We wouldn't be having this conversation if a) such encryption had existed on 9/11 and b) on 9/12 the FBI had asked Apple to let it into any suspect phones. Steve Jobs or Tim Cook would have opened them up with their tongues, because the enormity of the crime demanded it. They would have looked like co-conspirators with mass murderers in the eyes of the whole world if they had made then the same argument Cook et al. are making now.
Such noble half-baked and immature statements as the ones made above are only possible because merely 16 persons were murdered in San Bernardino. Yes, the hard truth about abstract moral principles is that they have to be put into action in the real world in the context of real human lives, and that changes the weight and heft of the arguments. If it had been 3,000 people who had been murdered in California rather than a *mere* 16, we wouldn't be hearing these arguments.
So that begs the question: Just how many mass murder victims is Apple willing to tolerate? How many are we the public willing to tolerate before we insist that Apple co-operate in keeping us safe? Or is the difference in the nature of the weapons used? Are assault rifle murders acceptable, while murders caused by airplanes are not? How about a poison gas attack, or a dirty bomb? Where is the line between an acceptable number of murders and an intolerable number?
Please go take your stupidity somewhere else, like maybe back to school so you can get yourself a good education. Then you might actually be able to understand the principle issues being discussed. What do you think our security agencies did BEFORE smartphones? That's right, they did their jobs with the resources they had. No matter how hard it was. Things like putting assets in the field, bugging devices, surveillance, etc. and that is exactly what we should expect of them now, without jeprodizing every single holder of a smartphone, by every single government and hacker out there. We are spending 100's of BILLIONS of dollars every year on national security. If they can't do their job with the resources they have then maybe it's time to put new people in charge. And your absolutely moronic comment about insisting that "Apple cooperate in keeping us safe" shows just how far you have your head up your posterior. It is NOT Apple's job to keep us safe. It is the government's. And you are obviously ignorant of the fact that Apple did cooperate as soon as asked by giving the FBI all the data they had, including from the previous backup of the device, as well as extensive and ongoing technical support. The government also already has all the phone records from the device. This is a totally bullshit attempt by the FBI to set a legal precedent to get into any device anytime they want, while at the same time jeopardizing the security of each and every one of us. Period.
Serves them right for throwing black kids out of that Australian store.
So they–Apple, a single entity–are simultaneously more politically correct than anyone would ever want them to be and more politically incorrect than some would want them to be? How does that work?
The Corporation has become way too powerful in this world
This is the only good thing you will ever say.
their lobbying controls governments
Not Apple’s though.
When I see business refuse to cooperate with government I see a huge problem.
Okay: “Hi, we’re from the government. Give us the personal information of all of your customers or we will kill you.”
I hope you take a moment to realize that the majority of garbage that floats out of Washington, for many decades now, is utterly unconstitutional. The people who crafted our Constitution and Bill of Rights would be horrified at what has become of this country and they would wonder why the people had not thrown everyone in government out on their ears or had them imprisoned for treason.
yeah, and they'd be appalled that women can vote and blacks are now worth one whole person.
thats the thing so called constitutionists failed to grasp -- that the founders provided it as a framework to enable change. a tool. they knew full well things would change and there are mechanisms to do so. we have a bill of rights, and a tool to modify law.
they weren't putting themselves forward as gods or idols. nobody actually knows how they would feel on these things -- they're dead. there's no such thing as ghosts or channeling. the only thing that matters is the people living today, and using the tools at our disposal to shape the world of the living. and that's what the framework of the constitution provides us with. it's a pretty good tool.
You say these things without providing historical context, which is completely disingenuous.
Of course the Constitution is a "living document" and subject to change, however there is such a long history of so many aggressions against both the word and intent of the Constitution and Bill of Rights that what would previously be considered treason is this years "new normal". It's extremely difficult to change the Constitution...and for very solid historical reasons!:
We wouldn't be having this conversation if a) such encryption had existed on 9/11 and b) on 9/12 the FBI had asked Apple to let it into any suspect phones. Steve Jobs or Tim Cook would have opened them up with their tongues, because the enormity of the crime demanded it. They would have looked like co-conspirators with mass murderers in the eyes of the whole world if they had made then the same argument Cook et al. are making now.
Such noble half-baked and immature statements as the ones made above are only possible because merely 16 persons were murdered in San Bernardino. Yes, the hard truth about abstract moral principles is that they have to be put into action in the real world in the context of real human lives, and that changes the weight and heft of the arguments. If it had been 3,000 people who had been murdered in California rather than a *mere* 16, we wouldn't be hearing these arguments.
