Foxconn Engineer Committs Suicide Over Missing iPhone 4G Prototype

We’ve just received word that of a terrible tragedy in the tech industry. An employee at the Chinese Foxconn factory has committed suicide over losing the prototype of the iPhone 4G. This is a story that hit home really hard for me. We spend all of our time obsessing over these gadgets, which for most of us, are just really expensive toys. Apple has always been known to carry an aura of secrecy around its future products to the point of dropping manufactures for leaking information, but is all this worth a human life?

Here is what we know and what is making its way across the news lines right now: Sun Danyong, a 25 year-old engineering graduate, was given 16 iPhone 4G prototypes straight from the assembly line. Three days later, on July 12th, he noticed that one was missing. After a frantic search, he informed his superiors that the phone was missing. The story gets a little hazy from here, but reports are that his apartment was searched without his consent by Foxconn in order to find the missing device. He is also reported to have been taken in for questioning and physically abused (the source for this is unsubstantiated). On July 16th, at 3 am, Sun jumped out of a window of his apartment to his death. This tragic event was captured by surveillance cameras.

We all cherish our devices and the company that makes them. We live for the rush of finding out something new ahead of the next Apple keynote. We comb through every leak, trying to make sense of it all and to spin the oracle of our imagination to guesstimate what lies ahead in the tech world. Yet sometimes we forget about the enormous pressure that’s put on those that design, engineer, and manufacture these products and services and still must keep it all a secret, all to make sure Apple’s announcements remain a surprise. That’s not what we signed up for, and you can be sure to see more posts from us with opinions about secrecy in the tech industry.  We are in mourning over this incident and Sun Danyong.

Via venturebeat and slashgear.