NemWan

"When NeXT bought Apple for negative 400 million dollars..."

It's funny because it's true.

bikeboatski said:

Younger people weren't around much before the age of cell phones and can't realize that when landlines were the only option, the government really didn't spy on people to any large extent, and then not usually without good reason. For the most part cops have there hands, and time, full with enforcement issues. And people had real lives, apart from their friggin' phones!  They had other things to do!  Youngsters are too paranoid in this.  Don't believe me and still too scared?  Just don't run your mouth on the phone and stick to in-person conversations.  You'll be fine.  They're the best kind anyway!

Do you only remember the good old days and not the bad old days? Landline telephones were an obviously convenient place to plant bugs. Don't get me started on J. Edgar Hoover and wiretaps. COINTELPRO? Martin Luther King Jr.? Nixon illegally wiretaped reporters and government officials he thought were leaking. The Church hearings revealed electronic surveillance of journalists, labor unions and student groups. Some paranoia is healthy and has been repeatedly vindicated.

GTQ said:

Apple is wrong and the people backing Apple are wrong. When a member of their family or someone close to them is murdered, will they take the same position if the name of the killer is on a locked Iphone. The killer walks free if the phone is not unlocked.

I assume you're referring to hypothetical conspirators to be discovered in iMessage, since the shooters are dead.

The only reason Apple can be ordered to anything in this case is because they haven't yet perfected the iPhone's security enough to eliminate all practicality of forcing access to users' non-iCloud, on-device data.

Smartphones are becoming prosthetic extensions of our minds and need the same level of privacy as our thoughts. Properly implemented security should ensure that the contents of a personal digital device that a dead user has not chosen to share are as permanently inaccessible as the contents of their mind.

If law enforcement can live with the Fifth Amendment sometimes preventing them getting confessions, they can also solve crimes without smartphone data, like they have for centuries.

DOJ: "....based on its concern for its business model and public brand marketing strategy...."

That is so cynical, and so many people believe this, and refuse to believe a large public company can act on principle. But Apple is not most companies and Tim Cook is not most CEOs. It's hard to imagine Steve Jobs doing anything more daring and risky than Cook is doing right now. The muted comments by other companies or CEOs, even those sort-of supporting Apple, help prove how exceptionally serious about this Cook is.

There are a billion active Apple devices, many not in the U.S., and it's clear Tim Cook feels personally responsible for making the privacy features of those phones work. Privacy is a lfe and death issue in many situations.