So that begs the question: Just how many mass murder victims is Apple willing to tolerate? How many are we the public willing to tolerate before we insist that Apple co-operate in keeping us safe? Or is the difference in the nature of the weapons used? Are assault rifle murders acceptable, while murders caused by airplanes are not? How about a poison gas attack, or a dirty bomb? Where is the line between an acceptable number of murders and an intolerable number?
Fact is that governments will always use a tragic events to gain more power. But we have the Constitution and should avoid responding based on emotions. The DOJ should not be able to force Apple to do anything against their own moral will, especially since it could harm others. And if we treat code writing as speech, the government cannot force you to communicate anything you are not willing to communicate. On a side note, If by now the FBI cannot connect dots from previous phone data backup, phone call metadata, message metadata, geopositional data, and social media data, then we need to worry that our CTD is either inept or they are collecting so much information that they cannot process it all. Not only the CTD failed at stopping the initial attack, they are now using this tragedy and the victims to justify more judicial overreach. It is a fact that the FBI and our intelligence agencies are collecting far more information nowadays than previously in history. Apple is doing right by pushing back and standing firm.
Daniel, please please please don't refer to the incident as terrorism, unless you refer to shooting up an office Christmas party as an act of terror. The only reason the DOJ uses that term is because the morons pee their pants every time someone in authority invokes the boogeyman "TERROR!" or "Muslim". The non-postal workers shooting up their workplace were NOT terrorists - they were wackos who happened to be Muslim. Don't fall into buying the Feeb's nonsense manipulative rhetoric.
Anyone who uses the term terrorist to describe that incident is supporting the Feebs. Don't be that guy.
It was terrorism, Islamic terrorism to be precise. They were ISIS supporters and they were dirty terrorists. I am sorry if you have a problem with reality and facts.
It was not terrorism. They were wannabe terrorists. Terrorists use planned attacks on institutions, strategic, and iconic places. They don't kill people they know. These killers were pathetic, misguided, and their attack was a knee jerk reaction to a workplace argument.
...I am sorry if you have a problem with reality and facts.
Much like your "I only know what's on the internet" friend with the tiny little hands and tiny little feet and tiny little brain goin' tweet, tweet, tweet....but that doesn't seem to bother you for some reason.
More anti-government propaganda by Apple I see. Timmy Crook and *every other software engineer at Apple* knows that the US Government has not requested a backdoor, a break in encryption, or anything close to that.
What the government has requested in the court order (read it please), is that Apple create a patch that will bypass the "five attempts and lock" feature on the phone, so that the government can then brute force it open. The patch can be keyed to the serial number of the phone and recompiled into the O/S, so that the code is not accessible or readable. No de-encryption, no back door, no problem.
Instead we get all this spin from Apple on how the US Government is crushing our personal liberties. Sort of makes sense, when you consider that Apple off-shores US jobs, clamors for H1B visas to drive down the domestic wage base, and uses tax shelters to avoid its fair share of taxes. Just Another Greedy Corporation.
This isn't about privacy - It is about Timmy Crook satisfying the billionaire investors who own Apple, and don't want something as trivial as people getting killed by terrorists to cut into their profits. Don't fall for this scam by the ultra-rich to give the government the finger once again, and may Timmy and Co choke on their caviar.
Most of what you say I disagree with. This I do agree with: "Apple off-shores US jobs, clamors for H1B visas to drive down the domestic wage base" Contrary to what the high tech corporations say, there is no shortage of highly qualified people with STEM degrees in the U.S.
"Real encryption means that the data is absolutely scrambled, the same way that a paper shredder absolutely obliterates documents".
Imagine a future headline: "In addition to the recently enacted law requiring all software source code for products sold in the United States be submitted to the FBI archives, the Trump Whitehouse insists that all manufacturers of paper shredders incorporate a printing mechanism that codifies each shred in order to facilitate reassembly by law enforcers. The president goes on to state, 'Anyone using illegal shredders should be roughed up.'"
You need to stop doing this. Citation fucking needed.
I need to stop making sense? As for citations look at every (real) terrorist act committed. They kill people they hate or that represent something they hate, not people that throw baby showers for them.
Or they could not bend over to government demands and NOT compromise the most secure OS in the world.
Ideally, yes. But if the government MANDATES backdoors, then I say Apple should ship the device unencrypted, thus meeting the governments requirements and allowing us to buy them.
If, however, a user installs encryption software or ad blockers or whatever on their own, then the government can't really pick a beef with Apple, can they?
