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rotateleftbyte said:

In other words, what MS can do for the NFL, Apple can do for Baseball.

The key question is, will the commentators say 'using their Surface' or...?????


I suppose it will make the game a bit more interesting. I'm saying that as someone who went to a game at Fenway Park and fell asleep. I've never fallen asleep at a Cricket Test Match.

BobLong said:

Now if the favorite phone company of the terrorist had just helped the FBI when first asked then the probably would have only cracked this phone which may, and probably will save American lives and even gained more support from Americans as a great company. But now that we know Apple = Islamic terrorist, the FBI had to develop a tool to crack every phone they so chose.

JeffA2 said:

OttoReverse said:

Thanks for that.  Still, no nation should be asking for this in the modern world.  With hundreds of encryption programs available (most based outside the US) for iOS and Android should Apple customers be forced to act like terrorists and criminals in the way we protect our data in order to be safe from government intrusion (rhetorical question)?  It reminds me of gun laws here in Canada.  We are limited to 5 round magazines for centre fire semi autos and 10 for handguns despite our statistically excellent history of generally not being murderers etc.  Yet criminals don't have the same limitations.  Point being it both punishes the law abiding citizen and is completely ineffective in preventing crime.

Let's not get gun control into this! It's an issue that's even more emotional than this one! If we put them together this entire forum will HACF.

But I struggle to understand the sanctity of the phone versus every other form of information storage. With proper judicial review your personal information has always been searchable. That includes bank accounts, phone records, computer hard drives, tax records, business records, email, written correspondence, photographs -- virtually anything. In the US, the only thing that stands between you and a search of any of these items is the 4th amendment which requires probable cause for the issue of a warrant.

So why is a photo stored on my phone unsearchable under warrant, while the same photo in an old-fashioned slide-carousel in my basement can clearly be searched for cause? The only plausible difference between a phone and other media is that modern phones amalgamate a wide variety of information in the same place. But so does my house and, given probable cause, the government can get a warrant to search that. So why not my phone? 

The ability of the government to search -- given probable cause and judicial review -- is not despotism. It's the basis of law enforcement. It's how we catch rapists and killers and financial fraudsters and terrorists too. It's always true that such powers can be seen as targeting the law-abiding as well as the criminal but it's not possible to avoid that. That's why it's always a balancing act between personal privacy and civil society. Advocates for absolute privacy in the digital domain seek to fundamentally alter that balance in ways that are unprecedented.

Marshall119us said:

There's nothing new or novel about the authorities having access to cell phone information and tech companies have complied without protest.  All of a sudden, smart phones are considered sacred devices by encryption absolutists and Snowden lovers.  There are ways to allow law enforcement access without compromising personal privacy but the way articles like this tell it, that's beyond the capability of technology (even though everything else is possible).  Yes tech companies must do a little work to be in compliance - that's the societal bargain.  Or they can simply design future encryption with that in mind but obviously Apple made a business decision to deal with this inevitability when it became a problem instead of baking it in to their initial design. That's simply a business blunder and now they'll hopefully have to pay the price.  I'm no Obama lover, and I own Apple products, but I side with law enforcement on this one.