Apple is coming after me for LEAKS...
**The Tug of War Over Leaked Information: Apple's Efforts to Control the Narrative**
Recently, I had a conversation with someone who wished to remain anonymous, and we discussed how Apple has been trying to stop leaks of unreleased products. This individual expressed their enthusiasm for sharing renders of unreleased Apple products, but warned them against creating and publishing such content, claiming that if they continued, they would be looked into by Apple. However, instead of coming after me, who lives in the US and is protected by similar laws, Apple targeted someone who simply worked on a project with me.
This event has left a sour taste in my mouth, as it feels like Apple used mafia-like tactics to silence someone who was willing to share information about their products. Since Apple couldn't legally come after me in the US, they instead went after friends and fellow leakers, sparking widespread speculation and concern among the tech community.
Evan Blass, a well-known leaker, recently tweeted about this situation, claiming that it could be "much more perilous" for John Prosser, an older acquaintance of mine who works under US jurisdiction. Evan speculated that I must be paying employees to leak information to me, which is simply not true. I have publicly denied these claims, and I've always made clear to my employees that they are under no pressure to give me information.
Evan's accusations, however, did bring up an interesting point: if Apple is trying to stop leaks from the inside out, why aren't they targeting the employees who are giving out the information illegally? It's true that Apple has fired and sued numerous employees who were caught leaking confidential information. However, when there are multiple sources, multiple teams, and new ways of sharing information, such as on YouTube or Twitter, it becomes more difficult to track down.
Recently, I've been told that Apple has been handing out body cams like police-grade body cams to entire teams of employees to wear while working on projects. This is likely a response to the growing trend of leaked products and news about upcoming releases. Leaks are, by nature, a tug of war between companies trying to control secrecy and media outlets eager to share that information with the public.
As someone who doesn't publish leaked information because I hate Apple (and Google, Samsung, etc.), I don't do it because I'm excited or motivated. Most employees who leak information do so because they're passionate about technology and want to control the news cycle for a day. They might be excited to share what's next, but ultimately, their actions are driven by a desire to expose secrets that companies would rather keep hidden.
The tug of war over leaked information will always be present between companies trying to maintain secrecy and media outlets eager to share that information with the public. Apple will continue to try to stop leaks, no matter how small they may seem. And there will always be employees who work for those companies that are excited to share what's next. As a result, it's essential for both sides to find ways to coexist and respect each other's boundaries.
In conclusion, the situation with Apple and leaked information is complex and multifaceted. While I don't condone leaks or encourage others to do so, I also understand why some people might feel compelled to share sensitive information. As a leaker myself, I've learned to be cautious and respectful of the individuals who provide me with information. And as Apple continues to adapt its strategies for controlling leaked products, it's crucial that both sides find ways to work together and respect each other's boundaries in this ongoing tug of war over secrecy and transparency.
"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enapple is well known for fiercely guarding technology but it seems that an apple employee accidentally left a prototype of the new iphone at a bar in california last month and now it's all over the web hey i'm jason chen this is the new iphone here are some of the new features when this whole thing with gizmodo happened i got a lot of advice from people that said you've got to just let it slide you shouldn't go after a journalist because they bought stolen property and they tried to extort you you should let it slide apple's a big company now you don't want the pr you should let it slide and i thought deeply about this and i ended up concluding that the worst thing that could possibly happen as we get big and we get a little more influence in the world is if we change our core values and start letting it slide i can't do that i'd rather quit that was in 2010. it's now 2021 and apple is still chasing leaks you could say a lot has happened since that iphone 4 leak from back in the day tim cook has now been running the company for over 10 years but those core values that steve was talking about they still seem to be intact you may have seen the articles lately about how apple is coming after leakers just as they always did the only difference lately is that the leaks aren't limited to tech blogs any longer now they're coming from youtube and twitter weibo and other forms of social media and luckily there are a lot of laws that are in place that protect journalists from the repercussions of those leaks i mean after all the journalists are not the ones doing the leaking they're just reporting what they know they're just reporting the news but what is a journalist these days i publish leaks on my youtube channel but am i protected is john prosser a journalist what about kang a weibo account in china or twitter account love to dream who publishes leaks disguised as dreams are they considered journalists well here in the us maybe in the united states freedom of the press and freedom of speech can protect you for instance in 2014 it was ruled by the court of appeals for the north circuit that a blogger is entitled to the same free speech protection as a journalist and for the most part freedom of the press