postman

Threats. Bullying. Intimidation. And they wonder why the public doesn't trust the government?

FBI director James Comey should be fired for starting this grandstand hostile attack on Apple – treating them like a criminal organization. Obviously, Tim Cook has no choice but to fight this.

The damage Comey has done to the FBI's reputation, much less the entire relationship tech companies will have with them going forward is incalculable. I mean, why would any big tech company want to "cooperate with", much less ever trust this gov't bureaucrat prick again?

"Cotton was pretty harsh on Cook," a source said. "Everyone was a little uncomfortable about how hostile Cotton was."

Junior Senator Tom Cotton is a proud bigot who has aggressively supported anti-gay state legislation. His open hostility toward Tim Cook - who is of course openly gay - at least let's everyone see who and what he is.

If law enforcement could protect the public from identity theft and getting data stolen – personal and public data– then end-to-end encryption would not be necessary. But they can't. So it is.

In other words, we have to protect our highly personal private data ourselves, because the gov't cannot do it for us.

The FBI and DoJ treating Apple like a criminal – by not notifying Tim Cook in advance of filing court orders, then running a massive PR effort on talk shows and in the Press vilifying Apple and besmirching their reputation is, ironically, a perfect example of why the public cannot trust government.

The argument for breaking the public's private encryption is that it makes it too inconvenient for law enforcement?

This argument is akin to law enforcement having to accept the inconvenience of pesky little barriers like Habeas corpus, reading Miranda rights, getting a warrant first, and not having unfettered stop and frisk "without cause"?

The awful truth is, most law enforcement agencies do not prevent crime. They investigate crime AFTER the fact. The FBI's agenda here is essentially to make their investigations easier so they can prosecute criminals. It's always been hard. But just like the concept of 'innocent until proven guilty', the right to privacy and the right to self-defense are inherent 'absolute' rights.

These laws have been inconvenient truths for law enforcement – but somehow they do their jobs anyway, don't they?

I believe this is less about the President and more about FBI director James Comey. This public grandstand by the FBI and the DoJ is turning into an embarrassment for the administration. I think Comey started this, and that the President is now stuck having to support the FBI – reluctantly. 

Why did Comey do this?
There is strong evidence that, unlike the FBI, the NSA has the budget and the capacity to "break" strong encryption now. And that FBI director James Comey's reason for grandstanding publicly at this particular moment was that the FBI was in fact right in the middle of requesting to increase their budget by more than double.

Mr. Comey essentially wants to make his job easier. And his strategy appears to be to either get Congress to change the law to force the device makers to give the FBI – and ostensibly all other law enforcement agencies – easier access, or to give the FBI the capability (like the NSA) on their own – with a vastly bigger budget for more manpower and super-computers to brute-force the encrypted devices.

The WSJ reported in Feb: "The FBI this month was asking Congress for $69 million to "counter the threat of "Going Dark"– being unable to access data because of encryption and other techniques.The bureau currently devotes 39 people and $31 million to this effort."

In other words, the FBI is using the Apple iPhone "access" demand to convince Congress to more than double their budget from $31 million to $69 million "this month".

To those who do not believe the NSA has the capability to break encryption, read this article "NSA is Mysteriously Absent From FBI-Apple Fight"

http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/35563-nsa-is-mysteriously-absent-from-fbi-apple-fight

My conclusion: This is a power play and money grab by FBI director James Comey. His history points to this – he was part of the Bush Administration and is one of the architects who helped write the 'Patriot Act', before being appointed as FBI Director in 2013. So he is a very experienced Washington insider.  I also happen to believe he is an authoritarian zealot masquerading as a law enforcement bureaucrat. When he states that 'this is the hardest thing he's ever done', I would take that literally – it is indeed very hard to get your way in Washington and convince Congress to make new law. Mr. Comey's entire agenda is to make his job (and law enforcement) easier. When he uses 'double-speak' and says things like "personal privacy and liberty are very important to me", what he really means is it is very important to him because the FBI wants unfettered access around it. George Orwell is turning over in his grave.

The U.S. Senate Select Committee on "Intelligence"? If there ever was an oxymoron, that would be it.

The anti-privacy anti-technology fanatics are relentless. Apparently hackers have more gov't lobbying influence than the rest of us. I mean the only ones who will benefit from idiotic laws like this will be the criminals, not the law enforcement agencies that are incapable of preventing crime – yet are Hell-bent on investigating and ostensibly prosecuting more of it. The irony is, they would get their wish – because laws like these will only increase identity-theft and cyber crime.

No encryption = No protection.