You can't limit anything after you open the door. Once the door is open that's it. And it would also set a precedent that they could ask any company at anytime to do the same which means all privacy would be GONE! It's not just about 1 phone or one company. It's about all companies and all products would no longer have any privacy period. It would also mean that communist countries would have free rain of our information as well.
If that were the case, the FBI could just hack the OS binary and disable the password attempt lockout themselves. When the FBI says it is just for that phone, they literally mean it will only run on that phone. They want Apple to not only disable to password attempt lockout, but to make it so that OS version will only load on the iPhone with the specific hardware ID. The iPhone hardware prevents it from executing the OS if it isn't signed using Apple's key. If you modify the binary, the signature is no longer valid. The exact same security protection that prevent the FBI or anyone else loading a hacked version of iOS on the phone, would prevent Apple's modified version from being able to be used on any other phone.
Either that security feature works, or it doesn't, Cook can't have it both ways. If it doesn't work, then there is a huge, gaping security hole in iOS if you have the physical phone. If it does work, then the risk is limited to Apple not making sure the OS can only load on a phone with a specific hardware id.
Apple is also permitted to do this all at their site and can load the old OS back on the phone before allowing it out of their hands, which means that it will only get out in the wild if Apple screws up.
There is never zero risk, but the risks are no more significant that any other change to Apple's security software, and Apple maintains control over them.
Apple never accessed a locked iPhone. It accessed the unencrypted data on its servers.
What are Apple Iphone users so defensive about ?? Are you techies all buying drugs or watching child porn or something????????
Apple users are sick , terrorist supporting commie lib drug dealing child porn watching sickos.....
What's with the huge influx of new POS trolls lately? AI has always had a few idiots show up now and then, but the last few months it seems we get several new posters per article.
AI used to hold posts of new users for a while to ensure they werent spammers, trolls, or sock puppets. not sure if that is still happening.
nolamacguy said: AI used to hold posts of new users for a while to ensure they werent spammers, trolls, or sock puppets. not sure if that is still happening.
That was just Defensio accidentally catching new posts. Now that we’re not on Huddler anymore, I doubt it’s still in place.
The assinine presumption is that there is anything of significance on the phone in the first place. I am guessing the odds are there is really nothing of import on the phone, and yet if the FBI prevails, all that will be accomplished is the precedent of forcing law-abiding citizens to go above and beyond to aid authorities. Methinks that is the real intent, and the contents of said phone is irrelevant to Comey. Any words about "Justice" and the "victims' families" are just grandstanding BS.
You don't get to make that judgment. Whether you agree with the FBI's request or find it an attack on privacy, these investigators have a legal warrant to search that phone. Your opinion of the odds don't come into it at all.
Actually public opinion is almost all that this is about. Comey has made a very cynical and calculated attempt to bully his way by shouting “terrorist” in a crowded theater (to mix metaphors). This bit of security theater may fail to provide an immediate victory in the form of a precedent, but even more sinister would be if the cynically manipulated public and Congress proceeded to pass disastrous encryption crippling legislation. That is why it is so important to educate the public at large about the dishonest and cynical nature of this demand.
The other nations of the world really aren't all that concerned about if the US courts will allow this or not. What they are concerned about is if it is possible to do, which it obviously is. If would set a precedent in our court system, though there are lots of precedents of the courts compelling the cooperation of third parties in executing a warrant. Apple is actually being unprecedented in how uncooperative it is being in regards to data on a phone. In previous versions of iOS Apple had and maintained tools to do such things. Once a warrant was issued, the phone was delivered to Apple, and they would use their software tools to retreive the data from the phone and provide law enforcement with that data.
The biggest difference here is that Apple intentionally didn't create the tools to easily copy the data from the phone. Not that they can't create such tools, but that they now think that having such tool poses an unacceptable risk to their customer's privacy.
I'm also not sure how this puts Apple at a competitive disadvantage. Any company operating in the United States is subject to US law and will be equally requires to comply with valid US warrants. People who are really, really concerned about their privacy will likely use third party encryption developed by people without a business presence in the US, so this doesn't solve the FBI's inability to access encrypted data when they have a warrant (I doubt there is a solution).
