News organizations ranging from the Associated Press to Bloomberg News have
joined a court filing to unseal the search warrant affidavit that backed the
April 23 raid of Gizmodo Editor Jason Chen’s California
home, after the tech blog publicly dissected what it called a next-generation
iPhone prototype.
According
to a May 5 article in the Associated Press, the affidavit remains sealed
more than 10 days after the search. Under California
law, such documents would ordinarily have been revealed to the public by that
point. Other participants in the court filing include the Los Angeles Times,
Wired.com and the First Amendment Coalition.
“The execution of this search warrant on a journalist has created a public
debate over, among other things, whether a basis existed to obtain a warrant
nonwithstanding the provisions of the Federal Privacy Act … and a similar state
law … that protect First Amendment rights,” reads the media organizations’
filing, which can be
found in its entirety here.
“The records that would help answer these questions include the affidavit submitted
in support of the warrant and the return, which ‘shall be open to the public as
a judicial record’ once the warrant has been executed or 10 days after
issuance,” the filing continues. “But despite this clear right of access, all
records relating to the warrant have been sealed—and the clerk’s office will
not even release the order sealing the records or the warrant number.”
Without such public access, the document argues, “There is no way for the
public to serve as a check on the conduct of law enforcement officers, the
prosecutors and the courts and monitor to ensure compliance with the Fourth
Amendment as well as the Privacy Protection Act and Penal Code.”
The raid on Chen’s home was conducted by members of California’s
REACT (Rapid Enforcement Allied Computer Team), who arrived with a warrant
issued by the Superior Court of San Mateo authorizing them to take digital
property associated with the prototype iPhone. That device was lost in a California
bar by an engineer, and subsequently sold to Gizmodo. REACT’s 25-company
steering committee supposedly includes Apple.
Stephen Wagstaffe, a spokesperson for the San Mateo County District
Attorney’s office, told Reuters on
April 27 that Apple had reported the device stolen: “The allegation was
that there was a reasonable cause that a felony theft had occurred. … This was
the beginning of the investigation.”
“My wife and I drove to dinner and got back at around 9:45PM,” Chen wrote in an April 26 statement posted on
Gizmodo. “When I got home I noticed the garage door was half-open, and when I
tried to open it, officers came out and said they had a warrant to search my
house and any vehicles on the property ‘in my control.’” Police subsequently loaded
a number of Chen’s computers and equipment into a truck.
In a letter sent to Detective Matthew Broad of the San Mateo County
Sheriff’s Office following the raid, Gawker Media’s Chief Operating Officer
Gaby Darbyshire stated that four computers and two servers had been
confiscated. Darbyshire argued that the search warrant was invalid, on the
grounds that Chen’s computers contained data about sources and were thus
protected from seizure under Section 1070 of the Evidence Code.
Gizmodo’s
April 19 dissection of the device, dubbed “iPhone 4G” by many in the media,
revealed a front-facing video camera, higher resolution display and micro-SIM
capability. While many originally questioned how a highly secretive company
like Apple could manage to have one of its prototypes lost in a German beer
garden, and wondered whether the whole thing was a publicity stunt on the
company’s part, subsequent legal actions suggest that the device was, in fact,
likely misplaced.
Enterprise Mobility News & Reviews 
