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18th Century Law Dredged Up To Force Decryption of Devices
Cognitive Dissident writes The Register has a story about federal prosecutors using a law signed by George Washington to force manufacturers to help law enforcement access encrypted data on devices they manufacture. The All Writs Act is a broad statute simply authorizing courts to issue any order necessary to obtain information within their jurisdiction. Quoting the Register article: "Last month, New York prosecutors successfully persuaded a judge that the ancient law could be used to force an unnamed smartphone manufacturer to help unlock a phone allegedly used in a credit card fraud case. The judge ordered the manufacturer to offer 'reasonable technical assistance' to make the phone's contents available." What will happen when this collides with Apple and Google deliberately creating encryption that they themselves cannot break?
What will happen when this collides with Apple and Google deliberately creating encryption that they themselves cannot break?
That is answered by the former quote:
The judge ordered the manufacturer to offer 'reasonable technical assistance' to make the phone's contents available.
Breaking encryption that is not breakable does not fall under any sense of the word "reasonable".
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
"New York prosecutors successfully persuaded a judge that the ancient law could be used"
The law was not sunset-ed, the law was not stricken down by another law, the law itself was not repelled on its own, the law was not stricken down by the supreme court.
So what is the problem ? Until a repell/strick down , ALL those law are still valid. Cue the shooting down welsh with a bow, but this is the basis of our judiciary process. just because a law is old does not make it invalid.
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Still having faith in the constitution? That same one that gets raped on a daily basis? I think you need a new strategy.
The constitution? Actually, yes.
The way it's currently being followed? Not so much.
The constitution isn't going to climb out from under that bullet proof glass in Washington and right wrongs like Batman. It takes diligence and sometimes sacrifice on the behalf of citizens to keep the country in line with the principles on which it was founded. We get the government we deserve, through out inaction, or through voting for free stuff rather than principles.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
This, interestingly, runs into the paradox of the heap. 10 grains of rice are not a heap. 11 grains of rice are not a heap. 12 grains of rice are not a heap... and adding grains of rice one by one is never going to end up in a case where X grains of rice are not a heap but X+1 grains of rice are. But now we have a problem, because 1000 grains of rice clearly are a heap! There must have been a switch somewhere from not-heap to heap, but it's somehow untraceable to any particular instance of rice adding.
The chicken is similar. The archaeopteryx clearly is not a chicken. Slowly, over the millennia, mutation by mutation, we eventually ended up with creatures that clearly are chickens. But when was the first time a non-chicken gave birth to a chicken? Just like in the case of the heap, we can't tell. What's more, not only can't we tell, there may not even be a fact of the matter; that is, it may be fundamentally unknowable.