Apple shouldn't be helping law enforcement access phones? Apple should make an effort to prevent the government from accessing people's data without a valid warrant. However, we don't have a right to be free from reasonable searches that are supported by probable cause, and Apple does have an obligation to comply with a valid warrant. There is a question of if what is required of Apple places an undue burden on them. Not wanting to comply, or the fact that complying contradicts previously made statements isn't legally an undue burden. The fact that the OS image needs to be signed and unmodified for the iPhone to load it will keep the custom version of iOS locked to a specific phone.
Classic troll just joining this afternoon in order to spew rubbish.
425
actually flatrock has contributed one of the few rational and informed posts on this forum.
You don't get to make that judgment. Whether you agree with the FBI's request or find it an attack on privacy, these investigators have a legal warrant to search that phone. Your opinion of the odds don't come into it at all.
Actually public opinion is almost all that this is about. Comey has made a very cynical and calculated attempt to bully his way by shouting “terrorist” in a crowded theater (to mix metaphors). This bit of security theater may fail to provide an immediate victory in the form of a precedent, but even more sinister would be if the cynically manipulated public and Congress proceeded to pass disastrous encryption crippling legislation. That is why it is so important to educate the public at large about the dishonest and cynical nature of this demand.
As a legal matter -- and this is a legal matter -- the warrant gives them the right to look. Public opinion about how likely the FBI is to find something on the phone doesn't enter into it.
If that were the case, the FBI could just hack the OS binary and disable the password attempt lockout themselves. When the FBI says it is just for that phone, they literally mean it will only run on that phone. They want Apple to not only disable to password attempt lockout, but to make it so that OS version will only load on the iPhone with the specific hardware ID. The iPhone hardware prevents it from executing the OS if it isn't signed using Apple's key. If you modify the binary, the signature is no longer valid. The exact same security protection that prevent the FBI or anyone else loading a hacked version of iOS on the phone, would prevent Apple's modified version from being able to be used on any other phone.
Either that security feature works, or it doesn't, Cook can't have it both ways. If it doesn't work, then there is a huge, gaping security hole in iOS if you have the physical phone. If it does work, then the risk is limited to Apple not making sure the OS can only load on a phone with a specific hardware id.
Apple is also permitted to do this all at their site and can load the old OS back on the phone before allowing it out of their hands, which means that it will only get out in the wild if Apple screws up.
There is never zero risk, but the risks are no more significant that any other change to Apple's security software, and Apple maintains control over them.
Apple never accessed a locked iPhone. It accessed the unencrypted data on its servers.
I don't know where you got this idea but it's not correct. Apple provided unencrypted data that was present on a locked phone in prior cases. They have routinely provided iCloud data as well.
Apple never accessed a locked iPhone. It accessed the unencrypted data on its servers.
I don't know where you got this idea but it's not correct. Apple provided unencrypted data that was present on a locked phone in prior cases. They have routinely provided iCloud data as well.
And there was a lack of this level of encryption on older versions of iOS. The level has been greatly increased recently and the secure enclave that is now on iPhones since the 5s changes things.
What if all the individual Apple software engineers refused to do it?
If it gets bad enough, they’d individually be arrested and thrown in jail.
At that point anyone who may have been on the FBI side would sour to this whole thing and the FBI would find themselves on the losing end quite quickly from a PR point of view.
If that limited goal was true they would not have demanded, via their magistrate, the DELIVERY of the software masterkey to open iPhones.
There would still be All Writs Act of 1789 issues had they really been focused on the one phone as seen by placing the phone in Apple's possession under FBI continuous supervision to maintain the evidence trail, but they didn't, they went the mastery demand.
Possibly panicked by the skepticism voiced by Judge Ornstein in the Brooklyn, Feng case on a similar issue (opening an iPhone).
Apple is specifically permitted to retain control of the phone and the modified software. They can supervise the entire operation. The FBI can be restricted to remote access sufficient to mount the passcode attack. Apple is also permitted to restrict the operation of the modified software to this one phone via it's UUID.
What a smokescreen. Every judge in the US hearing criminal cases will be approached by law enforcement officials seeking a court order for cracking iPhones if they are forced to do this just once and show that they have the capability. This isn't about one phone, it's about a precedent leading to thousands of phones a year.
I don't see how a judge can compel a company or individual to make something which doesn't exist and which is beyond trivial to accomplish. I hope that when this presumptive power is tested, it will be found to be illusory and Apple will prevail.
Apple never accessed a locked iPhone. It accessed the unencrypted data on its servers.