I honestly think that Apple will discontinue the iPhone if forced by the US Govt to make changes to the firmware.
I wish Tim would set Apple on a path to split up the divisions (a la Alphabet) to protect their assets. The company is too big a target that they look like a nice big juicy steak to the wolves in Washington.
Think this debate through to its logical conclusion, with unconstrained use of strong encryption in every aspect of communication. Every packet of data and every financial transaction is unbreakably encrypted and goes through anonymising routers, and everything is completely untraceable.
Your child goes missing after chatting to someone online, your employer goes bust because they're defrauded out of millions, a major terrorist outrage, organised crime on an industrial scale, a huge increase in taxes for honest folk because half the population has decided they'd rather be paid in untraceable bitcoins... and the police just shrug their shoulders and say there's nothing they can do. Even if they have a strong suspect for a major crime and have a cast iron search warrant, there is no possible way to check their assets, see who they've been in communication with, tap their phone, see where they spent their money or where they got their money, or collect any evidence of any kind other than physically following people and catching someone in the act of committing a physical crime.
Imagine a hypothetical drug baron, controlling an empire worth millions from his laptop. It's an office job, perfectly safe as he never needs to get anywhere remotely close to the action. He buys stuff online, places an ad online to recruit couriers "local deliveries, high rates of pay, no questions asked", they pick stuff up, pass it on to street dealers (similarly recruited online), who meet the customer (responding to an online ad) in a pub somewhere and just press a button on their Apple Watch to make the electronic payment as the goods are handed over. Within seconds the funds are transferred all the way back to our drug baron's account, completely untraceably. Sure, a few lowly foot soldiers might be caught occasionally with something in their possession, but the chance of ever finding where the money went, or that a payment was even made, are nil.
Sure, some technologically literate criminals will already be covering their tracks this way, but they're still very much in a minority, and they're still likely to make mistakes in other areas that mean they could in principle still be caught.
But let's take things further. Encrypted virtual machines, say. Imagine your iPhone has two PINs, one to unlock your everyday innocent account where you chat to your mum and your girlfriend, one to unlock the account where you commit all your criminal deeds. Even if you're arrested and comply with a lawful court order to unlock your phone or computer, you just give them the day to day one and there's no way to even tell there's anything else on your device or you've been communicating with anyone other than your day to day contacts, still less unlock it or see who you've been communicating with.
Farfetched? Hardly. Technologically we're there already, but it's not quite ubiquitous everywhere just yet. It's difficult to see how the lives of ordinary citizens or society as a whole will be improved when it is though.
Sure, we might get some smug self satisfaction at how clever we are to understand cryptography and the thought that "they" (the government and FBI and NSA and GCHQ et al.) can't read the messages we send to our girlfriends (without bothering to wonder why on earth they might want to, when they presumably have better things to do with their time, or considering the irony that we're all perfectly happy to freely reveal all our innermost secrets to the likes of Google and Facebook and Amazon!).
It's far from obvious that the long term risks of ubiquitous unbreakable encryption won't outweigh its benefits. The genie may already be out of the bottle but that is something to be lamented, not celebrated.
We wouldn't be having this conversation if a) such encryption had existed on 9/11 and b) on 9/12 the FBI had asked Apple to let it into any suspect phones. Steve Jobs or Tim Cook would have opened them up with their tongues, because the enormity of the crime demanded it. They would have looked like co-conspirators with mass murderers in the eyes of the whole world if they had made then the same argument Cook et al. are making now.
Such noble half-baked and immature statements as the ones made above are only possible because merely 16 persons were murdered in San Bernardino. Yes, the hard truth about abstract moral principles is that they have to be put into action in the real world in the context of real human lives, and that changes the weight and heft of the arguments. If it had been 3,000 people who had been murdered in California rather than a *mere* 16, we wouldn't be hearing these arguments.
So that begs the question: Just how many mass murder victims is Apple willing to tolerate? How many are we the public willing to tolerate before we insist that Apple co-operate in keeping us safe? Or is the difference in the nature of the weapons used? Are assault rifle murders acceptable, while murders caused by airplanes are not? How about a poison gas attack, or a dirty bomb? Where is the line between an acceptable number of murders and an intolerable number?
I think weak security almost everywhere is more likely to aid terrorists than anything else, particularly since you can be damn sure they won't be relying on the built-in encryption for their security. Backdoors will only be useful against low-level crimes, and for letting criminals hack into your life.
