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N. Carolina Senator Drafting Bill To Criminalize Apple's Refusal To Aid Decryption (arstechnica.com)
Ars Technica reports that North Carolina senator Richard Burr says he plans to introduce legislation "to criminalize a company's refusal to aid decryption efforts as part of a governmental investigation." In a USA Today op-ed, Burr, griping that "[t]he newest Apple operating systems allow device access only to users," even Apple itself can't get in," drags out the usual bugaboos: "Murderers, pedophiles, drug dealers and the others are already using this technology to cover their tracks."
Updated Friday 12:40pm EST: The Wall Street Journal reports Senate Panel Chief Decides Against Plan to Criminalize Firms That Don't Decipher Encrypted Messages
Updated Friday 12:40pm EST: The Wall Street Journal reports Senate Panel Chief Decides Against Plan to Criminalize Firms That Don't Decipher Encrypted Messages
Philandering senators.
Thirty four characters live here.
Apple is protecting itself from charge of Treason, something you yourself are guilty of.
The Constitution protects EVERYONE, not just "good people", but EVERYONE from unreasonable search and seizure.
It also allows EVERYONE to refuse to answer on the grounds that they might incriminate themselves.
When Apple configured it's devices so that they could not decrypt the phones themselves, they were ENFORCING those rights that you would so gladly trample all over.
I cannot wait until you, your traitorous cronies and the rest of the Congressional, Executive and Judicial branches are held accountable for their Treason and Traitorous activities since 9/11. We can fix the deficit by selling tickets to your executions (the punishment for Treason during a time of war).
Constitution doesn't apply anymore. Just meandering case law, executive orders, and things like Open Letters from the ATF
It's not like we really honored the US Constitution since the so-called "patriot act" after 911. Benjamin Franklin said it best: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." When will we learn?
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" - Einstein
When Tax rates (combined all government taxes/fees) exceeds 50%, I would suggest to you that we have indentured servitude. Just saying
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
So, here is the story:
The California government purchases an iPhone (hey it is designed in California!) for the terrorist they hired (notice how most news organizations and the president like to call him a mass shooter to further their agenda of gun control instead of a terrorist that they were?).
Being soooooo tech savvy, their IT department did not install away that allowed them (the gov) to access the phone that they owned and issued. It really seems that this whole encryption debate is design to mask the fact the the government is inept.
How may companies would issue a device they could not control?
Let's assume they could push an update just to that phone that lets the FBI in. Let's also assume that they drop their objections and do just this. Do you really think it'll be "just this one phone"? Do you think that other governments won't demand Apple let them into people's phones? Do you think Apple's update won't fall into a hacker group's hands who will use it to find exploits to get into any iPhone?
There is no such thing as "we'll just do it this one time". That's just the lie the federal government is telling to make themselves look reasonable in front of the judge until the next "just this one time" and the one after that, etc.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Like insurance, shouldn't you pay more for the protection of your property if you have more property to protect? As such, shouldn't the wealthy be paying a larger share of their income to taxes to protect their larger share of the benefit of government protection?
Your argument doesn't make sense. Of course the rich should pay more in taxes. But should they pay a higher percentage? Your "insurance" analogy does not support that. If I insure twice as much value, I pay twice as much, not three times as much.
Progressive taxation cannot be justified in terms of paying for services. It can only be justified if you believe that government should be an instrument of social justice.
There's other factors to consider. For one, income isn't exactly equal in terms of what it means. You might think a dollar is a dollar is a dollar, but a single dollar to a poor person has a lot more marginal value than it does to a billionaire.
There's a certain amount of income that's basically your core survival amount. For the sake of argument, let's say $15k (which may vary greatly). Taking money away here is going to seriously threaten your ability to just get by.
Then comes the next level, where you start to add in basic amenities, and minor luxuries like entertainment, saving money, the occasional vacation. Taking money from this amount doesn't threaten you, but it might lower the niceties that you can afford (maybe you only go out once a week to places like Chipotle rather than going out 2-3 times a week to a steakhouse). It's not the end of the world, but you notice.
