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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 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
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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?
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
I don't think we can say that history shows communism leads to poverty. Most nations that attempt communism are already poor and rarely get any worse. The USSR actually became less poor under communism than it had been under capitalism, and has again struggled to develop post-communism. The best case example would be East Germany, but even they started in poverty after WWII and we can't prove they'd have developed as fast as West Germany with capitalism if both halves were left to their own devices. Maybe you could make a case out of China, but that's more about Mao's personal mistakes.
Orwellian government control, on the other hand, does appear to be a near-universal result -- presumably because the wealthy won't give up their property voluntarily and thus an oppressive government enforcement system is necessary.
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Actually no. Pure Communism is a benign society that actually does very well. In fact, the US and Canada have many examples of it with the Amish and Hutterite colonies. The problem is SCALE. Both of these groups know if the colony gets too large - more than a few hundred members, the societal ties that make Communism work start to break down, which is why once a certain size is reached the colony sends a large chosen section of its members off to start another colony.
When you try to apply Communism to a country, you inevitably end up with a hellish blend of Communism and Totalitarianism to try and keep control of the monster.
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.
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.
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.