The Internet blogosphere has been alive for a week now with buzz about the iPhone that an Apple employee left behind in a California bar. In a nutshell:
- March 18th: Apple employee Gray Powell leaves his iPhone 4G prototype in a bar.
- A college-aged gentleman finds the phone and tries to return it.
- After Apple ignored him, he tried to contact Wired and eventually contacted Engadget and Gizmodo.
- A Gizmodo editor agrees to help him return it to Apple and paid him for an exclusive story.
- Apple tracked down this individual at his home, whom the police have identified, but will not release his name.
- April 19th, Apple asked Gizmodo to return it and Gizmodo agreed and returned it Monday (April 26th).
- In the meantime, Friday (April 23rd), REACT (the CA computer crimes division) obtained a warrant to search the journalist’s home; which they did and seize his computers, servers and UDB drives because they were suspected of being “used to commit a crime.”
- The San Mateo DA’s office still claims they are “still not saying it’s a crime.”
- In the meantime, the editor retained a criminal defense lawyer, while the prosecutors defend their seizure, but say they won’t investigate just yet.
Oh, and as an FYI – Apple is one of the 25 companies on the REACT steering committee and asked for the criminal probe. The Silicon Valley Blog has a great iProbe recap. The EFF calls it OverREACTing.