Eventually, we get to the point where you're making so much money that the difference in amenities that more money will buy is approaching a ridiculous level, like a question of 187 diamonds encrusted on the steering wheel of your Yacht rather than 188. We're talking incomes into the millions of dollars here. At this point, you're not even going to notice an extra dollar, because it represents a tiny fraction of your income. And even if we start talking percentages of your income, the amount that you're foregoing may be staggeringly huge, but it has minimal real impact on your lifestyle. If I make $10 million a year, and I pay 10% more in taxes, that's a million more I pay - but I won't notice it the same way that someone making $50k notices losing an extra $5k. Moreover, at this level, I have lots of money I can afford to invest into making even more money.
So that's partly why progressive taxation can make sense, because of the marginal value of that income. But really, the core problem in many cases is that last sentence above, because the majority of wealth isn't in wage income. Really rich people make their money off investments, and capital gains is taxed far less than wage income, and it's definitely not indexed progressively (or at all).
Like insurance, shouldn't you pay more for the protection of your property if you have more property to protect? As such, shouldn't the wealthy be paying a larger share of their income to taxes to protect their larger share of the benefit of government protection?
Your argument doesn't make sense. Of course the rich should pay more in taxes. But should they pay a higher percentage? Your "insurance" analogy does not support that. If I insure twice as much value, I pay twice as much, not three times as much.
Progressive taxation cannot be justified in terms of paying for services. It can only be justified if you believe that government should be an instrument of social justice.
I'm not saying they should pay a higher percentage, but the reality is, according to the OMB the top 10% pay the lowest percentage of total income as taxes, while the lowest 20% pay the highest percentage of total income as taxes.
As for insurance, if you buy a car that cost three times as much as I do, you would expect to pay three times the insurance, assume the other factors being the same. And yet, with taxes, at least in the US, it does not work that way. Again, according to the government's own numbers, the more you earn, the percentage paid in taxes decreases. You often hear quoted that the top 10% pay 50% of the taxes and while that is true, that is talking about in dollars paid, not as a percentage of income. Since the OP was about the cumulative tax burden of local, state and federal, including sales taxes, the more you have, the less percentage of it you pay.
As for the government being an instrument of social justice or not, that has nothing to do with it. The US had it's best economic growth at the same time it had its highest income tax rates. What determines economic growth is the purchasing power of the middle class, not the poor or the wealthy. However, since the 1980s, the middle class has received the heaviest tax burden (as a percentage of income) and has dwindled. Contrast that with, say, Germany that has a strong middle class and a high tax burden. They have a robust economy, even with many social programs beyond what the US has.
Social spending isn't the drain, it is the accumulation of wealth by the very top few percentages that drains the economy. Money in the hands of the lower and middle classes is used predominately to purchase direct goods and services, therefore stimulating supply and demand. Everybody wins. However, in the hands of the wealthy, it tends to accumulate which means it is actually removed from the economy. In this way, it has the same effect as government borrowing and actually slows the economy.
If one million people go out and purchase a new refrigerator, that will create more jobs than one person buying a million dollar boat. In addition the wages paid for those jobs will further stimulate the purchase of goods and services upto seven times the original dollar amount.
Remember, prior to the 1980s, the United States had a progressive tax system and had it's greatest economic growth period. Since then, when the tax system was flattened, at the expense of the middle and lower classes, growth, outside of speculative ventures, has declined.
Liberal/progressives/socialists/etc know this but also know that giving amounts instead of percentages is an easy way to bring hate and anger and resentment to people.
One guy makes 10 thousand and his neighbor makes 100 thousand. Taxes get cut 5% across the board.
The guy thinks it's fair when he is told they both get to keep an extra 5% of their salary.
Alternatively
The first guy is told that he is being cheated by the rich. Instead of percentages, he is told that the rich guy gets a $500 tax cut and that he is only getting a $50 tax cut. The first guy is now angry and outraged and will want to vote someone in that will make that other guy suffer for screwing him over.
"The real problem is that the government's claim this is a one-time event is BS. There is no limitation preventing another judge on any other case from issuing a similar order to Apple."
**This** is the crux of the matter, ensuring it won't be used again or misused. As we've seen with the Patriot Act, the FBI misused those powers. So measure need to be taken to prevent misuse if Apple relents.