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Comment by nailer | Hacker News Reader

It ruled that the lady in question "exhibited none of the recognized qualities or characteristics traditionally associated with the news process, nor has she demonstrated an established connection or affiliation with any news entity".

Ie, this lady wasn't considered a journalist.

Chen is an employee of a media organization. That the organization has a blog doesn't make it different to, say, AA Gill writing for The Times, which also has a blog. The main difference is The Times is a more recognized media outlet than Gawker media.

Interesting question: what if it were Engadget? AOL is a recognized media name (sad this was used by the judge in his definition). Or Reddit (owned by Conde Nast) started paying people to write about gadgets?

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Chen is an employee of a media organization.

A media organization with a legal staff, I might add.

But not a very good one, clearly.

If there's one word that can't be used to describe this case, it's "clear". Nothing is clear yet, except that Apple is mad.

Except that Apple hasn't had anything to do with this case. Criminal, not civil.

If someone found my lost phone in a bar, I doubt any search warrants would be served.

Apple has something to do with this case.

If you were, say, a major celebrity and there was a lot of press about it (as in this case) there would be.

Your phone, obviously, isn't that important.

When the phone in question is a prototype of a model that is destined to sell millions, it gets noticed. But, it's important to look at this as a criminal investigation. There're is the suspiction that a criminal act occurred. A judge agreed, and issued a search warrant. Just based upon Gizmodo's coverage alone, there is enough to suspect that a crime happened. Because this is Apple property, it gets greater scrutiny, but it's not like Apple signed the warrant.

You can expect a whole other level of hurt for Gizmodo from Apple in a civil suit.

And I thought Google blocking cnet for a year was bad... Just imagine what the Apple blackout will be like for Gizmodo.

If this case is about stolen intellectual property, then Apple is most definitely involved. They have to specify the infringement on IP rights committed. If this were just a stolen phone, they wouldn't be confiscating every piece of technology he owns.

> If this were just a stolen phone, they wouldn't be confiscating every piece of technology he owns.

What about photographs, emails and records relating to the person it was bought from?

> If this were just a stolen phone, they wouldn't be confiscating every piece of technology he owns.

Nowadays that's standard operating procedure for any criminal investigation. There was an article on HN a while back about the police in SF confiscating the laptops of DJs at illegal raves and tying them up in paperwork to get their gear back just to punish them for helping out the raves (the DJs' laptops are their main source of income in a lot of cases).

Police love computers because people do a lot of their interaction with the world through them now. So by confiscating someone's computer they can get a lot of information.

I had to laugh at her complaint that the search warrant didn't authorize a night search, and her argument that they violated the terms of the warrant because Jason Chen found them in his house when he returned at 9:45pm...even though Chen's description of events reports them as saying they had been there for several hours before he arrived.

Indeed. I am pretty sure "night search" means something like "4am". Before 10pm, it's "evening".

Their 'legal staff' is their COO, Derbyshire, who is a British barrister. Hardly the expert on California law you want on your side when being investigated by the DA.

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