If you’ll cast your mind back to earlier this year, when Gizmodo got their hands on an iPhone 4 prototype, and the police department kicked down one of their editor’s doors in order to seize computers, and get information on the leak.
The San Mateo DA has now withdrawn the warrant, and returned all the property to Jason Chen, in exchange for Gizmodo and Chen cooperating with The Fuzz.
What’s interesting here, is how various media outlets are portraying the this development. The EFF believes it is a positive thing, as they think the warrant was illegal in the first place, and that the DA should have subpoenaed the required information — this way they would have gotten it, and avoided breaking down doors and rifling through Chen’s stuff.
Ryan Single of Wired tweeted, “Gizmodo outs its iPhone 4G source in return for getting editor’s computers back from cops. That’s fearless journalism.” Obviously, he is of the opinion that Gawker should work to protect its source.
[full disclosure: I write about science for Gizmodo's sister blog, io9.com]
Written By
Law is lawless these days, this is just another example!
Could the Gizmodo debacle distracted them? Yeah, but its no excuse for Apple.
Since when do media outlets negotiate for their cooperation with law enforcement? That is absurd. They don’t dictate the conditions to the police, they comply with lawful orders.