Senate committee chair mulls bill to punish companies that refuse decryption requests

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Comments

  • Reply 21 of 68
    decondos said:
    never the right to bear arms
    Check again.
    Privacy did not kill the people in Southern California.
    That’s right; an unregulated immigration policy did.
    icoco3
  • Reply 22 of 68
    metrixmetrix Posts: 256member
    I guess we are all (Apple Corp and their customers) moving to Australia or New Zealand.
    Like I said before someone is pointing a gun at some software engineer to "write code" or your going to jail for a very long time.  What the heck!
    What has our country come to?
    edited February 2016
  • Reply 23 of 68
    mnbob1mnbob1 Posts: 269member
    I'm not surprised that he is trying to make headlines over this since he's up for reelection this year. It never hurts to stir up the base with a little grandstanding.

    He has released a new statement that he is not going to pursue legislation that would "criminalize" corporations over the encryption/decryption issue.
  • Reply 24 of 68
    He doesn't deserve that Macbook next to him
    icoco3
  • Reply 25 of 68
    GOP continues its slide towards out and out fascism. 
  • Reply 26 of 68
    josujosu Posts: 217member
    jungmark said:
    You know what pisses me off about how these politicians? They won't ban people on the terrorist watch list from buying guns but rather punishing companies for securing people's privacy. 
    You nail it, the right to own firearms is being put before the right to privacy.
  • Reply 27 of 68
    fracfrac Posts: 480member
    This current outbreak of stupid is.....
  • Reply 28 of 68
    cnocbuicnocbui Posts: 3,613member
    I frequently read comments on AI criticising the EU as being degenerate and all sorts of other such nonsense.  They are so funny.
    edited February 2016
  • Reply 29 of 68
    cnocbuicnocbui Posts: 3,613member

    IanMC2 said:
    If this ever becomes a law I would like to see Apple leave the United States. I wonder how many billions the US govt would lose in revenue.
    Since most of their cash is in Ireland, it's not going to hurt as much as you might hope for.
    I believe Apple's overseas money is mostly in bank accounts in NY.
  • Reply 30 of 68
    If they can't prosecute because they don't have unknown information from an iPhone, what kind of case could they possibly have?  
  • Reply 31 of 68

    Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R., N.C.) is mulling the creation of a bill

    Well, I'm not moving to North Carolina anytime soon if that's the way they think.
  • Reply 32 of 68
    rob53rob53 Posts: 3,241member
    Can someone please take away his MacBook! Morons!
    Speaking of that MacBook. If that laptop is not encrypted (FileVault is the easiest), then Burr is violating government requirements for the proper configuration of computers. He undoubtedly has sensitive unclassified data on it, therefore it needs to be properly protected when not within a secured area. Of course, I just see the MacBook as a prop for his grandstanding. He probably uses a government-issued Windows laptop like the other 4M Windows devices that have to be updated to Windows 10 by Feb 2017. Macs are allowed in some agencies of our federal government but I doubt he actually uses one because if he did, he'd understand why Apple is doing what they're doing.

    "Intelligence Committee" is such an oxymoron when talking about elected government officials. Not to be disrespectful but I don't see anything in his past that demonstrates any technical ability to be on this committee. He's probably upset Apple built their Maiden, NC, data center in a neighboring district.

    "
    Prior to running for Congress, Burr worked for 17 years as a sales manager for Carswell Distributing Company, a distributor of lawn equipment." ref: wikipedia
  • Reply 33 of 68
    IanMC2 said:
    If this ever becomes a law I would like to see Apple leave the United States. I wonder how many billions the US govt would lose in revenue.
    $19B in direct corporate income tax alone, but that obviously excludes non-direct tax revenue from ancillary sources. That does not include state and local income taxes.

    AAPL pays an effective federal tax rate of about 26%, and has done so for about the past decade. The average rate paid by the US's largest and most profitable companies is about 19%.

    Of course some large, profitable companies notoriously pay 0% thanks to lobbyists who routinely succeed in persuading Congress to effectively grant exclusions for them in the tax code. 

