The Police and San Mateo County District Attorney Take Orders From Apple?

The Macalope on this Yahoo News piece by John Cook questioning Apple’s role in the investigation, on the grounds that Apple is one of 25 companies that sit on the REACT task force steering committee.

What’s the counter-argument? That REACT should never investigate any crime against one of the companies on its steering committee? What company would sign up for that? My inbox is chockablock with messages from those who think Apple initiated this. That can’t happen. This is a criminal investigation, not a civil lawsuit. Apple gets to decide whether to file civil litigation. The San Mateo district attorney gets to decide whether to launch a criminal investigation. We don’t know yet whether Apple has been in contact with the DA, but, why wouldn’t they? They can tell the DA what happened. They can’t order the DA what to do.

Cook botches this, implying in his article that the police who raided Chen’s home take orders from Apple:

Which raises the question as to whether Apple, which was outraged enough about Gizmodo’s $5,000 purchase of the lost iPhone for CEO Steve Jobs to reportedly call Gawker Media owner Nick Denton to demand its return, sicked its high-tech cops on Chen.

★ Monday, 26 April 2010