“Apple’s attorney painted a scary picture if Apple loses its fight with the FBI,” David Goldman and Laurie Segall report for CNN. “In an interview with CNNMoney’s Laurie Segall on Friday, Ted Olson warned of a government with ‘limitless’ powers that could ‘listen to your conversations.'”
“Olson said the demands would mount. ‘You can imagine every different law enforcement official telling Apple we want a new product to get into something,’ Olson said. ‘Even a state judge could order Apple to build something. There’s no stopping point. That would lead to a police state,'” Goldman and Segall report. “In the case against the FBI, Olson said the government overstepped its legal authority. He said Apple’s stance hasn’t changed — instead, it’s the government’s request that has changed and become more expansive than ever.”
“‘It’s very easy to say ‘terrorism is involved’ and therefore you should do whatever the government wants to do,’ he said. ‘But just because you’re using the word ‘terrorism,’ you don’t want to violate the civil liberties that all of us cherish,'” Goldman and Segall report. “Meanwhile, Olson noted that Apple continues to upgrade the security of its iPhones. ‘Apple is constantly trying to improve its iPhones … so that people can’t hack in and find out where your children are or what your medical records are,’ he said. ‘So if Apple continues to do that, it’s just a point at which the government just can’t get into your soul. We have got to have a stopping point.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Only the intellectually facile fail to recognize the magnitude of what’s at stake in this case.
This is not about this phone. This is about the future. And so I do see it as a precedent that should not be done in this country or in any country. This is about civil liberties and is about people’s abilities to protect themselves. If we take encryption away… the only people that would be affected are the good people, not the bad people. Apple doesn’t own encryption. Encryption is readily available in every country in the world, as a matter of fact, the U.S. government sponsors and funs encryption in many cases. And so, if we limit it in some way, the people that we’ll hurt are the good people, not the bad people; they will find it anyway. — Apple CEO Tim Cook
SEE ALSO:
Apple: The law already exists that protects us from U.S. government demands to hack iPhone – February 26, 2016
Build a wall so high that no one ever could break through it…and send the bill to Mr. Trump and his amigos.
Canada will welcome all fleeing from that Police State, including the Statue Of Liberty.
Who cares?
Maybe this sounds like Sci-Fi. But maybe it is just because I am working on a book for years now.
U.S., 1913, 23rd of December.
Woodrow Wilson admitted later, it was not his brightest moment… In the absence of the majority of US state senators this lunatic signed the deal with the devil.
Money protects money, not people.
Only people protect people.
And our Manners make sense, so they might matter and they might be reason for conflicts.
Any culture is an asset.
The diversity might be too much for a simple mind, but here we are. Blind leading naked. The police delivers when the US-prison-ecosystem needs more prisoners no matter what, more money, more jobs?
Donald Trump reports the latest intelligence results and also reveals his latest haircut and says:
“Apples Darwin 15 is a joke, Prisons are just another kind of Business Units and the President is a just another corporate-america-puppet, but with an attitude.”
Are you mental?
MDN and fanboys:
Only the intellectually facile believe that they should be free to do whatever they want where government has barely any power and authority. Only the intellectually facile believe that their very lives that they have today have little-to-nothing to do with government monitoring people where warranted, armed forces, and law enforcement.
The safety that you enjoy daily is precisely because the government has the power to monitor people and take people’s liberties away if there’s reasonable grounds to suspect criminal acts or if criminal acts have occured.
Without a government. Without laws that are enforced. Without law enforcement. Without some monitoring where warranted. Without search and seizure where warranted. It would be total chaos. And that’s simply because people are not evolved to live amongst each other without having a babysitter.
It is complete nonesense that this case would result in a Police State. And it is complete nonesense to downplay and disregard the seriousness of this crime and terrorism. Requests to get into phones would be done case-by-case. There would be no carte blanche access for the FBI/government. Apple is engaging in a slippery slope.
100s of millions of iPhones are NOT AFFECTED. That is nonesense to believe that a company like Apple can’t keep this software under wraps.
You Americans may be interested in the Canadian Constitution. We have something called Section 1. Here it is:
“1. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.”
There are times when a infringement of people’s Charter rights are saved by Section 1. The Supreme Court of Canada renders such decisions. And this is only used very sparingly. One example that “ya’ll” can relate to is random Police Checkpoints. 1985 Supreme Court of Canada case: Dedman v. The Queen, [1985] 2 SCR 2, 1985 CanLII 41 (SCC)
The Court found that there was basically an infringement of people’s charter rights to be free and unmolested in their travels, but this was saved by Section 1. The reason is that it was found to be in the best interests of society to do so because impaired driving kills so many people and is associated with so many vehicle accidents.