protects you so long as you personally did not do anything illegal to obtain information see the publishing of material is not an illegal act but how you obtained that material well that can be even if your source as an employee of the company acted in bad faith or illegally by leaking information to you as long as you didn't solicit that information and as long as there was no transaction that was offered meaning the journalists did not pay the source or offer anything in return for that material or that leaked information then the journalist cannot be held liable but like what if you don't live in the united states we saw this with apple reaching out to leaker kang who lives in china and posts leaks to his weibo account apple's lawyers warned kang that he must not disclose information about unreleased apple products because it may give apple's competitors valuable information or mislead customers so basically a stop or else letter king went on to promise that he won't post riddles and dreams in the future also claiming that he would delete some previous posts and said he will tone it back when it comes to posting about apple before apple sent that letter to kang though you may have also seen me talk about them targeting me a couple weeks ago in an episode of my podcast see out of all of the leaks that i have ever published which includes 178 of them according to website apple track apple actually targeted one of my reports from months ago last year actually remember those renders of airpods max we posted these like three months before the product actually launched in fact we posted them around the same time where we shared our renders of air tags which obviously took much longer to come out source had given me photos and videos of these products and to protect them you know how this works i gave those images those videos to a render artist to have them recreated that way the source is protected and you get to see an unreleased product everyone wins right i mean i live right here in the united states so for the most part i'm safe i'm covered i'm protected so long as i'm not doing anything illegal obviously to obtain the information that i'm giving to you guys but what if somebody that i hired to work on a project for me what if they don't live in the u.s we'll talk about that right after we hear from today's video sponsor apple coming after you for leaks is not fun but you know what is we vpn's summer sale gets 74 off and three months of free service with the purchase of a two-year plan that's only 259 a month and on top of wii vpn being my favorite vpn they now unlock over 350 streaming services that's more than any other vpn protect yourself online keep your isp from tracking you and unblock all of your favorite streaming services by switching to wii vpn link down in the description the render artist that helped me work on the renders for both airpods max as well as air tags his name is concept creator and he a couple weeks ago was given one of those very nice letters from apple he also doesn't live in the u.s so um how's your day going in the most passive aggressive way ever apple thanked him for his enthusiasm for apple products but warned him against creating and publishing renders of unreleased products claiming that if he continues they will look to find him so once again here we are we have someone who likely won't be able to publish this sort of information moving forward and look i gotta be honest that makes me feel pretty terrible that since apple couldn't legally come after me here in the u.s for anything instead they went after someone who simply just worked on a project with me that's some like mafia level stuff that since they couldn't come after me since they couldn't get me they instead went after friends that's why these days when i share renders of unreleased products i work with concept artist renders by ian who does happen to live here in the united states and is covered by the same protections as me and with all of these new reports going around about apple coming after leakers it has stirred up a lot of speculating like these tweets here from fellow leaker evan blass claiming that this situation could be quote much much more perilous for our old friend john prosser who by virtue of being subject to us jurisdiction could be scrutinized for violation of the 1996 economic espionage act evan speculates that i must be paying employees to leak information to me to him that's the only way to explain how i've leaked apple and google information six or more months before a product launches saying quote you can bet something illegal has transpired and this is not the first time there have been rumors of me paying sources going around for a long time people have made fake accounts that somehow made it to the top of reddit threads and in news articles claiming to be a former source of mine and saying that i paid them of course as the news articles have said i have publicly denied this so fine i'll go ahead and say it here no evan though you're publicly making claims that john prosser must pay sources no i've never paid a source no money has ever exchanged hands no transactions have happened and i've always made clear to employees that they are under no pressure to give me information so like i don't know maybe don't say that stuff publicly about someone else unless you have proof huh so where does this all leave us i mean it's clear that this is this is not new you saw that at the beginning of this video apple has been trying to stop leaks since always but a lot of people lately have been bringing up a good point why is apple going after the people publishing the leaks if employees are the ones giving out the information illegally then why wouldn't apple try to stop the leaks from the inside out well uh they are they're doing that too apple has fired and sued the out of many employees once they were caught it's when there are multiple sources multiple teams and when the information is being published in completely new ways like on youtube or on twitter that's where