has been that being drunk makes it ok to be derelict in your duties

No, the attitude is that it's not OK to steal property, even if that person you're stealing from is drunk ... and to make matters worse the buyer also made the story public, for no public good whatsoever.

> People lose their kids in places like supermarkets all the time ... I haven't (yet) but it's a possibility (because kids by definition don't stay put) and I'd appreciate that if you found my child instead of stealing it from me to sell it to the highest bidder, you'd return it to me, because otherwise I might just burn down your house with you in it :)

Please, let's not compare our children with iPhones. Maybe choose a better analogy?

> Yeah, it's a bad analogy because for most people a phone is not equal to a child, but for passionate engineers the line is kind of blurry, isn't it?

Yes, it is a bad analogy, so why did you use it? If you are going to claim that passionate engineers equate products to living humans, at least qualify that by saying "a small proportion".

> No, the attitude is that it's not OK to steal property, even if that person you're stealing from is drunk ... and to make matters worse the buyer also made the story public, for no public good whatsoever.

The guy who had the phone tried to return it. He did more than most people would. On top of that, he was unable to get any contact information off the phone because they wiped it.

Yes he could have returned it to the bar but who knows how trustworthy those bar owners are?

There is a vast difference between believing that the guy did nothing wrong and believing that he didn't deserve to get his identity made public even though he made a serious mistake. I think most people responding here would understand if Apple decided to fire the guy, as he was clearly negligent. What many of us are upset with is Gizmodo's revealing of his name which will cause the guy harm that's far in excess of the severity of his mistake.

Then the Question is how many times in your Life you had something in your hand which was of great loss to saomeone if you misplaced it?.

Bullshit. There's a big difference between making a mistake, and having that mistake sprayed across the internet for all to see.

I agree. They had their story. At worst but acceptable they could have said that it was an Apple employee. They completely went over the line by naming said employee.

The question they should have asked themselves first was: "Does naming this person CONTRIBUTE to the story?" This is clear Journalism 101. The answer was and is clearly "no." The best line of defense for them is they have none.

Sometimes I hate the internet and its cache. This is one of those times. Anyone can ruin anyone. The really good news is that it appears he has many people on his side.

There's a big difference between making a mistake, and having that mistake sprayed across the internet for all to see.

Less and less difference. This is an outlier at the moment, but having your entire life, mistakes and all, laid out for anyone to view... that's just going to be normal.

Simply put once a news source starts omitting facts based on what they think is relevant that's the beginning of the end. News sources should report the facts in as complete a fashion as they are capable of doing. To do otherwise is to open the door to abuse. What's to stop a reporter from leaving a friend out of a story while reporting his coworkers were involved in some malfeasance? In that case the coworkers then look more guilty in comparison to their unmentioned friend who appears innocent because he wasn't reported in the story. That's just one example of how omitting facts can lead to dishonesty in reporting

Omitting irrelevant facts is the whole point of news publishers in the informaton age. You don't pay them to find information, you pay them to filter information.

The mistake you make is in assuming your judgement of what is irrelevant is sacrosanct. Again I give an example...

Let's say a Conservative reporter is in Iraq and for whatever reason he's the only reporter allowed there. Let's say he finds out that there were no WMD but says to himself "That's irrelevant because President Bush thought there were WMD so there's no reason for me to report on that". Would that be right?

Of course not. But the reason we have rules against reporters using their judgement to omit details is because it leads to situations like the above.

Now back to this situation. I'm not saying this is true I'm just putting forth a possibility. That said what if this is a person who serially does things like this? What if he could be linked to several leaks over the past few years? Wouldn't his name be relevant then? But how could you know if that was the case if reporters decided to omit his name every time he was involved? That's just one example of how this one fact that you think is irrelevant could in fact be very relevant

There are many journalists in Iraq. And you know why that is? Because if there were only one of them, he might make wrong judgments. Yeah, there might be wrong judgments when humans are involved, no one could disagree with that. The way out, however, is not to force journalists to report everything, the way out is to make sure there are always a good many journalists writing about the same stuff.

Journalists have to make judgments all the time, they have to decide which parts of a story are important and which parts are irrelevant. If they didn’t do that – if they weren’t allowed to do that – they wouldn’t do their job. Reporting whatever you hear and see is not what being a journalist means.

You can have nice arguments about which judgments are the right ones, which are the wrong ones. Saying that Gizmodo should just report whatever they know is not such a argument.

(You actually start to make the right kind of argument in your last paragraph which is nice but I don’t see how there is any evidence at all that hints at the scenario you are describing. There are always many things which are possible but that’s hardly a convincing argument. Evidence is what’s needed.)

