As Derbyshire points out, it's illegal to seize computers used for journalism
Except that's not a carte blanche shield. If a computer used for journalism was also used to store, say, records of a drug-running ring, would that computer be inviolable? Or seizable, with a warrant, as evidence in the commission of a crime?
This is the crux of the issue. The warrant wasn't issued to determine the source of a trade secrets leak. It was used to procure evidence for the buying and selling of stolen goods. Trade secrets are a civil matter. The fact that the police sought a warrant implies that they're pursuing the criminal case regardless of Gizmodo's publication.
IOW: Running a blog or being a journalist doesn't protect your computers from being impounded when you break the law and happen to also blog about doing so.
The amusing bit is that we all see, and probably laugh at, so many stories of people posting evidence of their crimes on Facebook or YouTube and then being surprised when they're caught. Gizmodo basically did exactly the same thing, but on a far larger scale.
>IOW: Running a blog or being a journalist doesn't protect your computers from being impounded when you break the law and happen to also blog about doing so.
Well said. I'm surprised Gizmodo people are making 'I'm a news organization' noises at the moment - it's a flaky excuse, and has little to do with the charges.
I think the biggest problem here is that the source of the leak (the guy who found the phone) is also suspect of selling stolen property (the said phone).
BTW, was it really stolen? It's obviously wrong to sell something you found before doing a reasonable effort to return it to its owner, but where is the line between finding and stealing?
This has been covered elsewhere, but I don't have a current link to it.
Essentially, there is a California law that says if you find something, you're compelled to either return it to its owner, or turn it over to the police if the rightful owner can't be found. So the very fact that he failed to turn it into the police converted it from an act of "finding" to an act of "stealing".
The warrant wasn't issued to determine the source of a trade secrets leak.
Actually...
Appendix B, paragraph 4: 'Printed documents, images, and/or notation pertaining to the sale and/or purchase of the stolen iPhone prototype and/or the sale and/or transfer of trade secret information pertaining to the iPhone prototype.'
Except that's not a carte blanche shield. If a computer used for journalism was also used to store, say, records of a drug-running ring, would that computer be inviolable? Or seizable, with a warrant, as evidence in the commission of a crime?