IPhone, Gizmodo, and moral clarity about crime | Hacker News Reader

IPhone, Gizmodo, and moral clarity about crime

csmonitor.com

60 pointsmbateman40 comments

I think "moral clarity" over this kind of thing was lost decades ago, when it became common for companies to buy/borrow/find prototypes, and rarely prosecuted. It's common knowledge among chip-design companies that as soon as your prototype board hits the fab (unless you're someone like IBM or Intel with your own fabs), it's going to be in your competitor's hands: NVidia and ATI operate on the assumption that as soon as a chip's sent to Taiwan, it's going to their competitor too. Nobody is ever prosecuted for that, either, on the side of the seller or on the side of the buyer.

Yes, technically selling found property is a crime, but morally, this looks more like a trade-secret dispute between businesses than a normal stolen-property dispute, i.e. the harms suffered are not primarily the loss of the device, but of the secret information. And I think people are pretty jaded when it comes to inter-business trade-secret/corporate-espionage sorts of disputes, because it happens all the time and nobody important ever goes to jail for it, even though there's a lot of wink-wink in which executives are aware of it.

The main difference here seems that it was made public instead of kept secret, and the people doing it were amateurs. If Gizmodo were a consulting firm instead of tabloid, paid $5k to see the prototype for a bit, took a bunch of photos and information, quietly returned it or didn't, and then quietly sold that info to one of Apple's competitors, we probably would never have heard of it. (There's a whole little cottage industry doing teardowns of "found" hardware.) I wouldn't be surprised if Jobs himself has purchased such information at some point in his long business career--- taking care to maintain plausible deniability of course.

Your argument seems to be: everybody is doing it, so it's not morally wrong.

Would you feel the same way if it was your intellectual property that was stolen? What if you spent the last year of your life in stealth mode, working 120 hour weeks and Gizmodo published your business plan on the web for everyone to see?

Sounds like good publicity to me. Especially if you've already got that much (6000+ hours) of a headstart on your competition.

It's more like: this isn't morally wrong in the sense that stealing someone's iPhone is wrong, but morally wrong in the sense that corporate espionage is wrong, which is a whole different and fairly complex beast.

Mostly, I don't think it's any worse when Gizmodo publishes it on the web for all to see than when the tech companies buy and teardown "found" prototypes. If people want a wholesale clampdown on that sort of thing, applied evenly, that might be worth considering.

nobody important ever goes to jail for it

This might have something to do with the fact that the US doesn't have any extradition treaties with China or Taiwan. People do go to jail over this if their activities are discovered while they're in US jurisdiction.

The management of these companies is mostly in the U.S. and knows about it, though, even if they're careful never to themselves touch the "found" prototypes.

Perhaps so, but in most economic espionage cases the police are tipped off by the competitors to whom the secrets are offered - possibly out of fear that they're being set up for a sting, but that's neither here nor there.

I wonder... if Gizmodo had informed Apple of the contact, might Apple have given them an exclusive deal further down the line for doing the right thing? Were I Jobs, I certainly would (though I'm not); people who will look out for you & yours are valuable to keep. That kind of better relations may have been worth more than the phone scoop, and certainly better than the horrendous PR snafu (it would've been the other way around, most likely: Apple fans praising Gizmodo).

Interesting sidebar to this: Apple had completely cut Gizmodo out of prerelease iPad access. In fact, the snub came literally as Gizmodo editor Brian Lam was already on a plane to meet with Apple on it:

http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-screws-top-gadget-blogs...

While I'm not certain Gizmodo wouldn't have still bought the unit given the way Nick Denton has talked up checkbook journalism the last few years, I do think that the fact that Apple had already cut off all access gave them little incentive not to publish. After all, tech blogging is pretty much an access-reliant venue.

Their great miscalculation there is clearly that they weren't expecting Apple to play legal hardball to the extent that they have.

