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Carole Adams, Mom Who Lost Son In San Bernardino Shooting, Sides With Apple (washingtontimes.com)
HughPickens.com writes: The Washington Times reports that Carole Adams, the mother of Robert Adams -- a 40-year-old environmental health specialist who was shot dead in the San Bernardino, Calif., massacre by Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife in December -- is siding with Apple in its battle to protect consumer's privacy rights. Adams says she stands by Apple's decision to fight a federal court order to create software that would allow federal authorities to access the shooter's password-blocked iPhone. She understands the FBI's need to search Farook's phone, but says it has to be done without putting others at risk. "This is what separates us from communism, isn't it? The fact we have the right to privacy," she told the New York Post. "I think Apple is definitely within their rights to protect the privacy of all Americans. This is what makes America great to begin with, that we abide by a Constitution that gives us the right of privacy, the right to bear arms, and the right to vote."
...as1) even as a capitalist I acknowledge that the Soviet bloc wasn't Communist; 2) the US is already way more intrusive than even the Stasi could have dreamed of... ...but that said, hoorah for Carole Adams! She GETS it. If you give the government free reign over the people, rather than the other way round - and the government uses "terror!" as justification - then the terrorists are getting exactly what they wanted.
I.e. to side with Apple is to carry on with the free lifestyle that makes America a less-than-despotic place to live; to side with the government is to kowtow to terror AND to encourage more of it, as terrorists will be strengthened by the knowledge that it works.
In the world of Facebook, who has privacy anymore?
The fact we have the right to privacy,
I seriously doubt that .
In her favor, her son was 40, so she is at least late 50s, if not much older. She grew up with the cold war and having to fight the dirty pinko bastards who spy on their own.
Silence is a state of mime.
It's a curious thing, but the U.S. Constitution is rather vague about a "right to privacy." There is no explicit right to privacy to be found anywhere in the Constitution or amendments. However, there's a long judicial history of interpretations and precedents that, in aggregate, creates something like a right to privacy. But, again, it is an implied right, not an explicit right, which is partly why we found ourselves in the present situation. A fun way to get a bunch of first-year law students in a twist is to propose a privacy amendment for the Constitution, then have them argue about what it actually means.
Would it make much difference? Could the things that Snowden revealed have taken place if an explicit privacy amendment had existed? (Many here would argue that the 4th amendment ought to have prevented it, so what good would another amendment do?) Would the FBI have much of an argument against Apple if such an amendment existed? Could Google do what it does and not run afoul of violating citizens' privacy rights, a la the "right to be forgotten" rulings in Europe? Could Roe v. Wade, which hinged heavily on an implied right to privacy, ever be overturned?
CA and NY have proposed legislation to require that phones have law enforcement backdoors to encryption turned on by default. FBI director James Comey has testified before Congress saying they need the ability to read encrypted communications over services like iMessage. I don't think the FBI is picking this fight because they need information about the San Bernardino shooter. They're making a scene because they want backdoors to all encryption. While they may not be able to see the contents of messages sent by the shooter, the can see the metadata and know who he was in touch with. They can see who the other shooter was in touch with, too. It's probably reasonable if there's any suspicion about any of their contacts to grant a search warrant. That might reveal some of the contents of the messages. I suspect the FBI can answer a lot of their questions through other means. I just don't think they're making this fuss because they care so much about this one shooting. I suspect this is done to push their agenda of getting backdoors in all encryption. I shouldn't have to explain to this audience why that's an awful idea.
I know it's extremely unlikely you'll ever see this, but - thank you.
It's easy for those of us who haven't experienced a loss like this to weigh in with our opinions. In all honesty, I think these sorts of subjects are best discussed dispassionately, as much as possible. But, having said that, it takes a lot of character and wisdom to see what's important and to stand for your principles in a matter that has impacted you in such a horrible, tragic way.
Thank you.
#DeleteChrome
implied argument that underlie this story, that one of the victims or victim's family has a morally superior right/claim over others(which includes both other victims or possible future direct or indirect victims) on the choice of legal process and procedure, is simply wrong.
btw just to be clear, i support apple's stance on this issue on principle.
In the sense of "Russia" (meaning the USSR) and East Germany and their extensive spying on their own citizens, then yes.
She grew up in an era where it was common to conflate communism (the economic system) with poverty and an Orwellian government such as the USSR. She likely learned it that way in school.
The security is just something you get because someone cannot try 30 million combinations in minutes on your iPhone because he has to wait a few seconds between each trial and is limited in the number of trials before cracking the iPhone becomes useless due to data deletion.
Achille Talon
Hop!
Please understand that this is a 60-year-old or so woman. She grew up with the Cold War. Don't hold this woman to the standards that you would someone who has learned about systems of government from textbooks. To her, communist is a synonym for authoritarian. Communists were all about "papers, please" and preventing their citizenry from critique or even travel.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
But has any communist government ever respected rights? No.
I am not sure Cuba's government has the appropriate infrastructure to invade its citizen's privacy
Public behavior is watched through local groups, but that is not enough to spy private life
Please understand that this is a 60-year-old or so woman. She grew up with the Cold War. Don't hold this woman to the standards that you would someone who has learned about systems of government from textbooks. To her, communist is a synonym for authoritarian. Communists were all about "papers, please" and preventing their citizenry from critique or even travel.
One of the grand flaws most people have is failing to understand an issue from any point of view other than their own.
You do not have this issue, you have put yourself in this woman's shoes and seen the light from her angle.
And the FBI can have the NSA do that at will. They are simply using this as leverage to make things easier for them in the future.
It would be wise to remember that Americans began to question authority and their own government in large numbers in the 60's.
Perhaps that reckoning is just as influential as any lessons ingrained during the Cold War.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
I think Apple is definitely within their rights to protect the privacy of all Americans.