In this case, there are no constitutional issues regarding people in the case. The government is warranted in searching and seizing the suspects’ property.
Apple is simply trying to invoke a very weak argument regarding speech and writing code and engage in a slippery slope argument that their data access method COULD get out into the world. This is very weak given how secure and secret they are as a company.
This is about money for Apple as their afraid of losing iPhone sales.
..AND THAT IS WHY AMERICA IS GREAT! LAND OF THE FREE THANK YOU FOR YOUR COMMENT ON CANADIAN SOCIALISM. YOU NEED 4 MORE CENTS TO MAKE YOUR PENNY FOR YOUR THOUGH.
You certainly miss the point. You certainly have your head buried someplace. If this is about stopping terrorism, sitting at Langley in some cubicle trying to decipher people’s messages is not going to it. Boots on the ground is what makes for the best intelligence. No, this is about gathering data about your personal sexual preferences, life style, what you say in normal everyday correspondence about government, etc. As a gay person, Mr. Cook 20 years ago would have been a target for this very kind of so called intelligence. This is J. Edgar Hoover and Joe McCarthy at their finest. And if you don’t understand the references, go do some research and quit being so willing to give up your freedoms.
jimg:
Yes, it is about deciphering people’s messages and listening in. An example and this is happening all of the time…
It’s for these very reasons that a terrorist attack involving 18 people was thwarted in Toronto in what is now referred to as the “Toronto 18”. Without monitoring, the RCMP, CSIS (our CIA) and the Canadian Forces would never have been able to stop it before it happened.
You are completely delusional and naive. And by the way, you Americans have random Police Checkpoints as well. The problem with all of you fanboys is you don’t read any case law and have no knowledge of the relevant statutes. You don’t know American Law anymore than you know Canadian Law. Your comments and discussions are simply based out of fear, and are uninformed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_Ontario_terrorism_plot
dswe, you have no idea what we have read, or what degree of knowledge we have about the law. The fact that you are willing to make such blatant assertions clearly shows that you, yourself, have no legal training (r failed miserably). You have no skills as a debater, either. You did not and cannot successfully sway the opinions of others using your approach.
You are welcome to your opinions, flawed as they may be. Grant us the same.
KingMel:
Your post says nothing. It’s a personal attack. I cite case law and law to discuss the matter, and there’s lots of American case law and law on this subject.
It is completely self-evident that most of you are uniformed based on the content of your posts.
No case law cited.
No statutes cited.
Emotional handwaving and name calling.
I bet none of you even know where to find case law let alone read it. And I also bet none of you have accessed some public court records either at the law library or at home to research these kinds of cases.
“You’re an idiot!” “You don’t know what you’re talking about!” “But Apple said!”
So let’s do this.
CITE THE SPECIFIC CONSTITUTIONAL INFRINGEMENTS IN THIS CASE. SUMMARIZE APPLE’S LEGAL POSITION. CITE THE SPECIFIC STATUTES FOCUSED ON IN THIS CASE. CITE APLLICABLE CASE LAW.
You, KingMel. You. Do it now. Show us that you’re not a basement dwelling fanboy posting meaningless drival on the Internet.
Imagine KingMel in a Board Meeting. “You don’t knkw what your talking about” “You’re an idiot”.
Meanwhile, KingMel doesn’t have the skills, education, or experience in government, law enforcement, and national security to save his life.
dswe, only the intellectually weak find it necessary to twist an argument around and stretch t to the absurd in order to provide the perception that their assertion has merit. We are not talking about doing away with government or reducing its powers until it is incapable of functioning. We are talking about the right to privacy on devices and servers, and systems, including cloud storage and backup, on which our private lives are stored in increasing concentrations.
This is not about taking rights away from a criminal. This is about the U.S. Government coercing a public company to assist it in its investigation. If the FBI wants the data on the iPhone, then they can work to get it on their own. But Apple’s policy is to securely encrypt information in the iOS ecosystem from end-to-end…a policy for which I an extremely grateful and proud. I would stick with Apple for that one fact alone.
I am in favor of a strong central government. But that does not means that I am willing to let its powers grown without bound. The U.S. Government does not always practice restraint, even in the face of the Constitution, laws, and regulations defining its proper behavior. I am glad that the Canadian government has exercised great care in its utilization of Section 1. But the U.S. Government has shown a distinct lack of restraint since 2001, as exemplfied by the existence of Guantanamo and “enhanced interrogation,” otherwise called unlawful incarceration and torture. In addition, U.S. Intelligence agencies and law enforcement have gotten fat and lazy suckling on the torrent of data made accessible by the Patriot Act. They need to learn to work again. Instead, they want Apple t do t for them. And this is just the first step…it will not stop with one phone and it will not stop with Apple.