things get a bit more difficult to track down but believe me apple is doing something they're always changing the way things work behind the scenes ways for employees to discuss confidential information has now become far more strict more recently though i have been told that apple has been handing out body cams like police grade police level body cams to entire teams of employees to wear at work throughout the last few weeks many sources have reached out to me showing that apple has them wearing body cams while working on a number of projects this is most certainly a response to stop videos and pictures of products from being leaked to people like me leaks are well they're a tug of war and i don't publish the leaks because i hate apple i don't publish them because i hate google or samsung whatever company it might be and the employees that are giving me that information willingly well they aren't doing it because they hate the company that they work for either for the most part most of them do it because they're excited they follow the tech news just like you and me and it gives them a little bit of a thrill to be able to control the news cycle for the day by leaking exciting information and though it might be my name in those news articles they know that the information came from them leaks have always been a thing from every company from every government and that tug of war that'll always be there for the companies that are trying to control the secrecy of information and the media that thrives on giving the information to you the public apple will always try to stop the leaks no matter how small it may seem and there will always be employees that work for those companies that are excited to share what's next so if you work at one of those companies and you've got information that you are excited about then you want to share what's next there will always be people like me that will listen ohapple is well known for fiercely guarding technology but it seems that an apple employee accidentally left a prototype of the new iphone at a bar in california last month and now it's all over the web hey i'm jason chen this is the new iphone here are some of the new features when this whole thing with gizmodo happened i got a lot of advice from people that said you've got to just let it slide you shouldn't go after a journalist because they bought stolen property and they tried to extort you you should let it slide apple's a big company now you don't want the pr you should let it slide and i thought deeply about this and i ended up concluding that the worst thing that could possibly happen as we get big and we get a little more influence in the world is if we change our core values and start letting it slide i can't do that i'd rather quit that was in 2010. it's now 2021 and apple is still chasing leaks you could say a lot has happened since that iphone 4 leak from back in the day tim cook has now been running the company for over 10 years but those core values that steve was talking about they still seem to be intact you may have seen the articles lately about how apple is coming after leakers just as they always did the only difference lately is that the leaks aren't limited to tech blogs any longer now they're coming from youtube and twitter weibo and other forms of social media and luckily there are a lot of laws that are in place that protect journalists from the repercussions of those leaks i mean after all the journalists are not the ones doing the leaking they're just reporting what they know they're just reporting the news but what is a journalist these days i publish leaks on my youtube channel but am i protected is john prosser a journalist what about kang a weibo account in china or twitter account love to dream who publishes leaks disguised as dreams are they considered journalists well here in the us maybe in the united states freedom of the press and freedom of speech can protect you for instance in 2014 it was ruled by the court of appeals for the north circuit that a blogger is entitled to the same free speech protection as a journalist and for the most part freedom of the press protects you so long as you personally did not do anything illegal to obtain information see the publishing of material is not an illegal act but how you obtained that material well that can be even if your source as an employee of the company acted in bad faith or illegally by leaking information to you as long as you didn't solicit that information and as long as there was no transaction that was offered meaning the journalists did not pay the source or offer anything in return for that material or that leaked information then the journalist cannot be held liable but like what if you don't live in the united states we saw this with apple reaching out to leaker kang who lives in china and posts leaks to his weibo account apple's lawyers warned kang that he must not disclose information about unreleased apple products because it may give apple's competitors valuable information or mislead customers so basically a stop or else letter king went on to promise that he won't post riddles and dreams in the future also claiming that he would delete some previous posts and said he will tone it back when it comes to posting about apple before apple sent that letter to kang though you may have also seen me talk about them targeting me a couple weeks ago in an episode of my podcast see out of all of the leaks that i have ever published which includes 178 of them according to website apple track apple actually targeted one of my reports from months ago last year actually remember those renders of airpods max we posted these like three months before the product actually launched in fact we posted them around the same time where we shared our renders of air tags which obviously took much longer to come out source had given me photos and videos of these products and to protect them you know how this works i gave those images those videos to a render artist to have them recreated that way the source is protected