We're now in a world where a for-profit corporation (two, if you count Google) is directly battling the US Government to protect human rights. I'm don't know if there's even a term to describe this political/societal situation.
Provided the iPhone is San Bernardino's county property, the privacy issue is nullified. Apple should stop playing the wrong game here and give the FBI what it asks for in this particular case, given everyone knows Apple's security is an illusion anyway. To crack a 4 digit password by brute force attack you simply need to have the delay between attempts set to 0 and the code wiping the data on the iPhone being neutralized. Which is a two lines of code modification in the firmware. No magic here. WIth a 4 digit password using potentially 75 different characters (upper/lower case + number + special characters) you have to try 30 million combinations at most. Something that can be easily done without any specialized hardware or on-steroids computer.
The security is just something you get because someone cannot try 30 million combinations in minutes on your iPhone because he has to wait a few seconds between each trial and is limited in the number of trials before cracking the iPhone becomes useless due to data deletion.
They already likely have the meta data and all history of calls/tests to/from that number. Isn't that enough?
When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail
How ironic that this article is in the This Day on /. box.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Everyone here appreciates your standing up for America's right to privacy and safety. Even the ones who nitpick about your using "communism" as a synonym for "authoritarian".
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
...saying - she's correct.
That IS what made America a great country. That we weren't such cowards that we traded liberty for a false sense of security.
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Provided the iPhone is San Bernardino's county property, the privacy issue is nullified. Apple should stop playing the wrong game here and give the FBI what it asks for in this particular case, given everyone knows Apple's security is an illusion anyway.
This isn't about the San Bernardino shooter's privacy, it's about other iPhone customers' privacy (and by extension, all citizens who would like to be secure in their pap-- use encryption)
To crack a 4 digit password by brute force attack you simply need to have the delay between attempts set to 0 and the code wiping the data on the iPhone being neutralized.
Which is why Apple made prevented this from happening on their device through firmware, while simultaneously requiring that to be signed by Apple.
The security is just something you get because someone cannot try 30 million combinations in minutes on your iPhone because he has to wait a few seconds between each trial and is limited in the number of trials before cracking the iPhone becomes useless due to data deletion.
Kind of at odds with what you said earlier, don't you think? Let's take a look again:
Apple's security is an illusion anyway
It's hardly an illusion if it would take literal years to brute force, and only then if you didn't enable the option to auto-wipe your phone after x number of unsuccessful attempts. How is that illusory at all?
They already likely have the meta data and all history of calls/tests to/from that number. Isn't that enough?
And probably more, judging by the reports of "accidental" or "automated" collection of data, which they do not include as surveillance. To answer your question, though, no, that is not enough, because that is nominally illegal.
History has taught us that communism leads to poverty and Orwellian government control. The former is a consequence of removing the incentive for innovation & hard work, the latter is necessary to enforce a planned economy and to prevent an uprising once the population notices that the grass sure looks greener on the capitalist side of the fence.
Furthermore, as I have posted in earlier topics, the terrorists destroyed their personal phones, but didn't feel the need to destroy this one. This was a work phone owned by the employer and probably only was used for work purposes. The whole thing is a fishing expedition that Apple is turning into a marketing event. The 'evidence' was on the phones that have already been destroyed.
In the sense of "Russia" (meaning the USSR) and East Germany and their extensive spying on their own citizens, then yes.
She grew up in an era where it was common to conflate communism (the economic system) with poverty and an Orwellian government such as the USSR. She likely learned it that way in school.
With all due respect to the KGB and the Stasi, I think organisations like the NSA and it's various friends and allies around the world have developed information gathering capabilities the KGB and Stasi could not even have dreamt of for the simple reason that they would not have been able to conceive of a future where such things were possible. Comparing what the NSA and co. are doing to the Soviet/E-German mass surveillance systems is like comparing a 1975 Ford Escort with a Tesla Model X.
Can you provide a list of these, please?
Maybe this woman understands how authoritarianism is an inevitable consequence of communism.
That's because one inevitably leads to the other. She went to a good school.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Apparently the government has asked Apple to undertake a very exhaustive and expensive effort to develop new software to enable breaking the encryption. In essence, the government wants this done gratis and the programmers would be paid by Apple and not the government. It might also mean hiring some very special engineers and perhaps mathematicians to do this work. Since when can the US government point a finger and demand work? It does strike me as being fascist. Further Apple would lose a great deal of business with people in other nations as they really don't want their phones wide open to US spy agencies.
Because the FBI is trying to play on emotion and sympathy for the victims and their families to get what it wants. They made her opinion relevant by trying to use her in that sympathy ploy.
As opposed to Joe McCarthy and J Edgar?
Don't hold this woman to the standards that you would someone who has learned about systems of government from textbooks.
Communism has always sounded much more viable when described in a textbook than when implemented in practice.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
IF you guys in the USA want the government 100% access to your gadgets, passwords, bank accounts and all other accounts and family settlements then why not set up some sort of constitutional amendment? HOW EASY WOULD THAT BE?
Of course you could continue as the USA and GB are doing and get the data anyway by hook or crook and fudge.
A tipping moment for you guys. Obviously going to the Supreme Court. (Watching with cynical interest.)
Are you saying the both regimes are like tin buckets with four rubber wheels on them that when working have the utility value of transportation.... but when there was a problem with the KGB or Stassi it was possible to address the problem with tools you could find in your garage and without any special education where the NSA would have to be re-engineered by a room full of Ph.D.s speaking in a language nobody else understands?
You're a deep and confusing person aren't you?
Norway
If you know and have talked with people that lived in the USSR in it's heyday, you know that she's right. People didn't have privacy in that society. When the concept of private property went out of style, so to did the concept of personal privacy - not just privacy from the government, but from others as well.
