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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
Fix Unicode already.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
Ars might want to update its rewrite of the WSJ story. Burr isn't submitting the bill. http://www.wsj.com/articles/se...
Philandering senators.
Thirty four characters live here.
Timothy...what the F? What is (TM) and the "a" all over? Unreadable! The new owners need to do something about this.
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).
Have a special version of iOS that secretly has a backdoor. Record the conversations of politicians. Then start to anonymously trickle the most embarrassing ones out, while releasing an update to iOS that removes the backdoor.
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
I think the quote went something like this:
"I do, I offer a complete and utter retraction. The proposed legislation was totally without basis in fact, and was in no way competent, and was motivated purely by ignorance, and I deeply regret any distress that my comments may have caused you, or your family, and any other citizen and I hereby undertake not to submit any such nonsense at any time in the future."
But when someone intercepted, recorded and released an embarrassing conversation made by Newt Gringrich in Gainesville, FL after this law was passed, no one was prosecuted.
The people who taped the conversation were, in fact, prosecuted, and pled guilty to illegal wiretapping. see: http://www.nytimes.com/1997/04...
Or, for more details: http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/jba...
Aside from the issue that this is a really stupid policy, can we please stop paying attention when so-and-so introduces legislation? ninety-nine times out of a hundred Introducing legislation is a cheap stunt used to run for election, knowing that the legislation will be referred to a subcommittee and will never again see the light of day. It might as well be a press release.
only senators and outlaws will have iphones.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
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?
A few lessons on the 4th and 5th amendments...
First, self incrimination, i.e. the 5th amendment, has absolutely no bearing on this case. If a police officer, prosecutor, congressional tribunal, what-have-you, asks you a question that may be used to incriminate you of a crime, you have the right to say, "I plead the 5th." But your constitutional protections end there; they have every right to look for evidence that may incriminate you outside of your own self. In this matter, we have a phone. It's not a person. It is an object that presents itself as evidence, ergo it may be used as such.
Second, and more difficult to accept, the 4th amendment has no bearing on this case either. The 4th amendment protects an individual's right to be "secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects." It begins and ends with the individual. This phone was not unlawfully seized. It didn't even belong to the individual; it belonged to the company he worked for. And the company who owns the property surrendered it willingly to law enforcement. (Side tangent lesson: don't ever use a company phone EVER for anything other than business. It may be used against you for any crime.)
Third, I don't see how treason plays into any of this. Article III, section 3 defines treason as "levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort." The charges I believe Apple will be facing is Obstruction of Justice, as, from the perception of the government, they are interfering with an investigation. And, like it or not, current US law requires them to follow the court order, under 18 U.S. Code 2511, which reads, in part, "Providers of wire or electronic communication service...are authorized to provide information, facilities, or technical assistance to persons authorized by law to intercept wire, oral, or electronic communications or to conduct electronic surveillance, as defined in section 101 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, if such provider, its officers, employees, or agents, landlord, custodian, or other specified person, has been provided with a court order directing such assistance."
Apple is trying to set a new precedent, one I would consider a push-back for all the illegal surveillance the US Government has done over the last fifteen years. They are attempting to make digital-communication-evidence-gathering impossible if an individual so wills it. I don't know whether they'll be successful or not.
For the record, I am not a lawyer, but it's my country and my laws as much as the rest of yours, so I feel responsible to understand them.
Oh but it IS unreasonable search and seizure.
To appreciate this you have to step out of the context of this specific case and look at the bigger picture.
Keep in mind, any and all of that data you presuppose Apple has just lying around is something the Gubmint can very likely already obtain through a variety of legal mechanisms if they don't already have it.
It all hinges on what the Feds are seeking. If they just went to Apple, handed them the phone, and said "decrypt please" things might be different. If they said "THOU SHALT DECRYPT" based on whatever authority, it might be different. No, what they're asking for is that Apple provide them an alternative iOS firmware to deactivate the functionality of wiping the phone after so many bad password attempts. Then with this, the Feds can themselves simply brute force it and eventually hit upon the right password.
There may be valid reasons for approaching it this way. This may, for example, increase the sense of validity of the data procured from the phone since the Feds could demonstrate the methodology on any phone. It may also prevent accusations that Apple didn't provide real decrypted data but instead colluded with the Feds to create stuff. Maybe the Feds don't want Apple seeing the data. I imagine there may be other reasions as well.
Nonetheless, this request to create and deliver an alternative iOS is new and unwarranted. It's probably essentially unconstitutional/illegal. Legalize it's "compelling speech". In vulgar terms, it's slavery. And it grants the Feds to ability to do this to any other phone anytime they want. Next, it essentially reverses and undermines the entire functionality of the device whereby you have some measure of security that if your phone is lost or stolen, the data won't fall into others hands. Once this new alternative iOS is out there, it WILL be leaked. So this suffers from the same problem as almost all backdoor or key-escrow proposals that giving the Feds the backdoor opens it up for thieves as well.
Envy is such an ugly color on you.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
I call bullshit. Show me how to do this and I'll retract my statement and issue an apology.
Otherwise, tell me just exactly how would my wife and I could receive "$75,000 in benefits and credits". From who, from where, and how?
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
http://www.cato.org/publicatio...
Can't find anything to substantiate the $75K figure. . .
One backdoor against a dead man can be used against the living. It is *very much* a constitutional issue.
They can have my encryption when they outlaw all firearms.
What the hell does one have to do with another?
Until 1992, export of encryption from the United States (basically, any product or software using it had to be in-country only) was banned; classified on the US Munitions List as an "auxiliary military equipment." It wasn't just export, but there were regulatory hurdles regular products needed to go through. I remember using Netscape in the early 90s, and there was a "U.S. version" and an "international version," the latter of which included much weaker encryption, but getting the US version was such a pain in the ass that most people stuck with the international version.
So encryption was once classified as munitions, but while personal firearms never seem to get much regulation, strong encryption got a ban.
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.
That bill is proposing an ex post facto law which is explicitly barred by the US Constitution.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
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.
Since Sen. Richard Burr is clearly an expert on this (NOT). Apple should just hire him to do the work for the FBI. 1) Apple can now claim they have put an expert on the job. 2) Judge/FBI can't complain 3) The phone won't get cracked. Win/Win/Win :-)
Not quite ass-hole.
"It has not unlocked these iPhones — it has extracted data that was accessible while they were still locked. " http://techcrunch.com/2016/02/...
Do some research before looking like an ass-hole.
I got news for you, even the government has limits. WE have reached it. There are some things that are beyond government reach, accept it, dont condone abuse of the citizenry in your pursuit of perfect justice.
Good-bye