Apple - The Power to Search and Seize?

This is the second time that Apple has shown its goonier side when one of its hapless employees loses an as-yet-unreleased iPhone...

NYT - 9/2/11 by DAVID STREITFELD and VERNE G. KOPYTOFF

If Apple thinks you have something that belongs to it, can its security personnel come to your house, gain entrance with the help of the police and search for physical and electronic evidence among your possessions?

While many details are still sketchy, that is apparently what happened in San Francisco in July when, for the second time, an Apple employee lost a test version of a future iPhone model in a bar. According to CNet, which broke the story, and SF Weekly, which provided a fuller picture of the incident, Apple went to great lengths to try to get its errant property back.

Apple used a GPS feature of the phone to trace it to a house near the bar. Sergio Calderon, a 22-year-old resident of the house, was quoted by SF Weekly as saying that he had visited the bar where the iPhone 5 disappeared, the tequila lounge Cava22, but that he did not have the phone. Mr. Calderon said he was visited by six people, four men and two women, none in uniform. He presumed they were all police officers, an assumption they made no effort to correct.

Read more>>

Follow me on Twitter. Please subscribe to our news feed. Get regular updates via Email. Contact us for advertising inquiries.