My parents left England partially due to the lack of privacy, not from the government but from the neighbours. While there is some small truth to the saying that if you have nothing to hide, the government won't bother you, that is not true for the common people who will shame you for the smallest transgression such as not keeping your steps well enough scrubbed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
She's probably about my age or a bit older than I. I am 58. The realization that our government wasn't always being honest, on a more public level of awareness, was probably the start of this. But, the contrast would be that it was bad in the US but it was the status quo in less-free societies. It's not okay when either government does it but it is even worse when it is a government that professes not to or even violates it laws to do so. They're two separate things and not a distinction without difference.
At least that's my view of that. I imagine that there's some further refinement as to how she was at the time. Was she a part of the counter-culture or was she a square? That would color their views. Given that many things are entirely subjective or not-concrete (like the believed definition for communism) it's not easy to say where she got the views in the first place. I imagine it might be a bit complex but it's true that the age has a bit to do with it, as will situational awareness, and environment/locale.
I am not a head-doctor or sociologist. So, I can only throw out what I think of and imagine that it's somewhat similar given the similarities in age. Hmm... One difference would be that my kids came around when I was older and I enlisted. I was kind of a square. I got better.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
You're pretty confused aren't you?
... that is of course if you want to buy that $0.39 cheese burger or if you want to get service at that restaurant. Those people need medicine and food. If they can't afford it with our help, they'll instead run themselves into debt which becomes acceptable since when a person feels they can't make ends meet no matter how much they work, they will take on debt and default on it with a clear conscience since they feel like it's no different than bending the rules on a game which is designed specifically to keep them from winning. So, they resort to the "white lie" version of stealing. And instead of trying to solve this problem, we instead treat them with resent and bitch that because "if they wanted more than $7.50 an hour, they should have studied" when in reality, if they did, they would be taking our jobs and nobody would be there to ask us if we want fries with that.
First of all, you have no idea what a republican or what communism is... that's ok... 99% of the people in the world don't.
American republicans have pretty much absolutely nothing to do with what a republican is. In fact, a republican and a communist is almost the same thing. Compare Marx and Plato's writings and you'll find they're very similar by Plato comes dangerously close to Scientology at times.
I am for example a communist... and I am a capitalist. I earn as much money as I need and then quite a bit more to pay large amounts of taxes to attempt to redistribute wealth so the guy working at the gas station around the corner for minimum wage will have additional money to live closer by or afford the higher cost of commuting to work. I don't resent him for not trying harder to be more in life. If everyone did, then who would run the gas station which I need. So, I need him to be satisfied collecting the salary his boss pays him while my tax money helps subsidize his income to make him feel motivated enough to do a good job without fear of greater monthly debt.
Welfare is an incredibly important component of civilization. I makes it possible for all of us to benefit. In order for my personal wealth to increase, the general value of said wealth needs to decrease through inflation. Therefore as I earn more, the money I "borrowed" when I was younger will be less expensive for me to pay as I get older. The lower earning classes will continue to be paid less and their ability to negotiate better wages will impede their ability to increase at the same rate as the people like me. They also won't accumulate as much legitimate debt that will leave them with assets increasing in value while the debt decreases. As such, they will never establish themselves and will always require our assistance to provide the services we need like washing the car, mowing the lawn, cleaning the house, etc...
So we pay welfare which is basically paying the wages we should have payed at the cash register to Walmart but instead, we trust the government to pass the additional cost to the people who work at Walmart more than we trust Walmart who actually pays dividends each quarter roughly equal to the amount of welfare being paid to their employees. By doing so, we produce more jobs... at walmart... requiring more welfare to be paid... to allow higher dividends to be paid... to produce more jobs.... etc...
The truth is, whether you support communism and wealth redistribution or not, it will happen all the same
Either you choose to structure a system which supports keeping these people fed, healthy and hopefully with enough money that they can in fact budget it and make do... or you force them into higher paying position leaving the service industry stripped of the labor.... or you leave it as it is, with millions of people digging deeper debt... systems tightening the nooses on them... people being forced more and more into desperation and desperate acts... then people going to prison for trying to steal money to buy milk for their hungry babies... then you can pay to support the p
No, no, the red peril is the best part of this! It was perfect.
Nothing undermines the government better than associating their behavior with that of totalitarian communism. It's so perfect because the irony is like kryptonite -- the security state always uses protecting freedom and the American way as their justification and mission, they can't possibly doing something in contradiction to their mission, can they?
It's like the Star Trek episode with Nomad, where their give it an illogical problem to solve and it self destructs.
This woman is either a idiot savant, or she's a political genius who should have run for office, because it's a transcendent response that manages to be both right (America's freedom IS what is/was made it great) and manages to smear the government in a way that appears to be a factual assessment, not a smear.
When I was younger, it was still in the middle of the Cold War. I took a couple of years worth of political science. During that time, we were taught that the government was made up of the people, that anyone was equal in power, that the power was shared equally among the people and the people controlled the economy and the government - thus, the State, which was the people, controlled the economy and owned the means of production. The key was that the people were the government and that, ideally, that control should not be seated in one group or one small group but a shared responsibility. E.g. as you might see in a 'commune.'
Everyone would have equal power and equal ownership. Everyone would have equal representation and control - as much as any other. Anyone was everyone and all people were considered equal (and the USSR's problem was that some were more equal than others, among other things). That really was the important part, the State was no more powerful than the people, it was the people. They were to be given no more power than a commoner, that the power was in the hands of the collective and all were a part of the collective. To each according to his needs, from each according to his ability. That sort of things...
So, dunno... That's what we learned but I hear so many people describing it in so many different ways, so many different rules, so many different views, so many different interpretations, and I think the definition might have changed and nobody actually told me the differences in it now. The important bit, the most important bit, was that the whole was equal - government was powerful but only as powerful as the collective and government was not to benefit personally from it, really. At least not individually. That whole "commune" thing in the name and all...
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Communism has always sounded much more viable when described in a textbook than when implemented in practice.
