Gizmodo considers suing police after iPhone raid

A lawyer for Gizmodo says the gadget blog could sue the sheriff's office in San Mateo County, Calif., for raiding an editor's home last Friday as part of a criminal probe into an errant iPhone prototype.

The option of a lawsuit "is available because search is not the appropriate method in this situation," Thomas R. Burke, a media lawyer and partner in the San Francisco offices of Davis Wright Tremaine, told CNET. He said the search warrant violated a California journalist shield law designed to limit searches of newsrooms.

Burke added, however, that he has been in discussions with the San Mateo County District Attorney's office and that he appreciated prosecutors' agreement not to search editor Jason Chen's seized computers, iPad, and iPhone while talks are in progress.

"Very much to their credit, they aren't just putting their heads into the sand and saying, 'Go away,'" Burke said Tuesday afternoon. "The district attorney's office is independently looking at this. We're going to be sending them a detailed letter of what we already told them Saturday and yesterday."

For their part, San Mateo County prosecutors have told CNET they considered early on whether newsroom search laws applied--and decided to proceed only after carefully reviewing the rules. Stephen Wagstaffe, chief deputy district attorney, said the prosecutor "considered this issue right off the bat" and "had some good reasons why he and the judge felt the warrant was properly issued."

Gizmodo's parent company, Gawker Media, has said that the search warrant is "invalid," citing a California law curbing newsroom searches. So has the Electronic Frontier Foundation. On the other hand, if the Gizmodo employees who paid $5,000 for what they believed was a 4G iPhone prototype are targets of a criminal probe, it's likely that the law's protections do not apply and a civil lawsuit would be unsuccessful.

(Via CNET)

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