manfred zorn

Emericus said:

... the FBI wants to avoid supporting the idea that it's okay and legal for any tech company to design devices that thwart all attempts at entry by law enforcement or anyone else. While such devices and the networks they operate on will naturally keep my own legal emails and bank account numbers secure, they will certainly also become the haven for all manner of illegal behavior. And if allowed to be used freely in private and public, as iPhones are now, such devices over time could render many forms of law enforcement perpetually ineffective (perhaps they already are).....

The same would apply to manufacturers of paper shredders. They could make many forms of law enforcement access ineffective. So is fire or the manufacturers of matches, gas lighters, etc. It is not illegal to own and use a paper shredder or matches. Encryption on a phone is like a paper shredder where with the right key you can "unshred" the paper.

Given that export of encryption software is no longer export-controlled, companies outside the US can and have developed their own versions. The current top algorithms AES and RSA have originally been developed outside the US. What that means is that crippling encryption on iPhones in the US would just cripple Americans. Foreign terrorists could easily load their own encryption software on the phone and thus "shred" communication from prying eyes or LEO.

This really amounts to a tradeoff between privacy for all or privacy only for those you are cunning and able to use other means of hiding their intentions.

radarthekat said:

The fact is, the case isn't about who can shout loudest or come up with the most damning insult.  It's about whether the government has a right to force a private citizen, in this case a corporation, to act against its will in service of a government investigation to which the private citizen is not a direct party.

Some have suggested that this is no different than the government asking the manufacturer of a safe to help crack the safe.  Lets say the smartphone as safe argument has merit.  To crack a safe, you call a safe cracker, perhaps with some technical details provided by the safe manufacturer.  Apple, the iPhone manufacturer, has already provided the technical details of how passwords are protected. The FBI has no authority, in my view, to demand that Apple weaken those protections. No more than they have the authority to tell safe manufacturers to redesign their safes so that they can be cracked; ones they build in the future or ones they've already built and sold.  It's up to the FBI's safecracker, or one they hire who voluntarily takes that employment, to crack the safe/iPhone.

docno42 said:

It' beyond idiotic there's not a way to easily disable (temporarily or otherwise) all notifications.  Drives me nuts when using my device for presentations, watching media, playing games where a notification will screw up gameplay, etc. 

Dave S said:

After all, if this was a locked diary and the gov't asked the locksmith to pick the lock, does anyone really think the locksmith could defend by stating that the lock is proprietary and he does not want to pick it for fear that the info could be used to pick locks on other diaries he sold.  Sounds ridiculous eh?  Well, that is how ridiculous Apple's argument seems to this lawyer!  If it can be done, it should be.

Personally, I have a very secure iCloud account from my end and nothing incriminating in my data, so I tend to like most of the conveniences offered by iCloud.