Did you even consider that many of us may not want the kind of “safety” for which you seem to be all too willing to sacrifice your privacy? I am willing to accept the risks of this decision for myself and my family. I was questioned about that just yesterday, and the person seemed genuinely surprised that I had considered the possible consequences and had not changed my mind. I would certainly be devastated were my family to be harmed in a terrorist attack. But I would not change my position, even so. I prefer a life worthy of living, even with some danger, over a life of surveillance with relative safety.
Good luck to you and your Section 1. But do not forget that you are only one bad Canadian Supreme Court decision away from your government unreasonably inserting itself into your life.
Do you agree then that Apple should also flaunt the Constitution in order to protect from those that do? By creating a system that provides no legal way for the provisions of the Fourth Amendment to conduct search and seizure given the right process to be executed, Apple and any others that may create such ‘perfect’ systems are circumventing the law.
I think you mean “flout” (to show contempt for; scorn), not “flaunt” (to go out of your way to display something) the Constitution.
Whoops! Thanks for the catch! 😀
X… You miss the point. The government can take your phone but they cannot take your password. There is a big difference.
Do you leave your car and house unlocked cause the police might want to stroll by and drop in??? My encryption is for my protection. If the police ask nice, I am sure I would let them see inside my phone. But only with my lawyer present cause they can add stuff once the phone is open.
PS, police NEVER shoot innocent people,,,, right??? you know, cause they are police and not normal people… or speed, or arrest innocent people… cause they are so perfect. Right?
I see your point about not being able to take your password. Though I believe the point I was making was that Apple and other companies that go to the extreme of creating systems so secure that not even they themselves can access it are possibly breaking the law by circumventing the Fourth Amendment provision for proper search AND seizure of property.
You use a car and house as examples. Each of those can be opened, if not by the owner, by a licensed locksmith. I never asked nor stated that devices be non-encrypted (locked) so any passing police could drop by and take a look.. As a law abiding citizen, I’m sure you would assist. The question is what do you do about those that are criminals and don’t assist?
Never said police are perfect.. They are people too and some abuse their position.. Even then that does not give anyone a right to break laws because the ‘bad’ police are doing it.
Another possible argument would be to allow completely encrypted devices with the caveat that the company that developed the device assume all responsibility for any misuse of the tech. Take care of your ‘baby’. 😛
1. There are indications that Apple purposely made the iPhone uncrackable by law enforcement. There were some media reports on this back in 2013/2014. What the public is seeing is a showdown after several years of issues between Apple and the FBI/US Government.
2. Most people want to be safe, and have been willing to give the government some powers to this end.
3. You have not engaged in any real legal analysis with your latest post.
That’s interesting that you feel the way you do about personal privacy, etc. But that’s not the real issue in this case. That’s Apple twisting things into a slippery slope.
The bottom line is this.
-Law enformcement needs to keep up with the times to fight crime. That’s their business. Apple is not in the business of national security, law enforcement, politics, and government administration. They aren’t privy to the same information these entities are. They aren’t educated to the same degree in these matters. They’re not experts in this area. They’re a technology company interested in profit. They will not be there for you when you’re sick. Or lost your job. Or when we’re being attacked by another country. Etc. The government will.
-Apple may have intentionally thwarted the FBI’s ability to hack the iPhone. This will all come out in the wash. If Apple did that, which I suspect they did, then they it will hurt their case. They’ll be asked to “undo” what they intentionally did and their “forced labour” argument will fall apart, as will their free speech one.
The day that a for-profit company calls the shots of a state is the day I’m outta here.
Stop worshipping corporations.
Stop following companys.
Question everything.
Apple is interested in one thing alone: money. They do not care about you. They do not want to lose iPhone sales. Period. And neither does any other tech company.
I don’t believe that Apple, as you asserted, is interested only in money. Neither do I believe that Apple deliberately thwarted a criminal investigation, as you insinuated. Nor do I believe that corporations like Apple are naïvely ignoring the rights and well-being of their customers, as you accuse; such corporations operate in scores of countries and must devote considerable attention and resources to observing their laws.
Slap me in the face if you will; I am entitled to those beliefs, which I believe to be pure and true.
Apple is not interested purely in money, about buttressing iPhone sales despite everything, as you allege. Think about it. If they were like that, why would they jeopardise iPhone sales by taking an unpopular political stand? That makes no sense.
On the other hand, if it turns out that Apple’s stand on privacy develops into a positive attribute to voters, then you could claim that it was all about dollars after all. You’d still be wrong, because the shareholders, the Board of Directors, and the CEO would never have have allowed the fuse to be lit in the first place; that kind of uncertainty is bad for business.