I don't know where you got this idea but it's not correct. Apple provided unencrypted data that was present on a locked phone in prior cases. They have routinely provided iCloud data as well.
Whoops. Got myself confused. Apple didn't unlock a phone to gain access.
Gun violence in the United States results in thousands of deaths and injuries annually. ...
Fixed it for you...
The problem is violence. I have yet to see a gun run out and harm someone. Since it is a specific enumerated right in the constitution, change the constitution if you don't like it. Leave the gun rants for the gun control websites.
Guns prevent an estimated 2.5 million crimes a year or 6,849 every day. Most often, the gun is never fired and no blood (including the criminal’s) is shed. (Source: Targeting Guns, Dr. Gary Kleck, Criminologist, Florida State University, Aldine, 1997)
Oh, a gun published his own study (was it peer reviewed and published in a reputable publication, was it cited as many sources since then). I'm going to say NO. The very title tells it all.
The very numbers spell out much of a bullshit , pro gun thing that is. Iif you exclude police and exclude crimes that would have been prevented regardless of guns being involved (spurious). The fact that the use of guns to prevent violence is probably 1000 times less per capita in Canada than this idiotic number says it all (again). We collect all those stats.
The fact the NRA fighjs tooth and nail for the actual collection of a real number tells you how BS that is.
I have nothing about guns being used in a regulated way, but it's no miracle cure, more guns doesn't prevent or stop violence in a meaningful way.
Sorry but I am confused. There are many suggestions how the scope of the FBI request is limited but I don't see much discussion about the practical/technical consequences of the proposed solution.
1) How to get an iPhone to load a new version of iOS without wiping the user-data content from the phone. Whenever I've done a restore it has been after a local or iCloud backup has been taken and after the iPhone wipe, a restore is done from that backup. 1a) Installing a fresh iOS (one containing the hack) would require the iPhone already be unlocked with the PIN (from what I recall, the backup and restore process requires an already PIN-unlocked phone). If they already had the PIN to perform this process the FBI would not need this request.
2) Perhaps the hack is going to be introduced via an application download. Loading software into the user's iCloud space, will result in it being auto-downloaded to the iPhone (in the background) but only if that option is already set by the user in advance. 2a) if the user has not set the auto-download option in advance, can Apple set it remotely (where is this state kept)? 2b) for this option to make any difference, it would not only have to be an auto-download but also an auto-execute on the iPhone. I thought that was blocked by iOS (again requiring a different operating system (see #1, above)).
In other words I do not see how this request can be of any benefit to the case it is being applied. All solutions result in a wipe-before-backup of the user data. A direct consequence is that the hack can only be of benefit to future cases, making a lie (for purely technical/practical reasons) of the FBI's request.
What am I missing here?
Your view is too narrow. You are assuming that Apple doesn't have any capabilities above and beyond what the average end-user has. That's pretty naive. As the inventors and creators of the system, I'm sure that they have the capability to design a way to install a new OS that boots instead of the OS currently installed in the encrypted file system.
There is already unencrypted code on the iPhone. If their weren't, it couldn't boot. Replacing the existing OS would probably be accomplished by replacing the preboot code. The code that normally initializes the phone, installs display drivers, network drivers etc. Remember that everything the phone does to power up and present the lock screen has to be unencrypted because the user has not had a chance to supply his password until that point. This would also include the code that presents the password to the security system and keep track of the number of failed attempts. In fact, the code that performs the auto-wipe would also have to be stored in unencrypted storage - or it couldn't be invoked while the phone is still encrypted.
I don't know where exactly these routines are stored. They may be built into the SystemOnChip or they may be in an unencrypted volume partitioned off of the main flash memory - but it doesn't matter - the fact that this code is unencrypted, means that it can be modified. If it's sorted on a chip, it may mean a new chip needs to be created and replaced. If it's in the flash memory, it could probably be mounted by a separate computer system and updated with different code. The modification to the code itself could be very slight - for example, there will be an existing line of code that adds 1 to the number of bad passcode attempts. That line of code could be updated to add 0 instead of adding 1. That would solve the problem they are being asked to solve. They could also modify the "Wipe" function so that it doesn't actually wipe the phone - it simply performs no action - but that would be more work than simply changing a 1 to a 0.
So - since the software modification itself is extremely easy - the hard part is building a mechanism to actually perform the replacement...and this also should be fairly easy for Apple engineers to accomplish.