Note please, that the New York Times [1] doesn’t mention the name. Apple engineer is all they write.

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/20/technology/companies/20app...

The question is whether naming the guy contributed anything to the story and was in the public interest, or whether it was a purely vindictive action by Gizmodo. Considering the fact that the main story is the existence of the prototype and that it's authenticity has already been confirmed by Apple's response, I'd say it was the latter. Revealing the guy's identity added nothing to the story, unlike in your example where the lack of WMDs would be the story.

Gizmodo have chosen to not only imperil this guy's current job with Apple but also his future career prospects. First by providing a market for stolen Apple secrets and being a willing buyer and publisher of the prototype and its details and second by splashing his name all over the internet. Count me amongst those who will boycott Gizmodo and all other Gawker sites from now on.

I believe the press has the freedom to print whatever they want so long as they are following first amendment rights. I feel neutral to the entire situation. Of course it's crappy that the guy's identity was outed but at the same time it was completely within Gizmodo's rights to do so. For that I am voting you backup.

So news articles about sexual abuse should include the name, age and address of the victim? After all, who is to say it is not relevant to the story.

There are laws against reporting those names for that very reason. Because there is an ethical obligation by reporters to report all the facts and we as society have decided reporting those details isn't acceptable so we restrict them from reporting those details. Just as we do with the names of children.

But the very existence of those laws proves the point I was making which is that reporters should be bound to report all details. Not the other way around

So we've established that there is a continuum between reporting all the facts and reporting none of them. As we've said, legally reporters are bound to stand at one point on this continuum (report most facts, but no names of abuse victims, no names of children in the police blotter, etc). It is a reasonable belief that ethically reporters are bound to stand at another point closer to reporting less facts, including omitting the name of someone who lost company property.

There's no proving or disproving points here, as you seem to think. It is a valid belief that ethically the name of the engineer should not have been reported. You might not share this belief, but it is a valid belief to have and it cannot be disproved. Your ethics are simply different.

"Simply put once a news source starts omitting facts based on what they think is relevant that's the beginning of the end."

Well, then apparently the beginning of the end was the beginning of journalism. This is done all the time.

I don't buy this. His name is not news. It is not important. If they just said "young Apple engineer" the news value of the whole thing would be exactly the same. If somebody that the public cares about loses an iPhone, the name is news. If it is just a random person, well the news value of the actual name is almost none.

Actual responsible journalists often withhold names of ordinary people that get into news stories if disclosure would be embarrassing or damaging for those people. For example, the names of people that are accused of crimes are usually not disclosed by journalists until these people have been charged. The names of people that are killed or injured in a newsworthy event are also usually not disclosed. The names of victims of sensitive crimes like rape or sexual harassment are usually not disclosed.

Of course Apple know he is the one who lost it, but now every future potential employer will also know. And again there was no reason at all for his name to have been made public.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journalism_ethics_and_standards

Did you even read this before you quoted it?

Jeez, talk about the pot and the kettle. From a five second skim, the harm minimisation part seems pretty appropriate:

Harm limitation principle ...This principle of limitation means that some weight needs to be given to the negative consequences of full disclosure, creating a practical and ethical dilemma. The Society of Professional Journalists' code of ethics offers the following advice, which is representative of the practical ideals of most professional journalists. Quoting directly:[17]

* Show compassion for those who may be affected adversely by news coverage.

* Be sensitive when seeking or using interviews or photographs of those affected by tragedy or grief.

* Recognize that gathering and reporting information may cause harm or discomfort. Pursuit of the news is not a license for arrogance.

* Recognize that private people have a greater right to control information about themselves than do public officials and others who seek power, influence or attention. Only an overriding public need can justify intrusion into anyone's privacy.

* Show good taste. Avoid pandering to lurid curiosity.

Show compassion does not mean omit facts. In fact, the article you quote says just the opposite.

Beyond that this is not a tragedy. This is someone dealing with the consequences of their actions.

Finally publishing photos off someone's social networking site is not invading their privacy.

Again I point out that you didn't read the whole article you quoted. You zeroed in on the points that you think support your argument and ignored the rest. Maybe you should take more than five seconds and read the whole article

I think we've already established your level of reading comprehension, so I won't argue any of your points, except to say that publishing photos from someone's stolen iphone is absolutely an invasion of privacy, and how you can think otherwise beggars belief.

Man, how often is this guy going to hear: So you're the guy who lost the iPhone? That's going to get old.

I am voting you back up. I believe your opinion is sound and deserves to be recognized.

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