“The FBI wants Apple’s help breaking into an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino shooters. Apple has helped the government get data off locked iPhones many times in the past,” Gideon Lichfield writes for Quartz.
“For all Apple’s fancy legal arguments, something feels disingenuous in claiming that it’s OK to betray your customers’ privacy to the FBI using one technique and not another,” Lichfield writes. “Yet the government’s claim is disingenuous too. It implies that everything is a continuum and there are no matters of principle.”
“The reality, however, is that everything we now consider a matter of principle — from the ban on insider trading all the way back to ‘thou shalt not kill’ — was once a line drawn in the sand, and only over time became a mighty barrier. Principles don’t get made until someone says ‘enough,'” Lichfield writes. “Apple has now said ‘enough.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: For too long, it’s been more than enough.
Creating an army of uniformed automations to pat down and/or irradiate old ladies from Wichita and three years olds from Ottumwa is pure fscking stupidity that does nothing but reassure cretins. Ditto for mass telephony metadata surveillance that, if you haven’t noticed, failed spectacularly to prevent the Boston Marathon bombing or the San Bernadito terrorist massacre. Until the actual crux of the problem can be targeted properly, much less even be spoken aloud by some “authorities,” this mindless, ineffective, money/time-wasting, rights-trampling overreach will continue.
Enough already! More than enough, in fact!
Important principles may, and must, be inflexible. — Abraham Lincoln
Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death! – Patrick Henry
SEE ALSO:
Apple privacy battle with Washington looms as watershed moment – February 26, 2016
Apple’s lawyer: If we lose, it will lead to a ‘police state’ – February 26, 2016
Apple: The law already exists that protects us from U.S. government demands to hack iPhone – February 26, 2016