Having once been arrested without bail for no good reason (that ultimately decided by the ninth circuit) I like this cloud data concept (after having every scrap of paper scrutinized and wild conclusions drawn from therein) and will probably go that route. Anyone have any specifics on who does that sort of thing?

The age-old concept of someone entering your property illegally, and takes something of value, is what we all know as “theft”. Generally, we all believe that the owner has an obligation to protect his/her property by keeping the valuables in a place that is somehow “protected”–by some sort of shield, or lock. Criminal punishment for those found guilty of breaking into a home or business to take these valuable is warranted.

But finding something in a public place that has not been “protected” by the owner, and failing to return it, should in no way be equated to a act of “breaking and entering”. Certainly the owner has a right to claim his property .. but not to demand the State put the finder in jail.

In this case, the “owner” was an employee of a large company, and might not even have had the authority to have the device off the premises. While that might not be true in this case, it could easily be true in other cases. The idea that the carelessness on the part of an employee that can result in another person’s being charged with “theft” is not at all reasonable.

This case should be examined by the California Legislature .. and the law on this point revisited to not make the “finder” of something (possibly) valuable so easily victimized by a large company.

While a prototype of a piece of consumer electronics could easily cost in the hundreds of thousands of dollars (on a per item basis), throw-away cell phones are going for $10. in retail outlets. So .. how does not spending a couple of days trying to return what might be a throw-away cell phone become a crime?

Although Gizmodo might have shown better sense than to go public with the details of the iPhone they had in their possession, under the circumstances–Apple is acting like a real thug here.

The Legislature should revisit this law, and make certain that “theft” means “theft”, and “not-returning” means something else.

This comment is not necessarily true. In the world of “cloud computing” all of your data could easily be on one (or more) servers around the world. You might find that the police have illegally seized your computer(s), but they will have to work a lot harder to get your data (which might be also encrypted).

This opens an interesting area for new legal battles, since this has not happened yet–but it will happen soon.

So .. search warrants written in the future will have to include some provision to compel the person who is the subject of the warrant to reveal the location of the “cloud-based” data. Otherwise, the cops might find that they have walked off with a diskless PC which has no data on it at all.

This also opens the door to another interesting problem. The cops often take every thing that they can get their hands on, presumably thinking that they can “go fishing”, and/or that they can “shut down” the work of the person(s) who is/are the subject of the search warrant (whether that person(s) is guilty or not. So, with one’s data out on the “cloud”, the person gets another Laptop (or Internet Access Device) and goes back to work. This might mean he/she destroys incriminating evidence, or moves it else where, or just goes back to work–frustrating the cops/DA, who is interested in getting in this person’s way.

So .. does existing law have the power to prohibit someone from using his data on the “cloud”, once the police have a copy? Hopefully someone in the media will pick up on this theme and do a little investigation .. it’s probably an area worthy of some thought.