The SF Weekly broke the story, which centers around the "disappearance" of an iPhone 5 prototype from a San Francisco bar. Apple, which had previously conducted a very high-profile hunt for an iPhone 4 prototype that appeared in gizmodo.com, apparently hit the corporate tilt button. That's where the story goes into streets that are darker than night, to paraphrase Raymond Chandler.
A number of troubling issues emerge from the article:
1. Apple tracked the phone "electronically". That capability implies your phone, whether turned on or off, could be used as a tracking device. No law covers your right to privacy in that case. Gadget creators and social media drum beaters distinctly downplay this issue. Not so in Europe, where Google, Facebook, and the smartphone players are running afoul of European Union privacy laws.
2. Apple security apparently accompanied San Francisco police officers in a search of a private residence. It was unclear whether the Apple personnel identified themselves as law enforcement officials, or intimated that they were officially connected to the San Francisco Police Department. (The San Francisco police department statement on the incident is quoted in its entirety in this linked LA Times blog post on the affair.)
3. Apple's high-handed security tactics reflect a need for control that goes beyond rationality. This perspective starts at the top, with Steve Jobs and his well-documented micromanaging style. Since the recent deification of Jobs into a corporate saint, and Apple's position as a "success story," Apple has gotten more or less a free pass from the media. Its outsourcing of manufacturing to cheap, environmentally unconscious Asian facilities should be a source of concern in an era of high domestic unemployment. Even the suicides and industrial accidents at Foxconn's Chinese facilities, where many Apple products are put into tangible form, were largely brushed aside. While Apple is hardly alone in this shameful practice, it also has dodged any sort of moral leadership in this area. Instead, one hears bromides about "game-changing" technology, "innovative" design, etc., as if that's all that mattered.
Privacy counts, even if Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg thinks it's a quaint notion (with queasy overtones of Alberto Gonzalez's similar characterization of the Geneva Convention). Complying with the law, rather than acting as if the corporation is above legal inconveniencies, is important. These are issues larger than the sanctity of a gadget.
However, there is reasonable concern regarding industrial espionage. Silicon Valley firms, which stand to lose enormously if their prize projects slip into competitors' hands, work hard to control instances of intellectual property theft. There are many interested players in this especially dark corner of enterprise: rival firms, hostile or friendly nation states, small-time pirates, even James Bond-style criminal enterprises. It's a tough neighborhood. In the case of Apple and the missing iPhone 5 prototype, the biggest issue is how the device got out of a very secure corporate building in the first place. That's one question Apple is unlikely to publicly discuss. After all, that would bring the investigation home.
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