This. The problem with communism is that it goes completely against the inherently selfish nature of humans. And no, you can't change people to be more accepting of it. Every single time it has been tried, it has failed. (With the possible exception of China, but who really wants to live there?) There will always be those among us who strive for greatness, not to serve humanity at large, but because of self-interest. It is this desire that has led to much of human progress. The problem with communism is that it brings everybody down to the same shitty level. There's no incentive to become a neurosurgeon if you can make just as much money working as a cashier.
Capitalism is the worst economic system, except for all the others.
With Communist governments being the most notable recent example of this happening on a grandiose scale, she is 100% correct in calling privacy as what separates us from them.
Indeed. And she will have been told that "communism" means "no personal freedom and no privacy". A few decades earlier she might have heard the same thing about fascism. Important thing is that she understands privacy is important and that the FBI (and others) are threatening it. And that she speaks up about it.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Indeed. Not really less propaganda in the "free" world, only more freedom to ignore it if you notice what is going on.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
She's not "brainwashed". She lived through (or just shortly after) both Stalin and Mao. That communism does not necessarily imply authoritarianism is purely academic - anyone who lived through the cold war can certainly be forgiven from learning that the two seemed to go together in practice. Perhaps this woman seems ignorant to a poli-sci major. She probably feels the same way about ivory tower types with no sense of reality.
In any event, whether she used the words "authoritarian" or "communist", her meaning is unambiguous. She communicated her opinion effectively, and that is the main purpose of language.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Psst. "Enemy of the people" = "Enemy combatant". New labels, same meaning.
If you can update the OS to run arbitrary code without the owner of the phone doing anything, then you can just disable the password entirely. It looks like remote software updating renders ALL security measures worthless.
Yes, they have much better tech for it now than KGB and Stasi did. Worse, they are developing a taste for using it en masse now. The NSA and FBI are doing their best to turn us into the once hated commies.
Sweden.
On a somewhat related note, I'm thinking about joining the Swedish Communist Party, just to piss off the Stas---er, NSA.
Ett spöke går runt Europa - kommunismens spöke. Alla gamla Europas makter har ingått en helig hetsjakt mot detta spöke... Proletärer i alla länder, förena er!
After more than a century, in any language, those words still scare the almighty shit out of the privileged class. I love it.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Fuck karma.
I'm guessing he's about 13, thinks he's clever, and he's apparently stuck in that wonderful moment when Junior or Missy first learns the word "No" that usually occurs around age 3.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Apparently not.
Achille Talon
Hop!
Obvioously you haven't read enough about the case. What the FBI is asking is not to install a backdoor or whatever on every iPhone sold by Apple. They are asking to break this one by modifying the firmware to enable them to crack the password without wiping the data or taking over 2 years to do so. You are generalizing this to every iPhone customer in the world while it has nothing to do with it. This trick to work need physical access to the device, something FBI is having.
Achille Talon
Hop!
Can you tell us where you get this idea FBI is playing on emotion and sympathy? They have a case to resolve and need access to data, that's it, that's all. They want access to this particular iPhone and need Apple to modify the firmware for THIS particular iPhone which can then be breached by a brute force attack requiring physical access to the device. There is nothing here about emotion and sympathy for the victims. In fact, there is no need for anyway. They are not asking Apple to modify all the iPhone in the world and introduce a backdoor in the firmware of all the iPhone. They are asking for this very particular iPhone which is property of the San Bernardino's County anyway.
Achille Talon
Hop!
Methinks wbr1 was, perhaps, simply using the terminology that was popular when Carole Adams was old enough to be forming her world view. That's a valid use of the slang, to color the context of the conversation with the likely viewpoint from which the person in the story made their comment.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Yes and to break the same code with only 10 tries is considerably more difficult and correspondingly more secure.
Since apple CAN break it, they will and probably should break it eventually.
However- they should make future versions of their operating system which they CANNOT break. And when the government says they must break it, then they can honestly reply, "We can't any more."
Security agencies try after every incident to get back doors into encrypted systems-- even when it later always turns out encryption wasn't used.
For example, in the case of Paris- the author of the attack stated months before in an ENGLISH LANGUAGE magazine that he intended to launch a terrorist attack on Paris. And then they implemented the plan using SMS (encrypted with ROT26... lol). And the security agencies failed.
This is not about finding terrorists. There's too much noise for them to know what's real, what's trolling, what's bullshit, etc. They can't chase every lead.
But it would be excellent for surveilling their own citizens.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
I had a conversation the other day with two brothers. One is a doctor that works for the CDC, the other is a college professor of philosophy. The subject of healthcare came up, and they both told me we need to move to single payer. They said people couldn't comprehend the multitude of health insurance option available to them so we needed to create a law that simplified it with a one size fits all solution. I said "so basically you're saying that Americans are too dumb to decide for themselves what is in their best interests." They both instantly exclaimed that that was correct. We are doomed. It's like that Simpson's episode where the "smart" people are put in charge of the town, and proceed to ruin it. Or just think of them as the pigs from animal farm.
I am asking this with the utmost of sincerity; do you have a blog or newsletter I can follow? Is there somewhere other than Slashdot where I can read your musings? And why have I not encountered you before tonight and, now, have seen and replied to two of your posts?
:P
It seems we have very similar, but different enough to be interesting, views. I'd love to toss political and economic ideals back and forth with you, in a civilized manner, if you're up for it; you can find my email above.
For the record, I decided I was going to write this reply before I looked at the author line and saw that this was written by you; I swear I'm not stalking
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Is this still Slashdot? Have I entered the wrong URL? Two reasonable posts in a row?
Is this whipslash's doing?
This is the Slashdot I remember (well, so is all the trolling, and that's still here... this positive discourse is what has been missing for some time) from a decade past. Thank you for that, guys, both of you.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
There's almost no system possible that is less communist than the theocratic oligarchy that Americans currently live in. You really should look up what "communist" means.
