Best in Blogs: iPhone Raid; AZ Backlash; Facebook Privacy Circles the Drain Top Stories for the Week of April 26-30, 2010 ![]() Last Friday night, California's Rapid Enforcement Allied Computer Team (that's REACT!) broke down the front door of Gizmodo editor Jason Chen and seized two computers and four servers. You know what this is all about, right? As Keith Olberman indignantly explained: (that's how big a story this is!): "An Apple employee leaves a prototype of a next-generation iPhone at a California beer garden. Somebody finds it, sells it to the editor of a tech website, who writes about it, posts pictures and video of it. So does that give police the right to RAID his HOUSE?" Yes, Keith was iRate. Well, the police squad had a warrant. And Gizmodo really did a cool show-and-tell with the discovered gadget, called it "pretty much the biggest tech scoop ever," and admitted paying $5,000 for it.
![]() But Startup Meme is confused: "I don't understand why the police would raid the house of a blogger and more so confiscate his property? ...On what grounds? Because they purchased a device that Apple thinks was stolen?" For its part, Gizmodo posts on a summary page with a mess of links (its own stories and those by others) on the matter and says "We can't comment much on this. We stand by our colleague and our coverage of the lost iPhone." The freedom-fighting EFF Deeplinks blog says that in issuing the warrant the state clearly was overREACTing, maybe illegally, and separately cites California penal code that states "no warrants shall issue" for unpublished "notes, outtakes, photographs, tapes or other data of whatever sort" if that information was "obtained or prepared in gathering, receiving or processing of information for communication to the public."
![]() Threat Level also reports that "people identifying themselves as representing Apple" visited the college-age man who found the iPhone. A source says the guy really tried to return it to Apple and thought Gizmodo would help with that (uh, mission accomplished?). Now it seems everybody but Dilbert (wait, scratch that) has weighed in on the matter. Slate says the First Amendment really should hold here but recommends: "One small tip for Gizmodo, though: If you haven't already, send that phone back. "
![]() In another chapter from the 2010 edition of George Orwell's 1984, the state of Arizona's new passed legislation empowering police to ask people on the street for proof of citizenship. No room here for all the debate, but Politico says one of the state's newspapers reported Arizona is "turning into a punch line," after surveying the latest global commentary about the state featuring choice phrases such as "wingnut paradise," "nuttiest legislative body," "America's dumbest state," and "blazing a trail into the fringe." Colombian singer Shakira went to Phoenix to try fixing things (that should shake 'em up). "Go get 'em, Shak!," says Perez Hilton in a surprisingly inoffensive moment. Calls for a boycott Arizona products swept up poor innocent AriZona iced tea, which comes from Long Island, NY. As Gothamist reports, the company reacted by putting a USA flag thing that calls them "An American Company" on their website. Which proves what, exactly? The logic is hard to parse, though suppose the flag it will help keep Tea Party sales flowing. Gothamist relates that the head guy at AriZona picked the name "trying to find a name as distinctive as Snapple, and chose Arizona after looking at a map and remembering his uncle moved there for his asthma." Hey, it could be worse—they could have picked South Carolina.
![]() Feeling like you can't walk the streets of Tucson minding your own business, or steal an iPhone prototype, these days without getting hassled by the heat? Want privacy? Put your hands where we can see them and back away slowly from Facebook. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg doesn't believe in privacy, according to a Business Insider report. (We though M-Zuck was cooler because his last name in German means "sugar mountain.") This comes courtesy of a Tweet from a NY Times reporter that says "Off the record chat w/Facebook employee. Me: How does Zuck feel about privacy? Response: [laughter] He doesn't believe in it." (Us: how does that reporter feel about the term "off the record"?) Facebook's moves to share its members' personal poop with its business partners really have been confusing and troubling to observers. "With so many business opportunities, why is Facebook dead set on pushing the limits of privacy?" asks AllFacebook. Says Epicenter: "Zuckerberg's apparent disregard for your privacy is probably not reason enough to delete your Facebook account. But we wouldn't recommend posting anything there that you wouldn't want marketers, legal authorities, governments (or your mother) to see." Sadly, for too many, that ship has already sailed.
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