Think this debate through to its logical conclusion, with unconstrained use of strong encryption in every aspect of communication. Every packet of data and every financial transaction is unbreakably encrypted and goes through anonymising routers, and everything is completely untraceable.
Your child goes missing after chatting to someone online, your employer goes bust because they're defrauded out of millions, a major terrorist outrage, organised crime on an industrial scale, a huge increase in taxes for honest folk because half the population has decided they'd rather be paid in untraceable bitcoins... and the police just shrug their shoulders and say there's nothing they can do. Even if they have a strong suspect for a major crime and have a cast iron search warrant, there is no possible way to check their assets, see who they've been in communication with, tap their phone, see where they spent their money or where they got their money, or collect any evidence of any kind other than physically following people and catching someone in the act of committing a physical crime.
Imagine a hypothetical drug baron, controlling an empire worth millions from his laptop. It's an office job, perfectly safe as he never needs to get anywhere remotely close to the action. He buys stuff online, places an ad online to recruit couriers "local deliveries, high rates of pay, no questions asked", they pick stuff up, pass it on to street dealers (similarly recruited online), who meet the customer (responding to an online ad) in a pub somewhere and just press a button on their Apple Watch to make the electronic payment as the goods are handed over. Within seconds the funds are transferred all the way back to our drug baron's account, completely untraceably. Sure, a few lowly foot soldiers might be caught occasionally with something in their possession, but the chance of ever finding where the money went, or that a payment was even made, are nil.
Sure, some technologically literate criminals will already be covering their tracks this way, but they're still very much in a minority, and they're still likely to make mistakes in other areas that mean they could in principle still be caught.
But let's take things further. Encrypted virtual machines, say. Imagine your iPhone has two PINs, one to unlock your everyday innocent account where you chat to your mum and your girlfriend, one to unlock the account where you commit all your criminal deeds. Even if you're arrested and comply with a lawful court order to unlock your phone or computer, you just give them the day to day one and there's no way to even tell there's anything else on your device or you've been communicating with anyone other than your day to day contacts, still less unlock it or see who you've been communicating with.
Farfetched? Hardly. Technologically we're there already, but it's not quite ubiquitous everywhere just yet. It's difficult to see how the lives of ordinary citizens or society as a whole will be improved when it is though.
Sure, we might get some smug self satisfaction at how clever we are to understand cryptography and the thought that "they" (the government and FBI and NSA and GCHQ et al.) can't read the messages we send to our girlfriends (without bothering to wonder why on earth they might want to, when they presumably have better things to do with their time, or considering the irony that we're all perfectly happy to freely reveal all our innermost secrets to the likes of Google and Facebook and Amazon!).
It's far from obvious that the long term risks of ubiquitous unbreakable encryption won't outweigh its benefits. The genie may already be out of the bottle but that is something to be lamented, not celebrated.
Meanwhile identify theft keeps occurring because of data breaches on unencrypted data. Plus phone calls can be retrieved via the service provider.
Law enforcement needs to adapt to new technology. How did they solve crimes before smart phones?
nope. work place violence isn't terrorism -- unless all those white Christian postal workers were also terrorists, in which case we've changed the definition of what the word means.
The actors' intent makes the difference. The location of the action has less to do with the purpose of the act.
Postal workers going nonlinear at the office because of personal conflicts with co-workers is "workplace violence".
A county employee and his wife shooting up an office party, having declared their allegiance to a terrorist organization, after weeks or months of prior planning driven by the goals of said terrorist organization is terrorism.
no, sounds like a personal beef with disliked coworkers to me. exactly the same as the white Christian who plans how he's going to carry out his identical plan to murder postal coworkers. these jokers weren't part of a cell and it wasn't politically motivated.
Meanwhile identify theft keeps occurring because of data breaches on unencrypted data. Plus phone calls can be retrieved via the service provider.
Law enforcement needs to adapt to new technology. How did they solve crimes before smart phones?
Yes, phone calls can be intercepted by the service provider (on receipt of a valid warrant etc.). But Skype and WhatsApp and iMessage and similar encrypted communication protocols can't be, no matter how life critical doing so might be nor how hard the service providers might want to. Doesn't that worry you?
You've seen Kojak and the Rockford Files, you know how law enforcement worked before the Internet and smart phones. If they were suspicious of you committing a crime they'd get a warrant and tap your phone, and find out who your associates were, and if they hear you talking about a major drug deal they'd follow you and stop your car, and if they found $100,000 in used notes in a briefcase that would be pretty strong supporting evidence. But if everything, even the money transfer, is done electronically, unbreakably and untraceably, where do you suggest they start?
