You're assuming that the computers were taken to investigate the 'finder' of the phone. Buying stolen property is a crime in CA, and shield laws are a lot murkier when the journalist is the one being investigated.

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/27/can-gizmodo-win-the-iphone-legal-battle/

If a judge ends up agreeing with the EFF on this, just imagine all the fun things that bloggers could do inside their own homes without having to worry about the police showing up. Doesn't seem practical to me in a world where anybody with a computer and an internet connection can become a 'journalist.'

I think the reason a subpoena is required is to specify what information can be taken and investigated and so it can be challenged. It's to stop the state/police intimidating journalists or taking damaging revelations back before they can be released.

@TheRealMafoo. Not above the law, just slightly different under the law. Your crime can and will still be investigated, it's just how its investigated that comes into question I think.

Certainly the shield law has had enough of an effect that they have halted the investigation (not looking at Chen's stuff) until they have sorted it out, seems odd to do this after the raid though, you think they would have checked if they could do the raid before they actually did it...

If they have to use a subpoena to criminally investigate Chen, he can invoke the fifth and the police will have no recourse to get at any evidence in Chen's house. If that's the case, it's a good thing he's pretty much publicly confessed to paying $5,000 dollars for stolen property, because any evidence of illegal activities in the Chen household cannot be investigated.

I'm sure there are quite a few shady characters out there who would love to start up a blog to get that kind of immunity and aren't stupid enough to brag about their illegal activities to the whole internet.

A subpoena would be used to gather evidence from his house. subpoena duces tecum

I certainly don't have the skills to put a number or even a ballpark on the damages, but there are a few different ways that this impacts Apple's bottom line:

1. Nobody is talking about the iPad anymore. Apple's big new product launched just a month ago, but now everybody's talking about the iPhone prototype scandal. You can buy an iPad right now. You can't buy an iPhone 4 right now.

2. Apple's PR strategy is to keep a tight lid on their projects, then get a bunch of press together and get it on every damn media pipe at once. It's worked pretty well for Apple for quite some time now. That strategy is severely disrupted, because we've all seen the iPhone 4 already.

3. The smartphone business moves pretty fast. How much do you suppose a three month early peek at the exterior and internals of a major competitor's product is worth to HTC, RIM, or Nokia? They will use it to help form their own designs and strategies to compete against Apple.

You're right that Apple's getting some publicity, but it's not wholly positive. The whole affair makes Apple look incompetent, and as we can see in this thread, some people even interpret Apple's complaint to the police as some kind of thuggery. I don't think the publicity from this will compensate Apple for having their launch event torpedoed, let alone the cost in trade secrets.

The iPhone earned Apple $5.4 billion in revenue last quarter. If this scandal puts even a 1% dent in the iPhone's sales for a single quarter, that's tens of millions of dollars.