They confiscate cellphones. They are free to examine a phone’s contents. They have permission to monitor phone calls during an investigation. They can scour email history at will. They can forbid computer use during an investigation. They can threaten financial ruin through heavy-hitting lawsuits. They are secretly planted in other organizations to carry out their mission. They treat resistance with suspicion.
They are not police. They are the Worldwide Loyalty Team, a group of employees tasked with quashing product leaks at Apple. Gizmodo–a twist of cosmic post hoc irony–documented their existence in a December article entitled “Apple Gestapo: How Apple Hunts Down Leaks.” Their antics can scarce be believed:
They don’t ask for cameras because there are no cameras at Apple: Employees are not allowed to get into the campus with them. If the cellphone is an iPhone, it gets backed up onto a laptop. “In fact, at the beginning they used to say that the iPhones were really their property, since Apple gave every employee a free iPhone,” he points out. All the employees are asked to unlock and disable any locking features in their cellphones, and then the special forces will proceed to check them for recent activity.
They back up everything and go through all the other phones’ text messages and pictures. If you have porn in your phone, they will see it. If you have text messages to your spouse, lover, or Tiger Woods, they will see them, too. Just like that. No privacy, no limits.
While all this is happening, the employees are ordered to activate the screensaver on their computers, so the special forces are sure there are no chats happening between employees or with the exterior. They are told not to speak, text or call one other when the lockdown is happening: “It is like a gag order, and if the employee does not want to participate, they are basically asked to leave and never come back.”
The iPhone 4G
The iPhone 4G (Credit: Tinhte.vn)
As of today, a pair prototypical next-gen iPhones have “escaped” their iron grip. One landed just this week at a Vietnamese tech blog, while the other fell to Gizmodo after it was allowed to walk right out the door to slam brewskies at a Redwood City, CA bar with owner Gray Powell.
The official narrative suggests that the phones were documented as a result of illegal activity–theft is the leading accusation. It is also said that the leaks have been “immensely damaging,” no doubt a mitigating factor in the search warrant executed on the residence Gizmodo EIC Jason Chen.
Indeed, there are few mysteries left to the iPhone 4G, but it doesn’t make a lick of difference. The next-generation iPhone was already destined to drive outrageous figures on the merits of exciting hardware. Now it is guaranteed to drive outrageous figures. The leak has distilled the fever pitch of Apple hype down into something more important: the will to buy, which snowballs by the day with an infectious momentum.
Mismatched pieces
Man landed on the moon. There was one shooter. It was not a controlled demolition. I am no conspiracy theorist, but I find the official story on the iPhone 4G hard to believe.
For starters, the pair of leaks came within weeks of the announcement that Apple has fallen behind Google’s Android in the battle for control of the smartphone market. The leaks also came amidst ongoing criticism that the iPhone 3GS is showing its age, if not “way behind the curve” with respect to Android’s best and brightest.
It must also be considered that the iPhone is in a category all its own at Apple. As the iPod took the PMP market by storm, the iPhone’s superstardom is sufficient reason to believe that Apple could corner the smartphone market as well. No Macbook will ever have that luxury.
Finally, we can also come full circle to consider the Worldwide Loyalty Team, part and parcel of a company that “ranks among the most security-conscious companies.” A company that has destroyed websites for leaking less information on less important products. A company that interrogates employees, confiscates their phones, searches their emails, and monitors their calls to prevent and uncover leaks.
Few products have ever been more important to a company than the iPhone is to Apple, yet we are to believe that evil bloggers trumped paranoia and privacy Gestapo alike to publish tell-alls about not one, but two, next-gen models.
With so much to gain both politically and financially, the choice is clear: Apple displayed wildly uncharacteristic clumsiness, or the world was meant to see the iPhone 4G all along.
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