Comments
This is the only good thing you will ever say.
Not Apple’s though.
Okay: “Hi, we’re from the government. Give us the personal information of all of your customers or we will kill you.”
You’re fine with that, then? Four others agreed with this? What the heck?
Except the book says otherwise.
Of course the Constitution is a "living document" and subject to change, however there is such a long history of so many aggressions against both the word and intent of the Constitution and Bill of Rights that what would previously be considered treason is this years "new normal". It's extremely difficult to change the Constitution...and for very solid historical reasons!:
Citation fucking needed.
.olliesedwuz said:
Most of what you say I disagree with.This I do agree with:
"Apple off-shores US jobs, clamors for H1B visas to drive down the domestic wage base"
Contrary to what the high tech corporations say, there is no shortage of highly qualified people with STEM degrees in the U.S.
Imagine a future headline: "In addition to the recently enacted law requiring all software source code for products sold in the United States be submitted to the FBI archives, the Trump Whitehouse insists that all manufacturers of paper shredders incorporate a printing mechanism that codifies each shred in order to facilitate reassembly by law enforcers. The president goes on to state, 'Anyone using illegal shredders should be roughed up.'"
If, however, a user installs encryption software or ad blockers or whatever on their own, then the government can't really pick a beef with Apple, can they?
Your child goes missing after chatting to someone online, your employer goes bust because they're defrauded out of millions, a major terrorist outrage, organised crime on an industrial scale, a huge increase in taxes for honest folk because half the population has decided they'd rather be paid in untraceable bitcoins... and the police just shrug their shoulders and say there's nothing they can do. Even if they have a strong suspect for a major crime and have a cast iron search warrant, there is no possible way to check their assets, see who they've been in communication with, tap their phone, see where they spent their money or where they got their money, or collect any evidence of any kind other than physically following people and catching someone in the act of committing a physical crime.
Imagine a hypothetical drug baron, controlling an empire worth millions from his laptop. It's an office job, perfectly safe as he never needs to get anywhere remotely close to the action. He buys stuff online, places an ad online to recruit couriers "local deliveries, high rates of pay, no questions asked", they pick stuff up, pass it on to street dealers (similarly recruited online), who meet the customer (responding to an online ad) in a pub somewhere and just press a button on their Apple Watch to make the electronic payment as the goods are handed over. Within seconds the funds are transferred all the way back to our drug baron's account, completely untraceably. Sure, a few lowly foot soldiers might be caught occasionally with something in their possession, but the chance of ever finding where the money went, or that a payment was even made, are nil.
Sure, some technologically literate criminals will already be covering their tracks this way, but they're still very much in a minority, and they're still likely to make mistakes in other areas that mean they could in principle still be caught.
But let's take things further. Encrypted virtual machines, say. Imagine your iPhone has two PINs, one to unlock your everyday innocent account where you chat to your mum and your girlfriend, one to unlock the account where you commit all your criminal deeds. Even if you're arrested and comply with a lawful court order to unlock your phone or computer, you just give them the day to day one and there's no way to even tell there's anything else on your device or you've been communicating with anyone other than your day to day contacts, still less unlock it or see who you've been communicating with.
Farfetched? Hardly. Technologically we're there already, but it's not quite ubiquitous everywhere just yet. It's difficult to see how the lives of ordinary citizens or society as a whole will be improved when it is though.
Sure, we might get some smug self satisfaction at how clever we are to understand cryptography and the thought that "they" (the government and FBI and NSA and GCHQ et al.) can't read the messages we send to our girlfriends (without bothering to wonder why on earth they might want to, when they presumably have better things to do with their time, or considering the irony that we're all perfectly happy to freely reveal all our innermost secrets to the likes of Google and Facebook and Amazon!).
It's far from obvious that the long term risks of ubiquitous unbreakable encryption won't outweigh its benefits. The genie may already be out of the bottle but that is something to be lamented, not celebrated.
Law enforcement needs to adapt to new technology. How did they solve crimes before smart phones?
You've seen Kojak and the Rockford Files, you know how law enforcement worked before the Internet and smart phones. If they were suspicious of you committing a crime they'd get a warrant and tap your phone, and find out who your associates were, and if they hear you talking about a major drug deal they'd follow you and stop your car, and if they found $100,000 in used notes in a briefcase that would be pretty strong supporting evidence. But if everything, even the money transfer, is done electronically, unbreakably and untraceably, where do you suggest they start?