Moral clarity about crime? I didn't see anything clearing my morals in the article. Yes, it was illegal (and probably should be so too) to sell/buy stolen prototype, but illegal and (morally) wrong are completely different things in my book. I my mind, the scales are tipping on the "morally good" side in this case, but I also think that Gizmondo should accept the quite predictable consequences.

The only thing that bothers me is the method of executing the search on Mr. Chen. In this case, it's not like he has ever been hiding anything, so did they need to bust in his door, execute a search warrant, and seize his computers?

It seems to me that the facts of this case are all public, and if they want to prosecute him, they could have done so without resorting to thuggish tactics.

The identity of the person who sold them the phone was not public.

They broke in his door because no one was home, and they'll pay for the damage. That's pretty much SOP when executing a warrant.

I believe that the contention of the police is that perhaps the facts aren't all public. They want to know exactly what exchanges too place between Gizmodo and Hogan (or whoever Hogan's go-between was), and I think that's reasonable. Did they ask where the phone came from? Did they ask if attempts had been made to return it? Do the dates of those correspondences match up with the stories both sides are telling? Etc.

In general, I disapprove of the increasing militarization of police tactics. Far too many search warrants are executed by SWAT teams wielding tasers and guns, and result in the deaths of innocent people.

However. Think about it for a minute. Just how should the police generally execute a search warrant? If the suspect doesn't answer the door, should they leave a polite note and come back several hours later once the suspect has had a chance to smash the computers with a hammer, set fire to the paper evidence, and flee to Barbados?

Shouldn't it depend on the crime and the alleged criminal. Chen had already returned the property to Apple so should have been given some credit for that gesture during the search. Also, the crime was for buying stolen property at worst, I don't think that should have involved knocking down doors

At worst, the crime is economic espionage (more likely by Chen's employers rather than him as an individual). This carries a sentence of up to a decade a fine of up to $5m (although if this were the case here, the actual penalty might only be a tenth of that).

> Just how should the police generally execute a search > warrant? If the suspect doesn't answer the door, should > they leave a polite note and come back several hours > later once the suspect has had a chance to smash the > computers with a hammer, set fire to the paper evidence, > and flee to Barbados?

Yes, actually.

"if David were to steal Goliath’s slingshot. . ."

I just don't even know where to begin.

> Finally, there’s the misguided idea, long espoused by many in the tech community, that “information wants to be free.” But whether it’s in the form of proprietary trade secrets embodied by Apple’s latest iPhone or intellectual property subject to seemingly endless illegal downloading and file sharing every second of every day, information is not free.

> It takes a lot of time and energy and money to write books, compose music, create movies, and design and market electronic devices like iPhones. Such information deserves legal protection, even when it’s been lost in a bar.

weird how he twists this to support an entirely different conclusion at the end. also i don't think the real issue here is whether or not there was theft. it seems pretty clear there was. the question is has the response to it been proportionate and "by the book", or has steve pulled strings?

This author doesn't seem to have researched his piece very well. Take the shield law argument. He says:

The problem for Gizmodo is that the shield law has a specific exemption when the police are looking for evidence that the journalists (in this case, the Gizmodo editor) themselves committed crimes, as seems to be the case here.

But almost every investigative reporter breaks a law when doing their job. Woodward and Bernstein received documents that were unquestionably stolen. That's receiving stolen property (not to mention violation of a bunch of laws regarding state secrets)

The argument against Gizmodo is whether the story "served the public good" as established by the precedent. NOT if they committed a crime themselves.

He's actually wrong: The California law has no such exemption, the federal one does though.

>By making an admittedly weak effort to return the iPhone to Apple, Hogan – in the eyes of the law – committed theft.

That's the thing though. Gizmodo did in fact return the iPhone to Apple without complaint, in a timely manner. Posting the information to the Internet is an unorthodox way of asking Apple if they want their property returned, but it ultimately has the same result.

