Okay, Apple, I get it. I know your trinkets are invaluable and if anyone were to get ahold of the latest version of one before its release, some of the sensation of the iPhone 5's world debut would be diverted from you to some third party. And we can't have that. You like to be in control of your branding to an infinite degree. You like to run a watertight ship. 

But does anyone else think it's a little weird that Apple has the power to enlist the help of the police in tracking down a leaked prototype? That, aided by police officials, they can search through your home and personal property without a warrant? 

A next-generation iPhone purportedly made it out of Apple's HQ, into a bar, and into the home of a civilian. This sort of thing has happened before--sometimes Apple higher-ups get drunk and careless, sometimes they leave hot new hardware lying around their watering hole of choice. This time, employees tracked the lost phone's GPS signal to a house in San Francisco. They got in touch with the police regarding the missing gadget and four SFPD officers were happy to escort them to the home and stand guard outside while they raided.

Sounds like they were mean about it, too. The purported iPhone thief told SF Weekly that the Apple employees made snide remarks about his family's immigration status. He's a US citizen living with relatives who were present at the time of the search. They consented to the look-around, but only because they were under the impression that the Apple employees were, in fact, police. 

So people working for Apple show up in police cars and essentially masquerade as police officers in order to rifle through personal belongings in search of the unreleased iPhone 5. Correct me if I'm wrong--I'm not the most well-versed in the California legal system--but I'm pretty sure there's a law or two against that. I'm pretty sure you're not allowed to mislead people into thinking you're the police when you're not. I'm pretty sure the actual police aren't supposed to sit idly by while you do just that. The man living in the searched house has stated that he wouldn't have let Apple employees look through his home if he had known that's who these guys were. He only let them in because he was under the impression they were all police officers. But even if they were--even if Apple had managed to sic a group of cops on the guy--they'd still need a warrant for that kind of thorough search. 

They never did find their iPhone. No police report was filed and no one has made comment to the press. It's almost as though they know they did something wrong. I get the need to keep prototypes under wraps, but maybe those working for Apple should take some precautionary measures like, oh, I don't know, leaving unreleased iPhones at home when they go out drinking. Just a thought. Saves you the trouble of making it look like we're already living in a giant, corporate-run dystopia.