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Apple Asteroid Case May Crash
By David Utter
Expert Author
Article Date: 2005-09-14
Apple may have violated federal and state laws in planning to subpoena journalists for their sources before doing a full internal investigation.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation announced it had won a request in court to have documents in the Apple v. Does case unsealed. Those documents show the company did not thoroughly investigate internally the disclosure of information related to a trade secret first.
Representing the two sites sued by Apple, PowerPage.org and AppleInsider.com, the EFF requested the unsealing of documents amid suspicions that Apple may have went after journalists for those sites prematurely. Those sites published information on a rumored FireWire audio interface for Apple's GarageBand program; the project was code-named Asteroid.
The EFF now says that Apple did no investigation beyond a forensic check of email servers and a single file server. Additional investigative options like checking workstations and obtaining sworn testimony from employees was not performed.
Apple had resisted the opening of court documents, claiming the internal investigation itself was a trade secret. The court rejected that assertion in unsealing documents.
EFF counsel claims the First Amendment and the California Constitution require Apple to exhaust all other options before issuing subpoenas to journalists regarding their sources. The case will be heard in California's Court of Appeal, but a date has not been set.
About the Author:
David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business. Email him here.
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