Every principle (and principled) stakeholder had to be on board with this, or Apple would have caved long before now.
Nah, you got it wrong. You are making the same argument that the disingenuous Bush clowns made after 9/11. None of the restrictions on free speewch has thwarted one terrorist.
Snowden was right. Blanket surveillance is never good. The PEOPLE can and should place limits on what their government does.
Apople is right. You are wrong.
The security of millions of smartphone users is on the line, here, and it isn’t just Apple. It’s everyone.
It’s very scary, and almost inevitable that this security apparatus that was put into hyperdrive with the patriot act has reached this point.
The FBI deliberately chose this case because they felt it was their best way to crack into apples system, the one system they can’t get into. Besides? This is an employers phone, and most likely the terrorist didn’t do any of the planning on that device. He would’ve used a burner, and since he destroyed his personal phone I’m guessing that’s where the information they neededed is.
I would love to know what type of cell phone he and his wife used and destroyed.
As a point of law, what difference does brand name make?
It would be nice to know if it was an Android…
Lead to?
I’m forced to agree with you. The brown shirts are coming out. Trolls and discontents denouncing Tim Cook and the rest of Silicon Valley leadership, at a time like this, are cynically and opportunistically siding with the oppressors of liberty who were supposed to be its defenders. Once again, it all comes down to the people, not the tribal leaders or their paid shills or hynotised thralls, who have the primal instinct for freedom and the moral obligation to call these clowns on their bullshit.
I tend not to post on the weekends as MDN and I are at times at logger heads over a couple of issues, but as my post will be very civil and because it’s you, I’ll make exception this time.
I have 3 rules of thumb that I have come up with as a result of discussions I have had with people face to face and real time. They are
1. Insult the messenger.
2. Use smoke and mirrors to distract to another issue.
3. Never reply to the issue at hand.
It becomes quite evident that when a person does not reply to the issue at hand that it’s time to walk away you won’t be getting anywhere using normal means.
The trolls you talk about use the first tactic, sometimes the other. What I have seen here over the last few days with this issue is a lot of consensus with those who will reply to the issue at hand. These are some of the best posts I’ve seen here for a while and it really makes me feel part of the community and part of the light that Apple is about, the power to be your best with insanely great products.
An issue with encryption is that it is easy to see the consequences of checking out it out when a criminal is involved. It’s clues to potential crimes and that’s fair enough. The value of privacy and by extension is a little harder to discern at first hand but it’s there and it’s amazing:
A. From Oct 2014, “Apple has just about killed the iPhone crime wave” by John Evans:
“Mobile phone theft is a huge problem. It accounts for up to 40 percent of reported crime in major U.S. cities. In 2012, stolen and lost mobile units, primarily smartphones, cost customers more than $30 billion, said the FCC.”
B. From “Feb 2015, iPhone thefts get walloped by kill feature, officials say” by Lance Whitney
“A kill feature that renders a smartphone useless if stolen appears to be taking a bite out of crime. The volume of stolen iPhones dropped by 25 percent in New York, by 40 percent in San Francisco and by 50 percent in London over the 12 months after Apple added an Activation Lock to its smartphones.”
That’s just part of the benefit of encryption and it’s a direct numbers and dollars.
That’s part of educating the public. making the value of encryption concrete, something they can get a handle on.
An educated and active population should be reflected by its leaders, but so many get into the power and control idea when they are given that power and it corrupts. When the people become weak minded, and goodness knows the media contributes greatly to this then it comes down to whether or not the tribal leaders are benevolent or malevolent and whether or not there is a fraction of the population willing to go the length to ensure that certain principles are upheld.
Right now, Tim Cook is it. Someone mentioned that he should be nominated for a Peace Prize over this, and it’s a good idea but at the end of the day, the privacy of the people for the country involved is at stake and by extension the privacy of the people for the world. Apple is focused on the latter and that bodes well for the world.
So take a deep breath, this is the stuff that builds character.
The police state is already here. The Tele-screen of 1984 is not on a wall- it is in your pocket.
Those who have failed to see that the USA is a proto fascist state are living in the past and helping to bring about its collapse.
Agreed. I don’t if the trend started before Dubya, but that was when I recognized it: “report your neighbor if you see suspicious activity.” We have become Nazi Germany of the early 1930’s.
‘Terrorism’ is the new magic word that they use to open all doors. It is very important to stop this now. A back door for a ‘good reason’ is a back door for everyone.
Don’t know if this has already been said in the MDN world – if it has, it should be repeated.
Tim is off the hook if the matter is finally decided in some federal court, perhaps SCOTUS, in favor of the government. He can say he “went to the wall” for all of us and did all he could.
