heli0s said:

Extracting rent is the main thing Apple is today. 

Rent seeking doesn't mean what you think it does. The $2 trillion U.S. tax cut from 2017 involved rent seeking.

 

Appleish said:

Totally Unrelated Headline from the non-tech world:

"Trump Family Rakes In 100+ Million Since Inauguration"

I apologize for injecting this totally unrelated headline into this completely separate story.

That's what Republicans mean when they say they want to run the government like a business. They want to enrich themselves rather than serve the public at large. 

apple4thewin said: They trust the attorney general the guy who actually has control. 

Pam Bondi has changed genders? Interesting. 

The word Vichy comes to mind for some reason…

9secondkox2 said:

foregoneconclusion said:

9secondkox2 said:

netrox said:

Expect to see this happen here in USA with SCOTUS being right wing and having expressed doubts about the right to privacy, starting with abortion and saying the same for sexual acts. They will likely use that reasoning to force Apple to provide a "backdoor".

The right to privacy simply does not exist with conservatives where they believe in imposing structure and control over people and their behaviors to their whims. 

Similar things were already happening under Obama. Hence Snowden. Barking up the wrong tree. 

LOL...the wrong tree? All the files that Snowden provided to Glen Greenwald for the articles he wrote were pre-2006 Patriot Act era. In other words, the era before Congress got rid of the worst abuses of the Patriot Act like warrantless wiretapping. George W. Bush was president at the time, not Obama. The Snowden stuff was really just a repackaging of the complaints that came out about the Patriot Act at the time it was passed + a layer of conspiracy theorizing on top. And the Patriot Act was primarily driven by the GOP.

Plus you now have the Laken Riley Act, which takes the loss of due process for anyone charged with terrorism (i.e., indefinite detainment) and applies it to undocumented immigrants charged with crimes as minor as shoplifting. The problem there is that the loss of due process for people charged with terrorism was based on the idea that they were a national security threat. Undocumented immigrants are not a national security threat. 

From 2015

“New Snowden Documents Reveal Obama Administration Expanded NSA Spying”

https://time.com/3909293/edward-snowden-obama-nsa-spying/

You appear to be confused about warrantless wiretapping. George W. Bush authorized warrantless wiretapping DOMESTICALLY. Meaning they were targeting people inside the borders of the United States, either citizens or non-citizens. That practice was ended in January of 2007. The article that you posted is in regards to INTERNATIONAL warrantless wiretaps where the target is outside the borders of the United States. 

The difference is that DOMESTIC wiretapping always required warrants prior to what George W. Bush did. That's not the case with INTERNATIONAL wiretaps. 

"FISA distinguishes between U.S. persons and foreigners, between communications inside and outside the U.S., and between wired and wireless communications. Wired communications within the United States are protected, since intercepting them requires a warrant,[47] but there is no regulation of US wiretapping elsewhere."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiretapping#Pakistan

This is an example of what was so stupid about most of the Snowden coverage. Snowden claimed he was concerned about Constitutional rights violations but the U.S. Constitution doesn't apply outside of U.S. territory. There's nothing scandalous about the United States doing warrantless wiretaps of foreign targets.