If any crime was committed by Gizmodo, it is theft of trade secrets, not theft of the device.

let's say someone steals your car. I buy it from them, then brag about it on the internet. I then realize I've drawn the attention of law enforcement and I "return" it to you in a "timely" manner. Is it theft? I mean, my bragging about riding around town in your car is an unorthodox way of asking you if you want it back.

The thing is, in this case, Gizmodo didn't really know if it was stolen - there was no way for them to know if it was a legitimate device or a knockoff from China. After they posted it Apple confirmed it really was their device and they returned it immediately.

Are they in the habit of paying $5,000 for things that they think are likely Chinese knockoffs?

They probably are in a habit of paying money for devices which look interesting and aren't easily available in the US market. So if somebody comes to them with a next gen mp3 player from China and they like it from the looks they probably gonna pay good money for it.

'Hello, Apple public relations? Is that Harry Helpful? Hey Harry, John Journalist from famous tech blog Gizmodo here...yeah I'm fine. Listen, someone gave me this thing that looks like a prototype of the new iPhone. Maybe you want to check in with your legal or engineering departments...'

they surely hoped it was a stolen nextgen iphone and not a knockoff.

> Posting the information to the Internet is an unorthodox way of asking Apple if they want their property returned, but it ultimately has the same result.

You're high as a kite.

edit: I think your comment is best read in the voice of Fat Tony.

Could Gizmodo have avoided legal jeopardy if they had used that $5000 to secure an exclusive instead of using it to buy the device?

Most likely, yes. Openly offering to purchase unreleased prototypes etc. is pretty common in "tech/gadget" media, and does not constitute theft on the buyer's side, which obviously is the case when in a concealed fashion fencing/trading something that you clearly know is someone else's property. This is de facto international law.

Er, what? I don't think so... http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/18/usc_sec_18_00001832----...

Unfortunately, Gizmodo's letter to Apple doesn't say they paid for an exclusive. Gizmodo says they bought the iPhone:

"We didn't know it was stolen when we bought it."

Who has the story about our software engineer? Talk about hangover after birthday party...

This article makes a bunch of assumptions. The most important assumption is that they guy who found the phone didn't make a reasonable effort to return it.

Just because the phone says "Apple" on the back, doesn't mean Apple owns it. My phone says that too, but I wouldn't want it sent to Apple if I lost it. Also, my understanding was that the phone was bricked remotely. Not much you can do to find the owner of a phone that doesn't turn on.

It would seem to me that this assumption must be proven true before police can take action against Chen, since unless this assumption is true, there is no cause to invade his office.

I don't know what the facts are, but the they need to be set straight in this matter before we declare anyone guilty.

The most important assumption is that they guy who found the phone didn't make a reasonable effort to return it.

The relevant statute, which has been referenced over and over and over, is very clear. It does not award points for effort. Instead, like Yoda, it says that you either do or do not -- there is no "try". Since he did not do what the law required, he's on the hook for theft.

You're supposed to turn it into the police office, or else you broke the law.

A reasonable person would hand it to the proprietor of the premises. It became "stolen" when he walked out with it.

I've gotten back lost items at the register of where I left them, or never gotten them back at all. This implies honest people turn things in, while dishonest people walk out with them.

It's not possible for the person who found the phone in the bar to both not know the phone is a valuable prototype owned by Apple and know that it would be worth $5000 to a tech news website.

It doesn't just say Apple on the back. It's disguised with a removable case to look like a previous model, has stickers on it with serial numbers, and the Gizmodo staffers evaluating it are expert commentators on the gadget industry.

Now you could say that the Hogan fellow who found it is naive, and it's apparent that a lot of people were not aware of finders' legal responsibilities in California; ignorance is not a legal defense, but that means only that an attorney can't offer it as a reason to have a case dismissed. A jury and judge might well regard his crime as a petty one and find him guilty only of a misdemeanor.

But where Chen (and indirectly, his employers) are concerned, they really should know better because the size and practices of the industry they report on is exactly what brings a sufficiently large audience to sell advertising.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com