It’s a game, folks. Once again, Tim has failed in resolving a matter that could have gone away without ever having been noticed but he chose instead to grand stand the issue to look like a leader. He’s not. Never will be.
So how would you have proposed that Tim resolve the matter? I think Tim is showing excellent leadership on this issue and if you go back to the many articles and posts a lot of people here think so as well.
He’ll never be a leader in your eyes, but then again in the eyes of a few here you are no more than a troll.
And … the resolution could have been quickly and easily achieved by working with those trying to ensure our nation’s security to provide access to this terrorist’s contacts. Not a single other iPhone user would have been compromised. Tim is conducting a stunt to curry favor with his customers but this one is not buying it.
Are you really truly that naïve? Or do you just love to troll?
It is literally impossible for Apple (or the FBI) to ensure that this custom-developed iOS, meant to be used “just this one time, on just this one iPhone” will indeed be only used this one time. Exactly what do you think will happen with the copy of that iOS after Apple had installed it on this particular iPhone, and FBI started brute-force attempting to unlock it? Once it is unlocked and the data siphoned away for FBI’s forensic analysis, what happens to the iPhone? Obviously, it is evidence, so FBI gets to keep it? What about this custom-made iOS on it? Does anyone seriously believe that FBI will allow all of this to happen at Apple HQ, under supervision of Apple’s engineers, all the way until the end, and then let Apple remove that custom iOS and replace it with the original one, before the phone changes custody again and is returned to FBI? Is anyone on this planet that naïve?
Courts may well force Apple to do this, and Apple may end up dedicating those engineers and their time to get this done. Once it is done, that iOS will end up in FBIs hands, and from there, it shouldn’t take more than a few days before it is in China, Iran, Russia, Israel…
If, as you suggest Tim had bent over for the FBI’s request to curry favor with its government to ensure your pathetic nation’s security it would have demonstrated a great lack of leadership towards the global customers around the planet. Global security is much more valuable than your fifth rate nation’s security, by a long shot, and Tim knows it, I know, and you, heck if you know it but you won’t weigh in on that, unless you can twist it to say the same messages you’ve said since being here.
1. Get rid of Tim Cook.
2. You are going to leave this forum.
You have not demonstrated leadership skills whatsoever and all you do is whine about the singular topic. It shows with what the others are saying, you make trolls look good.
You are a pretty pathetic person Jay, but then again, I understand what country you come from and how so many of you there are totally focused on your navels.
Please don’t give trolls a bad name by comparing this thing to them
Exactly. You should instead refer to people who have other viewpoints as eMos. Troll is a worn-out term.
It is the FBI that made this a public matter. Apple asked the All Writs order to be done under seal.
Police state was the project of FBI and CIA to be completed with the help of G.W.Bush and named “Patriot act”… Actually, USA is already a “police state”. It just gets a little more obvious these days.
A “few” is right, Road. I’m not a troll and you saying it over and over and over won’t ever make me one.
In case you haven’t been paying attention, the lemmings, like you, are decreasing in number as the reality of the incredibly weak leadership we are suffering sinks in – one lemming at a time.
Actually, it is the same person, under various aliases, that keeps trolling. But that’s OK, if you truly feel better after unburdening yourself that way on this forum…
Predrag, you couldn’t be further from the truth. There are a lot of us out here in the real world who understand that under the rule of law, reasonable security procedure with proper oversight is necessary to maintain law and order.
While Apple has good points to make, it’s not like the correct position in this argument is to simply agree with whatever Cook says. Frankly, Apple’s PR relations on this subject have been sloppy. In this instance, Ted Olson is using the classic “slippery slope” argument, which just doesn’t hold water. There’s a lot of details to consider here, and as usual, both sides have selective hearing. The courts will decide based on ALL the facts. Just because Apple is your favorite corporation in the whole big wide world and you cheerlead everything they do doesn’t mean that they don’t have to abide by the same legal due procedure that everyone else does. Apple may influence future law, but it is far from clear whether they are entirely free and clear to take the position they have. Perhaps when you have read through the entire Patriot Act you can tell us how to apply the law of the land.
Now in regard to your incessant bad online behavior: Could you please debate with civility instead of just shadow boxing with your one ineffectual weapon, the “troll” label? Jay has been a contrarian on these forums for as long or longer than you have, and he has every right in the world to speak his mind without enduring your juvenile personal attacks. Grow up. MDN is so full of immature fanboys these days it is getting harder and harder to have a debate on anything.
