In a sane world, that would be destruction of evidence. You shouldn’t be able to tell the court evidence exists and then destroy it before you let anyone else examine it.
As I understand, the evidence wasn't owned by prosecution, but by Apple. It's like saying "the truth is out there", which is technically true, but shouldn't count as evidence until collected.
Then why was it used for an arrest warrant? Should evidence not be examined before the warrant is issue? Or can you just claim to have video evidence of a murder to get someone you don't like arrested?
Prosecution should be held in contempt of court if they fail to keep their own evidence securely, including the platforms and locations of storage.
I think prosecutors should go to jail if they keep their evidence in a building covered in kerosene and then "whoops" the evidence has gone up in flames.
Thing is... its just a day job for these people and they probably get paid less than us devs. They have families, complicated lives just like we do. Stuff gets in the way of doing a stellar job sometimes. I don't think lazy devs that create buggy software should be charged with a felony, they just shouldn't get promoted or should change careers.
Having been falsely subjected to criminal charges myself I don't really agree. Having your pizza arrive late and cold is 'less than stellar'. Being jailed is a whole different experience, and though it was not for very long and the charged were ultimately dismissed I count myself very lucky for having had the support and resources I did. Many others are less fortunate and suffer far more.
You are probably lucky enough to be a US citizen. If you are an immigrant an arrest is a problem everytime you need reapply for a visa/residence permit. The question in the paperwork is always "have you been arrested", not "have you been convicted of a crime". In this case you'd like to see lengthy prison sentences for all involved, the whole chain of command.
What if "lazy devs that create buggy software" literally destroy peoples lives?
Blameless postmortem are fine only if steps are taken to uncover and fix the problem at the root cause. There's no excuse for systematically jailing innocent or pushing buggy software.
In this case, what steps were taken? Video was deleted!
I've been saying for awhile now that developers who work in life critical applications should be held to the same licensing and educational standard as civil engineers. There should be legal difference between a "coder" who can be unlicensed and not formally trained working on non critical software and a "software engineer" who is educated, licensed and bonded to work on stuff such as medical, automotive, aerospace and control systems. There should also be some kind of equivalent to the various engineering organizations that sets standards and norms.
Police1 - Yeah we saw the ID and stuff and some video
Innocent Man - where's the video, coz i was in different state
Accuser1 - we deleted it - poker face
Police - poker face
Innocent1 - poker face
Court - ok bye c u later