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Apple’s Unusual Hunt for a Missing iPhone
September 2, 2011, 7:14 pm
9:58 p.m. | Updated Revised throughout to reflect new information about the search for the phone.
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.
One of the people gave a phone number to Mr. Calderon, which SF Weekly traced to an Apple security official. A San Francisco police spokesman told the newspaper that the real police officers stayed outside while the pair from Apple searched Mr. Calderon’s house and car and examined his computer, an arrangement that raises more questions than it answers about both Apple and the police.
If the incident unfolded as reported, what did the police think they were participating in? Why did the police initially say there was no official report of the search? Were the police officers on duty? Why did it take four of them to accompany the Apple investigators? And, not least, where is the phone?
The police spokesman, Troy Dangerfield, did not return numerous calls. A statement was promised but by early evening had not shown up. Apple, as usual, declined to comment. Mr. Calderon could not be reached.
In last year’s missing iPhone incident, the men who found the phone sold it to the tech blog Gizmodo for $5,000, and the blog then spilled the details about the phone’s new features. Misdemeanor criminal charges were filed against the two men. Maybe the iPhone 6 will come with a feature that allows Apple to detonate it remotely so this never happens again.
Ny Times
September 2, 2011, 7:14 pm
9:58 p.m. | Updated Revised throughout to reflect new information about the search for the phone.
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.
One of the people gave a phone number to Mr. Calderon, which SF Weekly traced to an Apple security official. A San Francisco police spokesman told the newspaper that the real police officers stayed outside while the pair from Apple searched Mr. Calderon’s house and car and examined his computer, an arrangement that raises more questions than it answers about both Apple and the police.
If the incident unfolded as reported, what did the police think they were participating in? Why did the police initially say there was no official report of the search? Were the police officers on duty? Why did it take four of them to accompany the Apple investigators? And, not least, where is the phone?
The police spokesman, Troy Dangerfield, did not return numerous calls. A statement was promised but by early evening had not shown up. Apple, as usual, declined to comment. Mr. Calderon could not be reached.
In last year’s missing iPhone incident, the men who found the phone sold it to the tech blog Gizmodo for $5,000, and the blog then spilled the details about the phone’s new features. Misdemeanor criminal charges were filed against the two men. Maybe the iPhone 6 will come with a feature that allows Apple to detonate it remotely so this never happens again.
Ny Times