To the issue: the same idiots who blindly follow republican bluster in this campaign, the ones who followed 8 years of Bush fear mongering, plus another 7 years of Obama not willing to undo the damage Bush had done (and now with an obstructionist Congress making any reform practically impossible), are the same people who are paranoid enough to hypocritcally demand a stronger military but a weaker intelligence service. Does that make sense? Bankrupting the nation with trillions in weapons while having negligible intelligence to direct how and where to deploy it? Go ahead and try to win a football game without a quarterback, see how that works for you.
Reasonable people, like Jay in this instance, propose that Apple spend more time winning in the court of law rather than grandstanding in the court of public opinion, which thus far seems to be a losing battle. Apple’s wasting its time trying to convince a paranoid nation that terrorism can be defeated when corporations take the public position that they will not assist the law enforcement agencies. They need to convince people that they ARE helping fight terrorism, and are working through the legal system to establish the proper procedures to do so.
If Americans — and republicans in particular — really cared about privacy, then they would have protested Bush the millisecond the Patriot Act was proposed. Instead, both corrupt political parties have enabled to unfettered growth of surveillance apparatus and the military-industrial complex, with not a peep of protest from partisans or media. The republic isn’t going to change its laws to suit Cook’s position, right or wrong. To change laws, you need to contact your representative REGULARLY and tell him/her your proposal to reform the broken system we have. Right now, privacy advocates are completely drowned out by the paranoid idiots who are irrationally afraid of ISIS coming to their hometown.
I very much appreciate and respect your effort to argue your point in detail.
With respect to Jay, I am extremely cautious about deploying that “troll” label. Very few people have been able to irritate me to that extent that I would label them trolls.
Jay Morrison, and the few other names he uses on this forum, has been posting on this forum for several years now. The substance of his posts can be distilled into one single thought: Tim Cook is the worst CEO on the planet, he is destroying Apple and should be replaced yesterday. It can often be frustrating having to wade through such posts looking for something of more substance.
You may label me an immature fanboy, but I don’t go blindly defending Apple no matter what they do. I’ve been reading this site since well before the first iPhone was announced, and have left my fair share of comments here at Apple’s expense.
This site generally tends to attract people who like Apple and their products and services. I have been user of their hardware for about 20 years now. Most others are also owners.
Your user name doesn’t sound familiar, so I can’t really tell how long you’ve been reading / posting, but judging by this post, you may have something of value to contribute to these forums.
go jump off a cliff, Jay,
How mature, eMo. Right after you.
You are a troll Jay, by the very definition, and repeating it again and again won’t make you believe it any more than you repeating that we are lemmings again and again will make us believe it.
So it’s really a stalemate, except that you are a troll and we aren’t lemming. Look around at the posts, everyone is posting different insights, the Mac community here is diverse. Heck we even have a troll.
Like many others I am troubled by recent developments in the privacy versus security debate.
But now I am even more troubled that cockroaches are coming out of the woodwork to gnaw at Tim Cook, who has made a principled stand for basic human rights and a clear reading of the Constitution.
This can only be settled two ways: by a TAKEOVER, with President Trump or Cruz sending Tim Cook to Guantanamo prison, and confiscating Apple’s offshore reserves to fund their administrations’ initiatives to wall off America to Muslims and Mexicans.
Or by a Congressional Task Force to work out a basis for 21st century digital communications and security policies! Do it after the elections, though; candidates are crazed. Don’t think they won’t be abject panderers to win a few paltry votes. Remember—we’re talking about politicians, not your favourite uncle.
Goodness don’t sweat the cockroaches coming out to gnaw on Tim Cook, that’s par for the course, every great leader has it’s distractors, Jay Morrison for example whining on and on how Tim Cook is not a good leader is a pretty good indication that Tim Cook is a great leader. I’ve made a lot of post on this issue over the last week, Jay has come in at the end of the week and took a lousy pot shot. It’s great, nothing Tim will ever do will convince Jay and that’s a pretty clear indication of a very closed mind.
There are a few other ways this can be dealt with. One, is that Apple sees how bad their country of origin has become and leaves. Another way is that someone else puts forth an encryption solution to safeguard people’s privacy.
Encryption is a new technology and I’ll leave you with an interesting imaginary tidbit.
When an explorer meets a new tribe the tendency is for the elders to speak out and attack the explorer. The middle aged workers are wary and will try to exploit. The children and those who are like children will rush to the explorer with welcome arms.
The same goes for technology. Encryption is the greatest thing since a locked diary. The old guard fears it and will do everything to destroy it. Others will discuss the pros and cons. The kids will just use it and that’s how it will become incorporated into the fabric of the evolving culture.