and you get to see an unreleased product everyone wins right i mean i live right here in the united states so for the most part i'm safe i'm covered i'm protected so long as i'm not doing anything illegal obviously to obtain the information that i'm giving to you guys but what if somebody that i hired to work on a project for me what if they don't live in the u.s we'll talk about that right after we hear from today's video sponsor apple coming after you for leaks is not fun but you know what is we vpn's summer sale gets 74 off and three months of free service with the purchase of a two-year plan that's only 259 a month and on top of wii vpn being my favorite vpn they now unlock over 350 streaming services that's more than any other vpn protect yourself online keep your isp from tracking you and unblock all of your favorite streaming services by switching to wii vpn link down in the description the render artist that helped me work on the renders for both airpods max as well as air tags his name is concept creator and he a couple weeks ago was given one of those very nice letters from apple he also doesn't live in the u.s so um how's your day going in the most passive aggressive way ever apple thanked him for his enthusiasm for apple products but warned him against creating and publishing renders of unreleased products claiming that if he continues they will look to find him so once again here we are we have someone who likely won't be able to publish this sort of information moving forward and look i gotta be honest that makes me feel pretty terrible that since apple couldn't legally come after me here in the u.s for anything instead they went after someone who simply just worked on a project with me that's some like mafia level stuff that since they couldn't come after me since they couldn't get me they instead went after friends that's why these days when i share renders of unreleased products i work with concept artist renders by ian who does happen to live here in the united states and is covered by the same protections as me and with all of these new reports going around about apple coming after leakers it has stirred up a lot of speculating like these tweets here from fellow leaker evan blass claiming that this situation could be quote much much more perilous for our old friend john prosser who by virtue of being subject to us jurisdiction could be scrutinized for violation of the 1996 economic espionage act evan speculates that i must be paying employees to leak information to me to him that's the only way to explain how i've leaked apple and google information six or more months before a product launches saying quote you can bet something illegal has transpired and this is not the first time there have been rumors of me paying sources going around for a long time people have made fake accounts that somehow made it to the top of reddit threads and in news articles claiming to be a former source of mine and saying that i paid them of course as the news articles have said i have publicly denied this so fine i'll go ahead and say it here no evan though you're publicly making claims that john prosser must pay sources no i've never paid a source no money has ever exchanged hands no transactions have happened and i've always made clear to employees that they are under no pressure to give me information so like i don't know maybe don't say that stuff publicly about someone else unless you have proof huh so where does this all leave us i mean it's clear that this is this is not new you saw that at the beginning of this video apple has been trying to stop leaks since always but a lot of people lately have been bringing up a good point why is apple going after the people publishing the leaks if employees are the ones giving out the information illegally then why wouldn't apple try to stop the leaks from the inside out well uh they are they're doing that too apple has fired and sued the out of many employees once they were caught it's when there are multiple sources multiple teams and when the information is being published in completely new ways like on youtube or on twitter that's where things get a bit more difficult to track down but believe me apple is doing something they're always changing the way things work behind the scenes ways for employees to discuss confidential information has now become far more strict more recently though i have been told that apple has been handing out body cams like police grade police level body cams to entire teams of employees to wear at work throughout the last few weeks many sources have reached out to me showing that apple has them wearing body cams while working on a number of projects this is most certainly a response to stop videos and pictures of products from being leaked to people like me leaks are well they're a tug of war and i don't publish the leaks because i hate apple i don't publish them because i hate google or samsung whatever company it might be and the employees that are giving me that information willingly well they aren't doing it because they hate the company that they work for either for the most part most of them do it because they're excited they follow the tech news just like you and me and it gives them a little bit of a thrill to be able to control the news cycle for the day by leaking exciting information and though it might be my name in those news articles they know that the information came from them leaks have always been a thing from every company from every government and that tug of war that'll always be there for the companies that are trying to control the secrecy of information and the media that thrives on giving the information to you the public apple will always try to stop the leaks no matter how small it may seem and there will always be employees that work for those companies that are excited to share what's next so if you work at one of those companies and you've got information that you are excited about then you want to share what's next there will always be people like me that will listen oh\n"