It is still appropriate to conflate communism with poverty and orwellian governments. History and reality have not changed. What has changed is the political makeup of the education system. If one is taught by communists, obviously negative experiences will be left out of the curriculum.
I think the ideal is some form of capitalistic communism. I'm not sure quite what that would look like; perhaps it would look much like what we have in the US today, but without all the outcry against welfare programs. I'd be interested to see the idea discussed, though.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Nah, they still wouldn't have had the contents of the phone until after they confiscated it, after the shootings.
Tautology: Whether or not something you don't have is encrypted has no bearing on whether or not you can use the thing you don't have; therefore, the contents of the phone the FBI didn't have before the shootings would have been just as useless in preventing the shootings if there were stored in plaintext.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Weird, because I had a conversation the other day with two conservatives where we were talking about whether poor people should be made to die in the street like animals if they come down with a dangerous but treatable disease, and they both said
You know what, never mind. I was going to do the same thing you did and make up a really obvious lie intended to prove a point about what I think "those people" think except for a different value of "those people" in the hopes of showing you how ridiculous it looks, but it's not worth the effort and you probably wouldn't have understood what I was doing anyway. I'll be more to the point: We all know this didn't happen, because you did not construct the lie very well. People who believe in single payer aren't pulling for it because they believe that the current health insurance system is somehow incomprehensible. That point of view just does not exist. If you're going to pretend you had a conversation with someone and you want other people to believe you, you have to claim that your conversational partner said things that they reasonably might have said rather than what you really want for them to have said to reinforce your views.
If only there was someone in charge that we could blame and hold accountable for the action of the NSA and FBI. Problem is, most of the people here voted for that person, so that's not really a possibility.
Probably just his email, which they could likely get from his ISP or mail provider, assuming they know who that is. In all likelihood, it's Google, Yahoo!, or Microsoft.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Today, in our world we still have a nation that spying their citizen. Like North Korea
They have a case to resolve? Really? The people that were shot are dead, the people that did the shooting are dead, sounds like it resolved itself to me and, it would seem, the families of the victims agree.
What is there to gain by accessing the work phone of one of the shooters? The personal phones, where any evidence would reside, were destroyed and, ignoring that, the people the FBI is seeking to punish are, I'll repeat myself, already dead. Pursuing this past that is a simple waste of resources, unless they're angling for something else.
Like, oh, hmm, I dunno... setting a precedent for forcing companies to disable security features of their products and making encryption backdoors a hell of a lot more attractive to the masses who don't know any better, just as an example.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Yes, and much like games consoles, the device is designed to resist hacking attempts even by someone who has physical access - and for exactly the same reason. The best technicians the government has might be able to carefully open up a chip enclosure in a cleanroom and find the right places to apply probes, but they'd risk destroying it in the attempt.
My parents left England partially due to the lack of privacy, not from the government but from the neighbours.
That sounds... extreme. Dickhead neighbours exist everywhere in the world. Generally one doesn't need to move quite that far from them.
that is not true for the common people who will shame you for the smallest transgression such as not keeping your steps well enough scrubbed.
Social pressure cuts both ways. It's that social pressure that also stops many front yards looking like a hoarder lives there.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Can they even do that? I don't see why apple would be making a fuss if it were just about the terrorists phone. Aren't the FBI asking for all iPhones to be back-doored so that they can get easy access in the future.
Sounds like a judge who doesn't understand the tech just asked Apple to ruin the lock to the phone, it wouldn't just be the government who could unlock any phone, hackers would likely learn also how to unlock any phone.
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
So now Govern.org taking bait of deceased child's mother and family. Very bad move
Capitalism v communism is one spectrum. Perhaps a more useful lens to view this through is one of totalitarianism v a free society. Government agencies using backdoors seems like it skews towards the totalitarian side of the spectrum.
Attorney: Unlikely Malik could 'carry a weapon or wear some type of a vest or do any of this' ref
Read Daily Mail Online. People there still get reamed for offenses of this kind.
I disagree entirely with the cynical 'marketing' viewpoint. Apple's CEO spent decades keeping his sexual preferences and personal life private. I think he understands the value of privacy far better than the average person.
It's a shame that the DOJ is asking specifically for Apple to create something that, once created, could be used to attack the innocent. Had they made a less specific request, there might not be this problem. Yesterday, I posted a submission (http://slashdot.org/submission/5584621/how-apple-can-strike-a-balance-between-the-needs-of-the-doj-and-its-customers) suggesting that maybe we can help them come up a technological solution that balances everyone's needs. If you care about privacy, please take a second to click the link and vote up the submission so that more people will see it, on the off chance that the idea will make its way to the right person and actually allow them to resolve this conflict.
The presumption is that apple can update the OS running in the phone in a way that it circumvents the cryptography in the phone, i.e. disables the HW mechanism securing the key storage.
There are several options:
a) the keystore mechanisms (which i would have supposed to be on a lower level) ignores such a change.
a1) the keystore mechanism accepts "signed binaries" as OS (like TPM does), which makes the request to apple less a "make changes to the OS" but more a "sign off the changes for us"
b) it does not ignore it - and deletes the key. (This could be done if everything is really happening inside the SoC and runs on an independent machine/microcontroller, very much like the HW token on you bank chip card).
If a) is true (and i suppose it is, since otherwise Apple could openly state that just replacing the OS is impossible), then the mechanism of deleting the key store after a given amount of attempts is completely worthless against state-level actors (Which is my Hypothesis all along) - FBI is not a state-level actor since they are pretty much tied up by laws. Which makes this case just a case of marketing (in both directions!)