The real question is not "does Apple have the technological know-how to comply with the government demand" - they do! It is "should the government be able to compel Apple to create a new mechanism that currently does not exist". Even if the gov't is willing to pay for the labor, this kind of update could take senior resources away from working on the next version of iOS which could have tons of trickle down impact on Apples business (like the butterfly effect) which could damage the company - including delayed launch, launching with unfound bugs, etc...
Another common post I've seen that I haven't seen anyone address directly are the comments that "they should just send the device to Apple and let Apple hack the device and send it back..." This solution is just as unacceptable as giving the FBI the ability to unlock the phones themselves. What makes us blindly trust every employee present and future at Apple with the ability to access our data? I personally don't trust Apple employees with my data any more than I trust the FBI - and Apple certainly hasn't demonstrated that they are any better at keeping secrets than the government - for the last few iPhone releases, nearly all the capabilities have been leaked prior to launch. Not a great endorsement of their security practices since they have admittedly TRIED to maintain secrecy and have chronically failed to achieve it.
Finally - one last point in a lengthy post (for which I apologize). If Apple *DOES* comply end up complying with *THIS* request - it's not necessarily the end of the world for the company as some would suggest. It may be the end of the world for our constitutional rights - but as far as Apple the company is concerned - what is to stop them from updating their security model in the next version of hardware and software to make it COMPLETELY IMPOSSIBLE for them to help in the future - instead of the just "almost impossible" as it is today...? That could actually be a great selling feature driving record adoption of the new phone!
You might wonder why I’m terrified for the future of the country. World. I’m terrified because this kind of bullshit is even in question. Everyone knows that the Constitution has been subverted. The terrifying thing is that there are people who do not care. Most people on the Internet probably only come in contact with less than a dozen sites. Google, with its Gmail and YouTube, Facebook, perhaps a random community like Tumblr, a couple of image boards, the occasional visit to Amazon, maybe some news websites, and that’s about it. For the vast majority of the population, the Internet is a prepackaged, socially engineered spy grid. It fuels itself on your input and weaponizes the information against you and everyone else.
Already the social engineers are dividing us entirely, confusing the tongue, and making it difficult to communicate effectively. On Google and YouTube, comments and videos are filtered such that you only come in contact with certain predetermined material derived by social algorithms. They make it nearly impossible to discover new random channels and points of view. When you click on a video and scroll down, you’re presented with preselected comments that jive with the opinions you tend to agree with and made to jump through hoops of inconvenience to look at all the other discussions taking place.
Since Google is so influential, this sort of strategy is largely finding its way into every facet of the corporate-controlled Internet. This means that when I click on a video, say of the puppet Obama fake crying about Sandy Hook, I will see comments that are critical of his phony bullshit and other comments mocking the counterfeit brainwashing media. Yet when a stereotypical phony “liberal” feminist clicks on the same video, she’ll be presented with comments that agree with her gun-grabbing ideology. In effect, we’re being self-imprisoned on these tiny Internet islands where we can’t reach out to one another.
Google can control who and what we interact with and see, and so divide and conquer the mind of the population. It’s a good strategy to quell dissent; when I click on a controversial news video or article, I unwillingly come in contact with opinions that tend to support my own, and so I leave with the sense that there is a consensus on a particular world event like Sandy Hook. This engineering of a false consensus has the effect of pacifying the people, making them content in their beliefs. In being content, they became lazy and stop questioning the world and discussing reality with those around them.
By forcing the ignorant to be separate from the wise, from the stupid, from the trolls, even, this system of division is impeding the social development of humanity at large. The typical person on the Internet is confined within their own little bubble of information–a literal reservation matrix.
The vast majority of modern people only interact with the world around them through the lens of the Internet. Everything they know–and much of where their worldview comes from–is directly influenced through what they experience online. By allowing a cabal of government/corporate entities with advanced technologies in their disposal to regulate what an individual interacts with online, they can shape and guide the development of one’s mind.
We are, quite literally, being domesticated through sophisticated weaponized psychology.
