Californian police have been forced to reveal several secrets behind the recent Apple iPhone saga after a judge refused an application to seal documents relating to the case, which revealed the involvement of Steve Jobs in the saga.Late on Friday, Judge Clifford V. Cretan ruled against the San Mateo County District Attorney’s office, which argued that unsealing the documents will reveal identities of potential witnesses and compromise the investigation.
As a result of the unsealing it was revealed that Steve Jobs asked technology blog Gizmodo.com to return a secret iPhone prototype that Apple claimed was stolen, after an employee lost it in a San Francisco bar.
The new phone, which was disguised as a current model 3Gs iPhone, has been described as an “invaluable prototype” and that the loss was “immensely damaging to Apple” because it would hinder iPhone sales, according to an April 23 affidavit by Detective Matthew Broad.
Allegations that Apple put pressure on the police to raid the home of a journalist to gather information for Apple has been denied.
“I want to get this phone back to you ASAP and I want to not hurt your sales when the products themselves deserve love,” Gizmodo editor Brian Lam said in an e-mail to Jobs, Apple’s chief executive officer. “But I have to get this story of the missing prototype out and how it was returned to Apple with some acknowledgement it is Apple’s.”
According to BusinessWeek, Lam was writing in response to Jobs, who contacted Gizmodo on about April 19 seeking the return of the prototype after the blog dissected it and posted pictures detailing its features. Lam said he would return the phone if Apple provided him with confirmation that it belonged to the company, according to Broad’s unsealed affidavit.
Police investigating the matter claimed in a statement that, “By publishing details about the phone and its features, sales of current Apple products are hurt”.
Recounting a conversation with Apple lawyer, George Riley, of O’Melveny & Myers LLP, Detective Broad said, “Riley could not provide an estimated loss, but he believed it was huge.”
Gizmodo claim that they purchased the phone for $5,000 after it was found at a bar in San Francisco. The phone was lost on March 25 by Apple engineer, Gray Powell.
According to the documents tendered before the court, the police learned the identity of the man and then passed the information onto Apple. They revealed that student, Brian Hogan, was dobbed into the police by his roommate who contacted Apple fearing that she might be implicated in the theft.
She said that she thought Apple could track her down because the phone had been connected to a PC that they both shared and because of this she thought that Apple and the police could identify them via an IP address.
BusinessWeek said that based on Apple’s claim that an iPhone prototype was stolen, the county’s computer crimes task force last month broke down the front home door of Gizmodo journalist Chen. Gizmodo is challenging the seizure of Chen’s equipment, citing laws that protect online journalists from having newsroom equipment taken.
“The goal of the investigation is to find out every single person who came in contact with that phone from the moment it left the restaurant and ended up back in the hands of Apple, and to find out every person who handled it, what they knew and in the course of that if there was any crime committed,” Deputy District Attorney Steve Wagstaffe said over the weekend.
“I believe that evidence of the theft of the iPhone prototype, the vandalism of the iPhone prototype and the sale of its associated trade secrets will be found in Chen’s home,” Broad wrote in the document.
The search warrant affidavit released today indicates that the iPhone 4G prototype was disguised to look like an IPhone 3GS, the latest generation model available in retail stores.
According to Broad’s statement, Hogan, with the help of a friend, packed up his computer and other equipment and removed it from his home before law enforcement officials arrived. Hogan and the equipment were found at his father’s home, according to the affidavit.
Apple had no special influence in the investigation or getting it started law enforcement officials have said.