If a1) is true, it's more interesting. Signing a code as "non-malicious" and "conforming to the description of the device" is less a technical service, but has more implications. It's not about "i help you to find the position in the binary to set the limit to 1 billion attempts" but it's more the "i sign that devices accepting this binary will follow the specifications i promised, even though i know that this is not true". And as apple said, would such a signed version get out in the wild (and it would, since lawyers of possible defendants who phone with the owner of the phone could request access to it to verify that it does what it says), all iphones in the world are open to manipulation.
The real point (and that is the same as with TPM/UEFI boot): would you give the power to sign off/approve changes to his device completely to the user, then you would never run into this problem.
The discussion right now is about a company who love to control everything on their devices - and doesnt even think about giving this choice to the user - but now is not willing to accept the consequences).
If her opinion as an involved party is irrelevant then your opinion as a yap-flapper on Slashdot is even less than irrelevant. It's a waste of electrons' time. Won't someone think of the electrons?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The problem arises from a totalitarian society, which can exist at both extremes, whether is is left or right. We saw this in the USSR, but we also saw this with Hitler's Germany. In certain way we are seeing elements of this in the current UK system, which while not being far right has an extrodinary amount of monitoring.
Getting the balance of freedom and checking for dangerous societal elements is hard, but important if we aren't to slip into constant oversight and control.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Make the Feds eat their own dog food: anytime a phone is within DC or owner has a .gov email address turn on the mic dor all to hear. Maybe then they would understand why customers need privacy. Go Tim Cook and Apple!!
Can someone explain to me why this is an issue at all? The FBI is not asking Apple to create a backdoor to encryption, they want a firmware update for this specific phone to bypass the pin lockout/self-destruct features. They have asked Apple to tailor it to this specific device, if the FBI were to try and change the code to use it on other phones it would effectively break Apples digital signature and be useless on other devices (or so I've heard).
I love it when people defend our current health care system. The abomination that is our current system is utterly indefensible. If we had set out to create such a fucked up system we could not have achieved it. The levels of stupidity, inefficiency, and insanity which are present in every single facet of our health care system boggle the fucking mind. There is no one left in America who does not know someone personally who is going/has gone bankrupt due to medical bills. So defending this system when so many people are suffering under it is the absolute height of willful ignorance. But then again willful ignorance is the hallmark of our age. There are no people left in America who are "ignorant" about such things. Which is why arguing with people about whether global warming/climate change is real or man-made is so futile. Americans have become so cynical that hardly anyone gives a flying fuck about any so-called truth.
I guess what kills me the most is not that so many Americans are willfully ignorant about so damned much, for frankly the "truth" is about as relevant as my asshole, but that willful ignorance absolves one of any culpability for any basic level of personal honesty or integrity. Now of course willful ignorance is almost synonymous with "opinion", and everyones got one right? If I meet someone who face to face lies to me about shit they know is true they simply will never get to know me, their loss. I don't argue with them, not anymore, they don't respect themselves enough to be worth it. We may not agree with one another on suggested solutions(single-payer vs. x number of alternatives), but defending what we currently have ?really? I won't engage in that kind of intellectual dishonesty, and you can call it an opinion, but we know what it is. Maybe someday you'll join us, looking forward to getting to know you.
But having said all that, one of the greatest freedoms is the freedom to be full of shit. And I am mighty glad that we have that freedom, for if it were not for the right to be full of shit, there would be remarkably little humor in the world and we would be poorer for it. So instead of walking around with hatred towards my fellow Americans, most of the time, I succeed in realizing that there is just a very fashionable level of bullshit which has become normative, and I allow humor to overcome my anger and simply laugh at that for which it is-bullshit.
I had a conversation the other day with two brothers. One is a doctor that works for the CDC, the other is a college professor of philosophy. The subject of healthcare came up, and they both told me we need to move to single payer. They said people couldn't comprehend the multitude of health insurance option available to them so we needed to create a law that simplified it with a one size fits all solution. I said "so basically you're saying that Americans are too dumb to decide for themselves what is in their best interests." They both instantly exclaimed that that was correct. We are doomed. It's like that Simpson's episode where the "smart" people are put in charge of the town, and proceed to ruin it. Or just think of them as the pigs from animal farm.
Well, aside from your story being entirely unverifiable, let's try portraying the story in another way. Let's say the brothers had responded by saying "No, we're saying the health insurance system is obscuring people's ability to choose what really matters, the medical care they receive, in an effective manner. However, it's not like choosing actual medical treatment is easy. When do you need one pill versus another? When do you simply need to rest? What surgical method is best? What surgeon should you employ? Sometimes you aren't even in a position to choose. How many people are brought into emergency care while unconscious?
And I haven't gotten into the worst part of it. Many of the entities in the healthcare system are actors who are engaged in less the salutary conduct. Maybe not quite as bad as the patent medicine days, but far more sophisticated and devious. Some doctors aren't even quite as compassionate as they could be, or they're indifferent or just plain unconcerned with anything other than what benefits them.
Beyond that, the number of people who smoke and drink, or who eat poorly, show that continues to be a problem.
Sorry, but when it comes down to it, we're all subject to a level of dumbness, or a lack of sufficient smarts to deal with a very complicated problem all on our own, and you know what? The current system in America is TERRIBLY broken. As I was saying to someone in a doctor's office the other day, Bernie Sanders doesn't have to say it'll be free, he can just point out that we're already spending 8,000 dollars per capita on health care, so why aren't we getting results we find satisfactory? How can we make it better?
Maybe fire some of the paper-pushers.
Your riposte tells me you might not be aware of just how much the commies spied on their own.
The Stasi are just one example of a practice that is/was a hallmark of all communist states.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi
These guys didn't abuse their power, their entire purpose was to take snitching and spying on your own to an industrial level.
Comparing current US security institutions' spying to commie spying can be rightfully construed as insulting to the employees of said institutions.
The woman is spot on.
What I could never understand was the people who under the old insurance system who actually beleived they had coverage. It didn't seem to matter that tens of thousands of insured Americans had to declare medical bankruptcy every day because their insurance didn't cover them. Some people still beleived their insurance would cover them.