    AAPL is consistently one of the US's top five generators of tax revenue. That is the reason many highly profitable companies have been leaving the US to incorporate elsewhere, and if things were to change they might just do that. The  $5B cost to build the Spaceship? So what. They could easily afford to simply walk away from it. It doesn't make sense to incorporate in the US when every other industrialized country on Earth has a much more favorable tax climate.


    edited February 2016 icoco3
  • Reply 34 of 68
    rob53rob53 Posts: 3,241member


    IanMC2 said:
    If this ever becomes a law I would like to see Apple leave the United States. I wonder how many billions the US govt would lose in revenue.
    Since most of their cash is in Ireland, it's not going to hurt as much as you might hope for.
    You need to do some research. Apple is consistently in the top five companies paying the most in corporate taxes in the US. Even if they left, they would still be required to pay corporate taxes on their sales in the US. All you see is cash. There's a lot more to Apple than just cash.

    --@john galt's response is better and he was a bit quicker.

    edited February 2016
  • Reply 35 of 68
    linkmanlinkman Posts: 1,035member
    Would some rational person please explain why we need a law for this when failure to follow a court order is already a criminal offense? Yes, that court order can be stayed on appeal but criminal convictions can be appealed too. Spending time and resources on this simply reinforces why our current legislative body gets nothing useful accomplished.

    Enforce the laws we have. We don't need more laws restating other laws.
    tallest skil
  • Reply 36 of 68
    linkman said:
    Would some rational person please explain why we need a law for this when failure to follow a court order is already a criminal offense?

    You don't need that explanation. The idiot "Intelligence Committee Chairman" does.

  • Reply 37 of 68
    Senator Alice*: "under my new law all companies are now obliged to produce real pink flying unicorns"

    Advisor "err...Senator, you know, it doesn't quite work like that"

    Senator Alice "no? Off with his head!"

    *any resemblance to real (or fictional) persons with half brain is purely coincidental. 
    edited February 2016
  • Reply 38 of 68
    rob53rob53 Posts: 3,241member
    linkman said:
    Would some rational person please explain why we need a law for this when failure to follow a court order is already a criminal offense? Yes, that court order can be stayed on appeal but criminal convictions can be appealed too. Spending time and resources on this simply reinforces why our current legislative body gets nothing useful accomplished.

    Enforce the laws we have. We don't need more laws restating other laws.
    I believe the court doesn't have the authority to make up or change the law they're trying to use to justify the court order. The court can only interpret laws, they can't make them up. The All Writs Act, included in the Judiciary Act of 1789, is being used by the court against Apple because there's no statute, law or rule on the books to deal with the specific issue at hand. In other words, the judge is trying to create a law instead of interpret existing laws. This Act also requires three other qualifications: 1) The business in question (Apple) has some connection to the investigation, 2) There are extraordinary circumstances that justify the use of the All Writs Act, and 3) The All Writs Act only applies if compliance is not an unreasonable burden. Apple is challenging some if not all of the other three qualifications. Of course the FBI uses the terrorism word to justify all sorts of things. I don't condone what happened but does this event justify creating a backdoor that would be used by the FBI more than once and by hackers millions of time to attack every person who owns an iOS device? I personally don't think so. This is why Congress is attempting to create a new (illegal) law so that the court can force Apple to follow a legal court order. Creating a law after the fact might not be justifiable but it wouldn't be the first time our elected officials did something without thinking it out clearly.
    cnocbuiicoco3
  • Reply 39 of 68
    icoco3icoco3 Posts: 1,474member



    Sen. Richard Burr at the NC Child Care Coalition in 2015. | Source: Office of Sen. Richard Burr
    The irony...standing there with his Apple product on full display.
  • Reply 40 of 68
    cnocbuicnocbui Posts: 3,613member
    icoco3 said:



    Sen. Richard Burr at the NC Child Care Coalition in 2015. | Source: Office of Sen. Richard Burr
    The irony...standing there with his Apple product on full display.
    He will be even prouder when it says 'Designed by Apple in Ireland' on the bottom.
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