The Net is buzzing about San Mateo, California law enforcement officials’ search and seizure of Gizmodo Editor Jason Chen’s computers. Acting under a search warrant issued by California’s Superior Court, agents of the Rapid Enforcement Allied Computer Team (REACT), broke down Chen’s door this past Friday and searched his home, confiscating 24 items, including four computers, two severs, and several external hard drives. The authorities were  searching for evidence regarding how Chen and Gizmodo came to purchase an  iPhone prototype.

I’ve seen some hoopla about how the prototype iPhone was a “trade secret” and thus worth millions of dollars. It’s not and it wasn’t. Apple had no intention of keeping the iPhone and its features secret — the whole plan was to sell it to millions just a few months from now — and Gawker Media didn’t discover or publish anything more than information about the appearance of the phone. “A trade-secret claim based on readily observable material is a bust.” IDX Systems Corp. v. Epic Systems Corp., 285 F. 3d 581, 584 (7th Cir. 2002). Apple thus didn’t lose a “trade secret,” it just lost some control over the course of its marketing. So all we’re really talking about is the alleged theft of a single phone, a phone that was returned a few days after it was “stolen.”

Here’s what happened to Jessica Gonzales:

[A]t about 5 or 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday, June 22, 1999, respondent’s husband took the three daughters while they were playing outside the family home. No advance arrangements had been made for him to see the daughters that evening. When respondent noticed the children were missing, she suspected her husband had taken them. At about 7:30 p.m., she called the Castle Rock Police Department, which dispatched two officers. The complaint continues: “When [the officers] arrived … , she showed them a copy of the TRO and requested that it be enforced and the three children be returned to her immediately. [The officers] stated that there was nothing they could do about the TRO and suggested that [respondent] call the Police Department again if the three children did not return home by 10:00 p.m.” 

At approximately 8:30 p.m., respondent talked to her husband on his cellular telephone. He told her “he had the three children [at an] amusement park in Denver.” She called the police again and asked them to “have someone check for” her husband or his vehicle at the amusement park and “put out an [all points bulletin]” for her husband, but the officer with whom she spoke “refused to do so,” again telling her to “wait until 10:00 p.m. and see if ” her husband returned the girls. 

At approximately 10:10 p.m., respondent called the police and said her children were still missing, but she was now told to wait until midnight. She called at midnight and told the dispatcher her children were still missing. She went to her husband’s apartment and, finding nobody there, called the police at 12:10 a.m.; she was told to wait for an officer to arrive. When none came, she went to the police station at 12:50 a.m. and submitted an incident report. The officer who took the report “made no reasonable effort to enforce the TRO or locate the three children. Instead, he went to dinner.”

At approximately 3:20 a.m., respondent’s husband arrived at the police station and opened fire with a semiautomatic handgun he had purchased earlier that evening. Police shot back, killing him. Inside the cab of his pickup truck, they found the bodies of all three daughters, whom he had already murdered.

She sued the police department, alleging her rights and her daughters’ rights had been violated. The Supreme Court dismissed her case, holding that she had no “property interest” in the temporary restraining order, and thus no right worthy of enforcement.

Why is Apple’s iPhone prototype entitled to more justice than Jessica Gonzales’ daughters?

(abbyjean)

THIS! THIS! THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS a million times THIS.

Fucking this. I’ve been all over the place on the iPhone 4 story and shit. I don’t give a FUCK about Gruber or Denton, but it’s certainly an interesting thing. But THIS. Yes. THIS. Jesus Christ. THIS.