If the new york slimes can get away with publishing documents that put our soldiers in harms way, surely Gizmodo should be protected by the First Amendment as well.
The crime wasn't the writing of an article (or several articles) -- so "freedom of the press" is safe -- no worries there. LOL ...
It might "clear it up" for you if one was to consider that the police would be doing the exact same thing -- even if the articles were never written and no one in the public knew about this (and what happened) -- if the police had come across the information about the crime that was committed, by other means.
No, the "crime" wasn't "the article" that was written. The article that was written only let the police become aware of the crime that was committed.
SO..., that's why I said, earlier (up above) -- if you're going to commit a crime -- don't write an article about it and don't get on TV telling the world about it. That's how stupid criminals are caught, doncha know ... LOL ...
I believe it will be up to a jury to decide if there was, in fact, a crime committed. That's the way these things work. If, as others have speculated, there was collusion between the engineer who had original posession of the phone and Gizmodo, that is more likely. If not, then you never know. Police have to investigate because they believe a crime was comitted. There's nothing wrong with that, and it happens every day all across this land of ours.
I'm not entirely sure the heavy-handed tactics of confiscating the guys computers were necessary, though it seems to be SOP with most government investigative agencies, who apparently have never heard of any of the various software programs that allow one to clone a disk for later forensic analysis.
Also, if the story was accurate as written, there was an attempt to ascertain the ownership of the device in question. Unsurprisingly the tech support folk they taked to didn't know anything about it, so that query came to naught. You'll note that once Apple verified that it was their phone, it was returned.
If I was on a jury in this case and the facts turn out as presented thus far, I'd not be able to vote for conviction. To me, it's just a lesson learned on Apple's part. If you'vew got stuff you don't want people to see, don't let it off campus.