It would be wise to remember that Americans began to question authority and their own government in large numbers in the 60's.
Questioning our government started with the Revolution.
Intron: the portion of DNA which expresses nothing useful.
People arenâ(TM)t inherently selfish. Iâ(TM)m very generous to my family and friends. Iâ(TM)m even sufficiently generous that I donâ(TM)t grumble too much at my taxes because I know that other people need that money. I donâ(TM)t want to be the sort of person that denies the needy when I can afford to help.
But thereâ(TM)s a matter of scale and community at work here. Iâ(TM)m not so generous that I want to give you money (sorry). I donâ(TM)t know you. I donâ(TM)t even know where you live. You may not have my best interests at heart, or you may actively be a danger to me and the people I care about.
Humans work very well collaboratively, but in smallish groups where we can align our priorities. Once things get too big, we have to use a proxy (government, bureaucracy) to get anything done at all.
What, no "...and they want us to die. Want us to die"? Didja have a late night or something?
Apple should stop playing the wrong game here and give the FBI what it asks for in this particular case, given everyone knows Apple's security is an illusion anyway.
You are probably the only one who doesn't realise how stupid it is what you are saying. If Apple's security "is an illusion", then what the fuck is the FBI doing, asking them to unlock that phone?
If you can update the OS to run arbitrary code without the owner of the phone doing anything, then you can just disable the password entirely. It looks like remote software updating renders ALL security measures worthless.
Arbitrary code cannot decode the data on your phone. Nothing can decode the data on your phone without the passcode.
Also: It is _unknown_ whether Apple could create an update for the firmware or not. At the moment Apple doesn't have such an update and fights the idea that they have to _try_ to. There seems to be no way to update the firmware on an iPhone remotely. And there is no way for anyone other than Apple to create such an update, and Apple refuses, with good reason.
Please understand that this is a 60-year-old or so woman. She grew up with the Cold War..
Your childish arrogance is unbelievable. And your stupidity as well, because what she said is absolutely correct: Respect for its citizens, their security and their privacy is something that _should_ distinguish the USA from a communist country. What the FBI is asking for is actually something that a communist government would be asking for as well.
We came by this beautiful system of self-government not because it was perfect, but because we came from places that had other systems in place that worked less well.
Question authority: brought to you by the founders of your free (ish) nation. There is a lot of good to be said for government by representative assembly, but the recipe for fascism only requires that a government's convenience become more important than the rights of its citizens.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
She had my sympathy for the loss of her child. She now has my admiration and respect for speaking out to protect the rights of everyone's children.
Oh I'm sure East German surveillance traumatised the world's most powerful woman, Angie Merkel. Which is why she was so upset when decades later an ally, and one of the "good guys", under a 3-letter-agency bugged her phone.
I merely take issue with the logical error of the form: All communists are tyrants ==> All tyrants are communist.
Right wingers too had their domestic intelligence agencies that inflicted some nasty vindictive behaviours upon their own people - Franco in Spain, Salazar in Portugal, the "dirty wars" in South America during the 70-80s lead by military thugs such as Pinochet. All of whom were allies of the USA during the cold war.
i.e. I'm not excusing communism's infamy but "we", the west, didn't smell of roses either.
If the US government wins this fight, you can bet your bottom dollar they'll be making "drop your pants and grab your ankles" access to peoples' devices into law across every nation in the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership.
To say the implications are unsettling would be a gross understatement.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
As I said, partially. The main driver was probably economic, better chances of good jobs for them and their kids and not being stuck in a society where it was quite hard to change your social status. Just your accent being enough to peg you.
It was a lot easier to emigrate then as well. Different countries actually competing to get you to immigrate, at least if you were white Anglo-Saxon. They chose Canada and Canada gave them a grant in the form of an interest free loan to pay for the move.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
I work in IT, nevertheless NONE of my colleagues knew all the not so unimportant details of WTF FBI has actualy asked Apple to do, so here it is, just in case you also missed it:
FBI asked Apple to provide update that would:
1) Prevent the phone from erasing itself.
2) Allow to automate the process for trying out passcode combinations.
3) and without unnecessary delay.
4) and last, but not least: Control the process, but not know how it's done.
Source (BBC)
Now, pay attention to point 4.
FBI is fine with all that happening at Apple's HQ.
Where the FUCK did the "privacy concerns" come from, please? Would Apple itself leak that update? If so, couldn't they also somehow leak private key used to sign firmware updates?
1. Apple's reason for not breaking the phone is that the cops already would have access to it if they had not reset the lock code.
2. Apple is lying to us saying it is about privacy, when that has nothing to do with it.
3. This mom doesn't realize #1 and #2, so please disregard her comments.
As a former CALEA programmer, I remember that since 1996,all phone manufacturers have been required to allow this kind of of phone hacking.
Today, Apple and the FBI are playing a game to make the idiot criminals think iPhones can not be hacked by the Feds. LOL!
http://phys.org/news/2016-02-c...
In fact, the employer was paying for a software on the iPhone of its employees which enable him to unlock them anything he wishes. The only problem being the employer didn't install the software at all even if he was still paying the monthly fee for it.
And again, the article is pretty clear this case concerns only ONE iPhone.
Shame on you moderators of my arse.
Achille Talon
Hop!
i.e. I'm not excusing communism's infamy but "we", the west, didn't smell of roses either.
Yes, but there is one important thing. At first, West had the attitude about right-wing dictators "ok, he's a bastard, but it is our bastard". In ~70thies, West started to take care about human rights. Cynics would say that it was for propaganda reasons, as East was reasonably successful (early success in Space race, various unexpected technical achievements, many ex-colonies that decided to become socialist states...), so the human rights record was the thing where West was able to show its superiority. That led to West/USA not to care too much about various dictators any more, and let them go when their people decided that too much is too much. We don't necessary see it that way because what we all remember is Reagan/Thatcher duo that truly believed that supporting thugs like Pinochet gives them any good. In practice, all it gave them was a chance for liberal media to rightly joke on them.
