Maybe I misunderstand you, but that's an enormous accusation you're wielding - that Apple could influence a police force to execute an illegal warrant at their bidding?
Do you have any sources backing up that REACT is "corporate sponsored"? While I saw that Apple was on "a steering committee", where did you hear that they were a "high level advisor"? While "steering committee" sure sounds impressive, that doesn't tell us much about how they could have influenced the process for issuing and executing a (allegedly) illegal search warrant.
Money quote: "In a statement, the Santa Clara County DA confirmed our report yesterday that Apple sits on the steering committee of the Rapid Enforcement Allied Computer Team (REACT) Task Force, a coalition of 17 federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies created in 1997 to combat high-tech crimes (the Santa Clara County DA's office is the task force's lead agency)."
And: "Apple Inc. has provided "advice, recommendations, strategic input, and direction"..."
That can mean a lot of things, but "high level advisor" is certainly among the most obvious interpretations here.
Well, it depends on if the allegation is that Apple could influence a police force to execute an illegal warrant at their bidding, or that Apple could influence a police force to execute a warrant at their bidding.
I don't find the second one particularly objectionable.
Correction: EFF asserts that the warrant should not, in this form, have been issued. EFF's certainly entitled to its opinion, but EFF is not the final arbiter, and is pushing an interpretation of shield laws which has a number of large drawbacks.
Yeah -- #3. Where are you getting this from? And what does your parenthetical "(Or Apple would have denied it and requested that they return the equipment.)" even mean?
It's true that the warrant was executed as part of the investigation into a crime involving Apple, but that doesn't imply that Apple has the level of control over the investigation that you're claiming they do.
Sorry, I didn't realize that was unclear. I meant that if the folks at Apple who had reported the crime had thought it was unjustified to seize the "reporter's" equipment, they could certainly have issued a press release saying that they regretted that the police had seized all his stuff, and hoped that the guy would get it back immediately. They might additionally have behind-the-scenes channels to make requests like that — as Adobe did in the Sklyarov case — but that hypothesis isn't necessary for my #3.
Is your cellphone a next-gen prototype of a high profile phone expected to make billions of dollars in revenue? If your cellphone's details were leaked would it cause you millions of dollars of potential losses because it gives your competitors an advantage (not to mention lost marketing hype)?
I'm not a fan of Apple, but selling proprietary information that was for all intents and purposes stolen is not comparable to an average Joe losing their cell phone.
If it was that important Apple should have been more careful than to let their engineer take it out and about. Given that people are prone to losing cell phones, how could they expect that not a single one would be lost?
Shit happens. No measure could have prevented one prototype from being lost eventually. And mobile phones have to be field tested before release.
There is a measure that could prevent a prototype from being stolen or sold to a blog that would take it apart bit by bit and post videos of it: it's called the law. I think they passed that a few hundred years ago.
There are ways to field test that don't involve people taking phones to bars. That is just carelessness. Sure, shit happens, but c'mon, a little responsibility might be in order on the part of the company with so much to lose. Law or no law, Apple should take more care with such prototypes.
So if you're one of the 25 companies on REACT's steering committee (including Adobe, Microsoft, Cisco, Symantec and pretty much every other large tech company in the valley) then you don't get to take advantage of their services?
BTW React isn't multi-state it's multi _county_ focused on Silcon Valley.
You don't gain credibility for your argument by equating the loss of a top secret research prototype for a multi-billion dollar product with your $400 personal phone.
Trade secret and top secret are two very different things.
In any case, while it is possible that the loss of such a prototype could have devastating implications for a company, it seems pretty clear that this publication was not a serious problem for Apple.
Why, exactly, is it "clear" to you that this publication isn't an ongoing serious problem for Apple? As you can tell, I'm a bit baffled by how blase people are about what's happened here. Just because it happened on the Internet, and the sky didn't immediately erupt with lightning and fireballs, doesn't mean that something momentously bad didn't happen.
I think the reason people are blase is because the story makes it seem like Apple brought the problem on themselves. The leak was utterly mundane; no one broke into the Apple campus or smuggled anything out, no one bribed or attacked an employee. As far as we can tell from the story, Apple regularly dresses up its research prototypes and takes them for walks outside. This practice is so obviously prone to leaks that people are speculating that Apple leaked the phone on purpose.
Either Apple had calculated the risk and found it to be acceptable, or they never planned against the possibility of losing the phone. If the former, then Apple is merely experiencing an inevitable downside of its chosen (wildly successful) development model. If the latter, then Apple was foolishly optimistic and should never have let a readily identifiable prototype off-campus in the first place.
I know this assertion about trade secrets not to be true. Things that are more valuable than research prototypes go for walks outside all the time. Maybe it's that context, which I get from my field of work, that's lighting me up so much.
I think you're dead flat-out wrong about this, but I understand where you're coming from.
[update: the San Jose Business Journal is reporting that Apple outside counsel reported the phone stolen. So much for the "it was a publicity stunt" story.]
Why, exactly, is it "clear" to you that this publication isn't an ongoing serious problem for Apple?
Because the phone is not that special. It is the same as the next-generation phones that HTC is going to release at about the same time. It's almost like all these phones are made by 2 or 3 companies in China, or something...
I'm not trying to necessarily say it's right, but I'd like to think that Apple would have some specialized help available to them, given that they protect multiple billions of dollars in shareholder value and are a not insignificant part of the US economy.
Apple is a high level advisor to REACT, serving on their steering committee. There is no coincidence here.
Just try getting that kind of personal law enforcement reaction if your cellphone was lost and then sold on craigslist.