The government has the ability to enhance your live, or utterly destroy it, if you are targeted. So don’t be so naive and blindly trust them.
trondude, replace “government” with “corporation” and the statement still rings true. The difference, of course, is that the people can change their governments. For reasons that elude the thinkin man, unelected and unaccountable corporate leaders are notoriously difficult to eradicate no matter how evil.
for those people arguing that Apple is wrong, that this is an’isolate case, it’s necessary to open the phone because of terrorism, that it’ won’t leak’ etc I’ll like to point out :
1) already in the filing Apple has showed at least 9 other phones the DOJ wants opened. None of them deal with terrorism.
so it’s not ‘isolate one case’.
The FBI and DOJ deliberately chose this case as it was ’emotional’ and hoped that it would mislead idiots (see several posters above).
it was deliberate PR stunt by the FBI. Cook said he found out about the court order from the Press… !
2) the argument what Apple HAS to comply because it’s a ‘court order’ is garbage. Court orders can be wrong and can be challenged.
Also don’t forget it was the FBI WHO SCREWED UP THE PASSWORD in the first place which is froze Apple’s abilities to help (backing into the cloud etc). (how come the people criticizing apple don’t criticize the FBI even a bit over their screw ups? hey the SCREWED up a case which they and their supporters are Say is the MOST IMPORTANT CASE IN USA Weird none of the people posting above heavily criticizing apple have asked for the FBI agents in charge to be fired’ … ? is it not that they CARE so much for JUSTICE but they simply HATE APPLE? )
3) Apple has argued this is an unusual application of the All Writs Act. The FBi is not asking just for assistance on opening the phone with existing Apple capability but asking to build NEW technology which Apple deems dangerous . it’s like a landlord given a warrant not just to search a house but that the landlord be compelled to build a battering ram or set fire to his own building to flush the criminal from the apartment.
Once again judges etc can over reach in interpreting the law.
(Apple rightly argues that if FBI wants this than Congress should decide, people should debate the issue).
if security forces can compel Apple to build a hacker tool WHAT ELSE CAN SECURITY FORCES COMPLE COMPANIES TO DO? It is a PRECEDENT.
NOTE THAT THE FBI AND VARIOUS PARTS OF THE GOVT. HAS LONG ADVOCATED THE BUILDING OF ‘BACKDOORS’ in TECH DEVICES. Note that leaked documents show a broad place strategy to make this happen. (this terrorist fits awfully well into their framework)
space precludes me from listing in detail but backdoors are extremely dangerous as they will get into the hands of criminals.
4) Beside the doj phones there are also numerous other phones other places like New York would like get unlocked.
Cook has already argued that once Hacker OS is devised how can it stop other jurisdictions from demanding it? Cook has already said that supposing a judge wants a phone in a DIVORCE case or something similar decrypted? or we can think of other situations: business disputes , inheritance cases etc where the data is locked on the phone…
if this case goes through it sets precedent. People (every judge for example) can have DIFFERENT criteria they think is important enough for the HACKER OS to be used. A judge might think a business case might be important etc.
If Apple has complied once can apple refuse (note the idiot apple haters above has argued that the government is always right and the courts should always obeyed ). does apple need to go through this ‘fight the order’ rigmarole over EVERY case? can it even do that if precedent is set?
5) this leads of course to how Apple a product company can handle all this cases? How many engineers, security forces, labs do they need? Apple is product manufacturer not a judicial arm of the govt.
Apple has said that they needed a team of lawyers to go through each case minutely as they might get sued if the court orders are improper. Also the phones might contain confidential information NOT related to the case like the medical info of the defendants wife for example — so apple has heavy burden to maintain security on it;s premises or it WILL GET SUED. It’s easy to understand how much hardship Apple (once again a BUSINESS enterprise and NOT a security agency) has to keep doing this (all the security it need to keep private info from leaking etc, it has to vet it’s own staff, do checks etc. Mistakes on it’s part and Apple will be f**d by defense lawyers )
Note : the USA government can’t even keep secrets (see Snowden) but Apple is supposed to keep all the info it gets from the phones ( all those its going to get deluged with in the future if precedent set) secret and hand them to the govt…..
6) and if Court orders (as the idiots above have argued ) have ALWAYS to be obeyed than what is to stop a NEW COURT ORDER in the future demanding that the HACKER OS be HANDED OVER to the government investigative authorities?
if apple refuses it’ll go back to the same arguments (put up by the idiots above) that the govt. knows better and Apple has to comply because of ‘public safety’ etc.