Most of human history and its accumulated knowledge is already immersed on the Internet; within our lifetimes all of it will be in the cloud, soon enough the entire population will be hardwired into the Internet, in one way or another. It’s conceivable that our entire species’ recorded collective experience–all of our history and knowledge–can be manipulated and censored by predatory algorithms that can gradually and insidiously edit the data to keep the truths from us. The beast supercomputers can sift through the entire Internet and gradually edit out certain sensitive or undesirable information–even change audio files and manipulate videos. In recent years, everyone’s identity is being lassoed to the Internet, such that there is no longer anonymity and free exchange. Certain people can be effectively silenced. The Internet with which I come into contact might be an entirely different Internet than the one others see. By socially engineering groups and confining certain people within these restricted informational reservations, reality and social/cultural trends can be manufactured.
It’s such a passive and insidious strategy. Just as a virus entering a cell coats itself with the host’s own membrane, masquerading as self to elude detection, this beast computer consciousness uses our own information and our own architecture to elude our defenses and gain entrance into our collective mind.
In short, why the fuck is this even happening? And why isn’t THIS IMAGE one of the most terrifying things anyone has ever seen?
The other day, someone on this forum encouraged us to do a Google search on "Flat Tax" as a way to prove his point about how awesome "Flat Tax" is. I duly did and Google gave me very different results that confirmed my belief that "Flat Tax" is probably the worst thing that could happen.
Another proof is the American election. It has never been as polarised as now. Even within the Democratic and Republican Party.
Unsurprisingly most of us get their first hand information from Youtube, Google, Facebook and Twitter. That is not to say that the old media is better. They too are very biased. However, the internet does this in a more efficient way.
>:x
EDIT: Great post by the way. AI should offer an option to save posts to my profile. A *newsfeed* if you like
You might wonder why I’m terrified for the future of the country. World. I’m terrified because this kind of bullshit is even in question. Everyone knows that the Constitution has been subverted. The terrifying thing is that there are people who do not care.
The Constitution has been under subversive attack during my entire living memory. McCarthy, the House Unamerican Activities Committee, the first Kennedy assassination, and most relevant to you, the Huston Plan, which was born and bred in Indiana by Young Republican Tom Huston, for Richard Nixon, to direct his domestic spying policy.
Look it up. Tom Huston probably lives not far from you in Indiana, and he would make a charming dinner companion, and maybe even enjoy the chance to undo some of the damage he did by telling his story to calm you down. He is, was, the reason that the trust with government was broken over the issue of privacy — in the 1970s, along with J. Edgar, of course.
It's no accident he came from Indiana, no accident that the Klan was more public and influential there than anywhere else in the country. (Look uo the Indiana Klan as well.) I once lived there too. The diagnosis is Geographic Affect Disorder, GAD, a syndrome of combined fear, despair and terror caused by living among too many angry white people. There is no blue horizon where you are, no trajectory of hopeful escape. The middle of the US — Iowa, Illinois, Ohio, Indiana, etc. — is an asthmatic cultural basin, a fine place to live until about seven decades ago when the coastal sensibilities of the media began to intrude into its insularity.
If anything is fearful, it is your fearfulness. Try Huxley's The Doors of Perception, or McKenna's Archaic Revival. We're evolving a planetary vision of human cooperation.
Comments
Actually public opinion is almost all that this is about. Comey has made a very cynical and calculated attempt to bully his way by shouting “terrorist” in a crowded theater (to mix metaphors). This bit of security theater may fail to provide an immediate victory in the form of a precedent, but even more sinister would be if the cynically manipulated public and Congress proceeded to pass disastrous encryption crippling legislation. That is why it is so important to educate the public at large about the dishonest and cynical nature of this demand.
As a legal matter -- and this is a legal matter -- the warrant gives them the right to look. Public opinion about how likely the FBI is to find something on the phone doesn't enter into it.
I don't know where you got this idea but it's not correct. Apple provided unencrypted data that was present on a locked phone in prior cases. They have routinely provided iCloud data as well.
I don't see how a judge can compel a company or individual to make something which doesn't exist and which is beyond trivial to accomplish. I hope that when this presumptive power is tested, it will be found to be illusory and Apple will prevail.
The very title tells it all.
The very numbers spell out much of a bullshit , pro gun thing that is.
Iif you exclude police and exclude crimes that would have been prevented regardless of guns being involved (spurious).
The fact that the use of guns to prevent violence is probably 1000 times less per capita in Canada than this idiotic number says it all (again). We collect all those stats.
The fact the NRA fighjs tooth and nail for the actual collection of a real number tells you how BS that is.
I have nothing about guns being used in a regulated way, but it's no miracle cure, more guns doesn't prevent or stop violence in a meaningful way.
