Over the last two weeks, the tech world has been closely following the story of Gizmodo and the iPhone 4G. Earlier this week, editor Jason Chen's house was raided by police and several computers, cameras, hard drives and an iPhone were taken from the premises.
Right now, everyone is trying to decide whether or not a blogger counts as a journalist and if so, should the same laws that protect journalists protect bloggers. These laws protect a journalist's workplace (in Chen's case, his home) from searches, but if the journalist engaged in illegal activity, these laws do not apply.
However, a lot of people are asking if Apple somehow had a hand in the fact that there's any investigation to begin with. An article in the San Jose Business Journal suggests that Apple was the one who requested the probe into the "lost" iPhone 4G.
The San Jose Business Journal yesterday cited officials who said the criminal investigation into the purported theft of the Apple prototype came at the request of Apple. The Business Journal goes on to say that officials have identified and interviewed the person who took the phone from the bar where Apple engineer Gray Powell lost it. Officials did not say whether or not the person who took it from the bar was the same person who sold it on to Gizmodo.
Right now, the situation is this: Jason Chen has hired a top criminal defense lawyer and prosecutors are said to be defending the raid on Chen's house. CNet reports that Stephen Wagstaffe, chief deputy district attorney, said prosecutors had considered whether reporter shield laws applied to the search and seizure but decided to proceed after carefully reviewing the rules.
"My prosecutor who is handling it considered this issue right off the bat when it was being brought into him and had some good reasons why he and the judge felt the warrant was properly issued," Wagstaffe said.
Gawker maintains that the search warrant is invalid because Chen should be protected by journalist shield laws and prosecutors have voluntarily agreed not to search Chen's computers while discussing the matter with Gizmodo's lawyer.
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