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Apple Lawyer Ted Olson: Creating Unlock Tool Would Lead To 'Orwellian' Society (9to5mac.com)
Apple's lawyer, Ted Olson, explained in an interview with CNN that what the government is asking Apple to do is "limitless." Olson explained that if the tool that the government wants is created, any judge anywhere could essentially order to list to any customer's conversation, track location, and much more. The lawyer likened it to an Orwellian "big brother" type society. When pressed about how Apple could potentially help fight terrorism by creating a tool to access locked devices, Olson explained that while Apple will help the government defeat terrorism in every way that it can, it can't be done by breaking the Constitution.
Pretending that back doors don't exist is what will create an Orwellian society.
The back door is already there. Thats the problem. The problem isn't that the government wants Apple to use it, and certainly not that the government wants Apple to create one (remember the original narrative?)
"His name was James Damore."
We of the dark side are often accused of invoking the slippery slope argument too soon. But in this instance, if the FBI is able to convince courts that forced labor is a valid tactic to use in a terror investigation, it already has nine new cases (more according to some sources) for which it wants Apple to be forced to write custom crack code in hopes of solving. And every single one of these new cases involves the drug war, not terror.
The "unreasonable" part. It's "reasonable" for Apple, on receipt of a court order, to turn over to the FBI all data in its possession concerning the terrorists, which Apple has done.
Demanding that Apple force its programmers to write custom software THAT DOES NOT NOW EXIST to allow the FBI to break into one particular iPhone is "unreasonable", and I think Cook, and Apple, are correct here.
Further, concerning the 1789 "All Writs Act", signed by George Washington back before there was much Federal law at all; if the All Writs Act can be perverted so far as to demand that Apple write software that does not exist, then what government demand does it NOT permit? Because if there aren't any limits to THIS PARTICULAR LAW, then the Constitution died in 1789, barely two years after its ratification.
Let's not pretend that Tim Cook, or virtually any executive at Apple, gives a shit about the US Constitution.
Whether he does or doesn't isn't terribly relevant. Tim "cares" about the privacy of his users. The 4th Amendment "cares" about the privacy of the people. They're aligned.
The Constitution that authorizes the government restricts the powers of said government. The government specifically is not authorized to obtain General Warrants; what they're asking for is the digital equivalent of King George's abuses.
Now, one might argue that the USG is no longer, practically, bound by the Constitution. But if that's the case, it's no longer authorized either. Most people would rather pretend it somehow is than admit they're living under despotism.
There's also another argument that the people need a fresh reminder of how abusive governments can be, every few generations. Jefferson wrote frequently on this, but then again he thought the Constitution should expire every 19 years so that each new generation could enter into the agreement voluntarily, and not be bound by the decisions of their ancestors.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Either the FBI is very incompetent or that was a deliberate act by the FBI to create the situation that now exists. A situation that is the best possible scenario for the FBI to force Apple to unlock a phone.
The FBI has lied about this case time and time again. They even had the gall to blame the San Bernadino health department for resetting the password.
I am not convinced that there was a screwup, but instead the FBI got the password changed, knowing exactly what the consequences would be.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
"It was terribly dangerous to let your thoughts wander when you were in any public place or within range of a telescreen. The smallest thing could give you away. A nervous tic, an unconscious look of anxiety, a habit of muttering to yourself – anything that carried with it the suggestion of abnormality, of having something to hide. In any case, to wear an improper expression on your face (to look incredulous when a victory was announced, for example) was itself a punishable offense. There was even a word for it in Newspeak: facecrime, it was called."
"The telescreen recieved and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it; moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever the wanted to. You had to live- did live, from habit that became instinct- in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized."
-Some quotes from 1984
Exactly. The FBI should have asked. And Apple would have and should have refused, as they have.
Instead, the FBI screwed up and then are trying to strong-arm Apple into repairing the mess the FBI made. Typical overreach and use of force instead of brains.
Don't step on the baby.
Since his wife was killed by terrorists on 9/11 he's a good choice to counter the fed's "But we need this because terrorists" argument.
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
It is simply not possible to build the required tool in a way that:
- it will only run on this iPhone
AND
- it can not be trivially adapted to run on every other iPhone
The first part is completely possible, but the second part is impossible - by building the tool, you have done 99.999% of the effort required to do it for another phone. Maybe not quite that for secure enclave devices, but certainly for everything pre-A7.
This isn't a 4th amendmant issue - it's a government owned phone. The same government that:
- bought, but did not use Mobile Device Management software that would have let them unlock the phone
- did not use Apple's free Device Enrolment Program, that can make MDM mandatory & non removable for institutionally owned devices
- did reset the ICloud password so the backup was no longer recoverable
For institutionally owned devices, Apple has already supplied a tool set to do exactly what the government needs here.
They chose not to use it, and now want Apple to build a new tool set that digs them out of the hole they found themselves in, due to their incompetence.
Don't SAY stuff like that, not even in jest! Some congresscritter (or staffer) is likely to be lurking here, and get the idea that this might actually WORK!
But there is case law concerning the All Writs Act; demands made regarding it are required to be "reasonable", which the FBI's demand in this case is not.
But now Apple will spend a billion dollars litigating this all the way to the Supreme Court, and Apple is pretty sure that's how far it'll go - because you don't hire the former Solicitor General of the United States, who represented the U.S. at the Supreme Court, unless you're pretty sure that's where it is going.
And the fact that Ted Olson took the case is a pretty clear statement that he doesn't think this case is about terrorism. Olson HATES terrorists; his wife was on the airplane that hit the Pentagon on 9/11/01.
Somebody is wearing a tin foil hat...