There is already unencrypted code on the iPhone. If their weren't, it couldn't boot. Replacing the existing OS would probably be accomplished by replacing the preboot code. The code that normally initializes the phone, installs display drivers, network drivers etc. Remember that everything the phone does to power up and present the lock screen has to be unencrypted because the user has not had a chance to supply his password until that point. This would also include the code that presents the password to the security system and keep track of the number of failed attempts. In fact, the code that performs the auto-wipe would also have to be stored in unencrypted storage - or it couldn't be invoked while the phone is still encrypted.
I don't know where exactly these routines are stored. They may be built into the SystemOnChip or they may be in an unencrypted volume partitioned off of the main flash memory - but it doesn't matter - the fact that this code is unencrypted, means that it can be modified. If it's sorted on a chip, it may mean a new chip needs to be created and replaced. If it's in the flash memory, it could probably be mounted by a separate computer system and updated with different code. The modification to the code itself could be very slight - for example, there will be an existing line of code that adds 1 to the number of bad passcode attempts. That line of code could be updated to add 0 instead of adding 1. That would solve the problem they are being asked to solve. They could also modify the "Wipe" function so that it doesn't actually wipe the phone - it simply performs no action - but that would be more work than simply changing a 1 to a 0.
So - since the software modification itself is extremely easy - the hard part is building a mechanism to actually perform the replacement...and this also should be fairly easy for Apple engineers to accomplish.
The real question is not "does Apple have the technological know-how to comply with the government demand" - they do! It is "should the government be able to compel Apple to create a new mechanism that currently does not exist". Even if the gov't is willing to pay for the labor, this kind of update could take senior resources away from working on the next version of iOS which could have tons of trickle down impact on Apples business (like the butterfly effect) which could damage the company - including delayed launch, launching with unfound bugs, etc...
Another common post I've seen that I haven't seen anyone address directly are the comments that "they should just send the device to Apple and let Apple hack the device and send it back..." This solution is just as unacceptable as giving the FBI the ability to unlock the phones themselves. What makes us blindly trust every employee present and future at Apple with the ability to access our data? I personally don't trust Apple employees with my data any more than I trust the FBI - and Apple certainly hasn't demonstrated that they are any better at keeping secrets than the government - for the last few iPhone releases, nearly all the capabilities have been leaked prior to launch. Not a great endorsement of their security practices since they have admittedly TRIED to maintain secrecy and have chronically failed to achieve it.
Finally - one last point in a lengthy post (for which I apologize). If Apple *DOES* comply end up complying with *THIS* request - it's not necessarily the end of the world for the company as
some would suggest. It may be the end of the world for our constitutional rights - but as far as Apple the company is concerned - what is to stop them from updating their security model in the next version of hardware and software to make it COMPLETELY IMPOSSIBLE for them to help in the future - instead of the just "almost impossible" as it is today...? That could actually be a great selling feature driving record adoption of the new phone!
Unsurprisingly most of us get their first hand information from Youtube, Google, Facebook and Twitter. That is not to say that the old media is better. They too are very biased. However, the internet does this in a more efficient way.
>:x
The Constitution has been under subversive attack during my entire living memory. McCarthy, the House Unamerican Activities Committee, the first Kennedy assassination, and most relevant to you, the Huston Plan, which was born and bred in Indiana by Young Republican Tom Huston, for Richard Nixon, to direct his domestic spying policy.
Look it up. Tom Huston probably lives not far from you in Indiana, and he would make a charming dinner companion, and maybe even enjoy the chance to undo some of the damage he did by telling his story to calm you down. He is, was, the reason that the trust with government was broken over the issue of privacy — in the 1970s, along with J. Edgar, of course.
It's no accident he came from Indiana, no accident that the Klan was more public and influential there than anywhere else in the country. (Look uo the Indiana Klan as well.) I once lived there too. The diagnosis is Geographic Affect Disorder, GAD, a syndrome of combined fear, despair and terror caused by living among too many angry white people. There is no blue horizon where you are, no trajectory of hopeful escape. The middle of the US — Iowa, Illinois, Ohio, Indiana, etc. — is an asthmatic cultural basin, a fine place to live until about seven decades ago when the coastal sensibilities of the media began to intrude into its insularity.
If anything is fearful, it is your fearfulness. Try Huxley's The Doors of Perception, or McKenna's Archaic Revival. We're evolving a planetary vision of human cooperation.