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GJ Apple.

Looks like the police colluded with some Apple employees (looking for a missing phone) to search someone's home, the person gave permission for the search thinking it was a request made by the police, looks like he was never told that the two Apple employers who were involved in the actual searching were Apple employees.
 
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If I wanted to search some guy's home because I thought he stole something of mine, would I be able to do the same as these Apple employees did? Would I be able to get the police to conduct a search on my behalf or on behalf of a company I work for? Is this normal police policy? Seems to me the fault here is with the police.
 
So the police didn't even get a warrant? The perp shouldn't have even allowed them in. So much wrong in so little time.
 
arthwollipot said:
If I wanted to search some guy's home because I thought he stole something of mine, would I be able to do the same as these Apple employees did? Would I be able to get the police to conduct a search on my behalf or on behalf of a company I work for? Is this normal police policy? Seems to me the fault here is with the police.
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The second link said the Apple person the reporters contacted (he had given his phone number to the guy they claimed had the phone) said he was a former PO with San Jose. I expect he got help from his "buddies".
 
If the cops come by and ask to search my house, I'll tell them to **** off and come back when they get a warrant.
 
As I understand it, there's no law against someone searching your house if you explicitly grant them permission to do so. However, an argument could be made that permission might not have been given if A) the request did not appear to come from the police, or B) it was known non-police would be performing the search.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. I know that not everything police do is necessarily reported and filed, but that's usually for really small things like civil standbys. It does seem like a few procedural steps were skipped.
 
KoihimeNakamura said:
It's both. Apple should ahve never attempted it, as that sort of thing is blatantly illegal without a warrant.
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It's not.

There were real police officers present. The home owner allowed the search. A warrant ceased to be necessary at that point. If the police then allowed outsiders to actually conduct the search (since said outsiders have better technical expertise and knowledge of the missing item) doesn't matter. There is the bit that the home owner did not realize that the two searchers were from Apple, but then again, he can count as a suspect (of theft or industrial espionage), and it's totally legal for police officers to deceive suspects (within limits, as has been pointed out).
 
It just dawned on me ... this could have been conducted as a civil standby. I could go to the police and tell them some person has my things and won't return them; I'm going to confront the person and would like a civil standby in case things turn ugly. They'll do that. I've done it. In fact, the police suggested it in my case.

Now, I don't know if that's how it actually went down with Apple, but its possible.
 
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elgarak said:
It's not.

There were real police officers present. The home owner allowed the search. A warrant ceased to be necessary at that point. If the police then allowed outsiders to actually conduct the search (since said outsiders have better technical expertise and knowledge of the missing item) doesn't matter. There is the bit that the home owner did not realize that the two searchers were from Apple, but then again, he can count as a suspect (of theft or industrial espionage), and it's totally legal for police officers to deceive suspects (within limits, as has been pointed out).
Click to expand...

Also, it seems that the police had a reasonable suspicion to request the search, and likely could have gotten a warrant if necessary since they were able to use GPS to track the phone to that location. It further appears that no further action was taken against the homeowner since the item was not found.

So, we have a case of the police having a reasonable suspicion, requesting a search, not finding anything, then dropping the matter since nothing was found.

The other thing that the article mentions is that the item in question is one of two prototype phones. So Apple being aggressive about combating a potential case of corporate spying is not much of a surprise either.
 
While it sounds like the search was legal, I suspect that not identifying searchers properly violates proper procedure.

With the "civil standby" you describe, daSkeptic, the target would know that you are not a police officer. While they may be influenced to do the right thing (giving you back your stuff; I suspect most of the time an actual search wouldn't be necessary) by the presence of the police, there wouldn't be any potential deception involved.
 
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