LA Times reporters, David Sarno and Jessica Guynn, have a very good piece on REACT, the task force that searched the home Gizmodo’s Jason Chen, the blogger who temporarily had possession the lost iPhone prototype.
(The Gizmodo/iPhone prototype story somehow still hasn’t gotten less interesting, even with its alarming implications.)
The LAT reporting begins like this:
When a top-secret prototype of Apple Inc.’s new iPhone went missing recently, the computer giant summoned Silicon Valley’s version of the cavalry — an elite squad whose main mission is investigating crimes against high-tech companies.
Little-known outside the tech world, the unit is suddenly in the spotlight for its April 23 raid on the Bay Area home of Jason Chen, the 29-year-old technology blogger who had gained possession of the missing phone.
The unit swept in after Chen posted a photo and details of the new iPhone on the Gizmodo.com website. But the raid itself has become secondary to a larger debate burning up Silicon Valley and the blogosphere: What is this high-tech police force, and who controls it?
“It’s the iPolice,” said Steve Meister, a former Los Angeles County deputy district attorney. “This whole thing appears, rightly or wrongly, to be law enforcement doing the bidding of a private company.”
The task force, called REACT (for Rapid Enforcement Allied Computer Team), is a kind of SWAT team, chartered in 1997 to focus on “large-scale crimes that victimize the high technology industry in the Bay Area.”
There’s LOTS more, so read the rest here.