mrich

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?