NOTE ALSO that the various govt. branches APPARENTLY CAN’T HANDLE OR UNDERSTAND TECH as shown by the FBI SCREWING UP THE PASSCODE ON THE PHONE or the county not activating their device management software which would have given them password override (imagine them having a hacker OS if they can’t understand setting a passcode… ) (Freaking scary)
Also I’ve read from some experts that in some other future cases DEFENSE lawyers might play a part (in the Farouk case the criminals are dead and have no lawyers). the Defense might demand that Apple show the OS and the process to prove that they have not tampered with. They might demand to have a look at the tool etc. We can see how the is ‘great secret’ will rapidly fall down the slippery slope…
7) as demands for unlocking phones grows see pt. 1 above) and more an more people are involved there is little doubt that the Hacker OS will leak. (snow den has shown us Govt can’t keep secrets)
8) if Apple can be compelled to build a HACKER TOOL what about other countries? like Russia, China, etc.
At least now apple can argue it has NOT done so , therefore those countries can’t force it either.
9) for those who argue that govt. is always right and is always for our interest I would like to point out to all the scandals Govt. is involved in, and all the things they said was ‘good for us and necessary’ like the (selective) draft for the Vietnam war and there are always right (you know like Iraq has WMD.. ) . And as for Govt always protecting our interests and not violating our rights what about the widespread surveillance including the tapping of internet cables, placing of spy devices on Macs etc plus all the stuff Snowden released.
Democracy exists with CHECKS AND BALANCES, Govt. needs checks. without checks they become DICTATORSHIPS. Democracy exists for the PEOPLE not the pandering of those in power. And laws are open to interpretation and people have the right to question them.
Tim cook is right that important issues like this need to be discussed by the people via Congress.
Expounding on one of your points: I always find it amusing when government officials go on a tirade about what Edward Snowden did to the USA and to foreign relations, ad nauseam. And yet, they never talk about the fact that he COULD access all that information at all. The same theme of stupidity in my government keeps repeating itself over and over.
I first became aware of such stupidity when I studied the Red Hacker Alliance, which was China’s first foray into cracking into the computers of the US federal government. China jumped into cracking the USA immediately after they were handed ‘Most Favored Nation’ status by the naive Clinton administration. That was 1998. It wasn’t until nine years later, 2007, that the US feds finally admitted that ALL their computers exposed to the Internet had been infected with Chinese bots that were relaying EVERYTHING on them to China. Then in 2015 we learn that #MyStupidGovernment still hadn’t learned any lessons because the US Office of Personnel Management was scoured clean of government employee data, from janitors to spies, from social security numbers to fingerprints. Holy FSCK what an incredible catastrophe of BAD security!
So Snowden plays the role of scapegoat while the nightmare of government incompetence rages on.
Next up: The FBI attempting to intimidate Apple into violating citizen’s constitutional rights.
Hopefully, there’s some perspective on all this garbage that better explains what’s going on. But from my perspective, I am not impressed. 😛
‘Police State’ = Totalitarianism = A failed government. It’s a method of desperately holding onto control of the government via the application of negative reinforcement, aka FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt…) in order to elicit a desired populace behavior. It’s primitive, ignorant, inefficient, ineffective, destroys personal incentive, resulting in the populace using crime as their personal incentive. The eventual result is a criminal state. This has been a repeating constant throughout human history.
Professional historians, please chime in as I am not.
This is why I continue to believe in faeries, as my grandmother taught me, despite your satirical use of them in your rebuttals of other fantastical social ideas.
A commanding proportion of the human race believes in supernatural forces, even those who aren’t religiously indoctrinated which, even in these United States, seem scarily too few.
I believe in certain supernatural forces because I trust my grandmother’s words more than those of aloof, distant experts whom I never met or talked with.
She said “You’ll know, when the time comes, what to do. You’ll be inspired–literally breathed into life by your muse.”
✨👸✨ All hael Queen Maeve!
IRL I find stories of the fae to be amusing. I have a couple back burner stories involving them saving the day during intergalactic conflicts. 😉
Here is a piece of synchronicity, my favorite form of Devine self-evidence. I received it today from ‘Judicial Watch’, a political gadfly organization:
Headline:
Air Force Academy Celebrates Witchcraft and Voodoo While Demeaning Christianity
There’s something seriously amiss in the United States Air Force Academy. We received documents from the Air Force Academy revealing that in 2014 and 2015, the Academy used its “Chapel Tithes and Offering Fund” to pay for cadets to participate in worship services featuring witchcraft, “Faery Magick,” and voodoo. The records reveal that the Air Force Academy paid to send cadets to a Wiccan festival in Denver in May 2014 and a Denver Witches Ball in October of the same year. . . .
So yes, there are still those of us who believe in faeries. My mom calls me a pantheist. I’d enjoy having a more serious discussion of the matter offline. 🌞
If Apple gives in here, every future Gestapo or KGB type organization is going to start asking for a back door.