No sig today.
That's just a giant straw man, because in the US, no one can be turned down for medical care. So shut your lying cowardly mouth.
Let's see some marches on Washington in support of that. I just don't think that's going to happen. The left has been exposed as unprincipled authoritarians, who are only concerned with getting the proper party in power.
Yes, that is indeed what I was trying to do with my pejorative statement. I fully agree thought that regardless of country or mode of government, most people are just trying to live under it as best they can. With their own views shaped by the powers and propaganda around them.
Silence is a state of mime.
Provided the iPhone is San Bernardino's county property, the privacy issue is nullified. Apple should stop playing the wrong game here and give the FBI what it asks for in this particular case,
Don't you mean the San Bernardino's county should give the FBI what it wants, since it's their fucking phone?
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
Every time you construct a massive generalisation of millions of people you might as well replace it with the following text:
"I do not understand nor care for logic. I am willing to say whatever I want in order to attempt to win an argument or make a point. I don't care if I am posting absolute nonsense - just me hammering out words is enough for me. Screw everyone who reads this".
You are not very good at thinking logically, clearly.
Why the name calling? I think we agree.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Shilling for 60 year old women who pay me to equate communism with authoritarianism, yes. You caught me.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
What a wonderfully vapid post. It has all the content required to be a sensible argument, but it boils down to "The STASI didn't have access to the internet of 2016". It says nothing about the NSA. Heck, pick a tiny little country which does a tiny little bit of internet surveillance and the results would be the same - they would also fit perfectly in your analogy in place of the NSA.
here.
Bullshit. Jonathan Gruber, widely recognized as a main "architect" of Obamacare, said the American public would NOT support the plan if they any clue about what it really was. Just saying. It's been, putting it *very* mildly. Me? A poor homeless fucker (with food stamps and bandwidth)? Fuck all you SJW's who act all high and mighty and sanctimoniously "compassionate." You don't really care any more about me than Hillary Cankles Clinton. Yet you try to portray the "average" conservative as evil and ignorant. "THEY" vote "Republican." Yeah? And you fucking libtards vote "Democratic." Stupid. Really stupid. All of you Red/Blue-voting ignoramuses. Big Brother doesn't care. Hope you enjoy your Soylent ... uh, purple.
You're gonna get the government you deserveâ"all the while pointing your hypocritical finger at the *other* party.
-- "I'm not in a hurry; I'm in Hawaii." The Homeless Guy
Bullshit. Jonathan Gruber, widely recognized as a main "architect" of Obamacare, said the American public would NOT support the plan if they any clue about what it really was. Just saying. It's been (putting it *very* mildly) spectacularly unsuccessful. Typically wasteful and inefficient. Woefully so. Me? A poor homeless fucker (with food stamps and bandwidth)? Fuck all you SJW's who act all high and mighty and sanctimoniously "compassionate." You don't really care any more about me than Hillary Cankles Clinton. Yet you try to portray the "average" conservative as evil and ignorant. "THEY" vote "Republican." Yeah? And you fucking libtards vote "Democratic." Stupid. Really stupid. All of you Red/Blue-voting ignoramuses. Big Brother doesn't care. Hope you enjoy your Soylent ... uh, purple.
You're gonna get the government you deserveâ"all the while pointing your hypocritical finger at the *other* party.
-- "I'm not in a hurry; I'm in Hawaii." The Homeless Guy
I'm shocked that you would have to ask this question at all. Have you seen the level of intelligence of the average American? Isn't the existence of the Kardashians or Honey Booboo or Duck Dynasty or Donald Trump as a Republican front-runner more than enough evidence for you? Americans, on average, are not at all intelligent, barely making it into double-digit IQs, and that average idiocy is force-multiplied by the fact that there are so many of us. I mean, Equatorial Guinea might have a much lower IQ, but there are fewer than a million of them, so the damage they can do to the rest of the world is quite limited. America is a global superpower, and the fact that a plurality can so easily be led by their basest instincts without any critical thought whatsoever has huge negative implications on the rest of the world.
Basic math tells us that single payer is more effective; basic economics tells us that for a product with intricate, expensive infrastructure in which everyone must participate by virtue of their biology (i.e. power, water, health care), a natural monopoly exists, and it is most efficient, and must be highly regulated. (and no, I did not say "perfectly efficient", or even "adequately efficient", simply "most efficient"). Anyone who claims health care in this country is anything close to a "free market" is a babbling idiot, so if it isn't a free market anyway, why isn't it a market that is structured to benefit the most people rather than the fewest?
That the average American doesn't know this, and will swallow the line that we should not move to single payer in America, even though it is working in EVERY SINGLE FIRST WORLD COUNTRY, providing roughly double the value at half the cost to the population because SOSHULIZM!!!! just boggles my mind and saddens me.
This comment is my opinion and does not represent an official position of Donald Trump or others I do not work for
Jeebus H. Fucking Kerist no it most certainly does NOT. For the love of The Flying Spaghetti Monster PLEASE go buy a fucking dictionary.
This comment is my opinion and does not represent an official position of Donald Trump or others I do not work for
What the FBI is asking is not to install a backdoor or whatever on every iPhone sold by Apple.
They kind of are. They (and the court) have said that Apple is obligated to help them access a locked and encrypted iPhone for which there is currently no access. The access to this is through means of a firmware backdoor, which the FBI and the court have said that Apple must create and implement.
It's not asking them to do it to every iPhone now, but it might be asking them to do this in the future. If Apple is required to help the FBI access this phone, does this mean they can or cannot create a securely locked-down iPhone in the future for which there is no possibility of a firmware backdoor? That is unclear.