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Apple Lawyer Ted Olson: Creating Unlock Tool Would Lead To 'Orwellian' Society (9to5mac.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the big-brother-is-watching-you dept.

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.

9 of 183 comments (clear)

  1. pretending that back doors dont exist by Rockoon · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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."
    1. Re:pretending that back doors dont exist by Rosco+P.+Coltrane · · Score: 4, Interesting

      You miss to point: Apple - and Google, and Microsoft - would much rather do the big-brothering themselves for their own profit, and don't want to give that power to the government.

      1984 is already happening, but Orwell got one thing wrong: the tyranny is coming from the private sector, not the government.

      --
      "A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
    2. Re:pretending that back doors dont exist by Rumagent · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Spot on!

      Apple i perfectly capable of cracking your device. They are not fighting for privacy. They are fightning for the appearance of privacy because it is good for business.

      It seems to me that either they follow the legal requests (which they are) or they get their shit together and create a phone that is actually secure.

    3. Re:pretending that back doors dont exist by alvinrod · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I believe they already have made one that's more secure. Apparently this particular attack vector only works on older iPhones, which the shooter had in this case. I wouldn't be surprised if the next phone is completely impossible (so much as anything can be at least) for even they themselves to hack. Apple makes all of their money from selling expensive hardware, not customer data, so they don't have much financial motive for needing an access to that data and their inability to do so only makes the hardware more attractive.

    4. Re:pretending that back doors dont exist by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I believe they already have made one that's more secure. Apparently this particular attack vector only works on older iPhones, which the shooter had in this case. I wouldn't be surprised if the next phone is completely impossible (so much as anything can be at least) for even they themselves to hack. Apple makes all of their money from selling expensive hardware, not customer data, so they don't have much financial motive for needing an access to that data and their inability to do so only makes the hardware more attractive.

      What if the governements orders Apple to create iphones that are breakable ? Thought about that ?
      People are fucking stupid and don't understand that technology is never the answer to a societal problem.
      Politics is. Apple is doing the right thing. If the government wants to break the iphone they have at their disposal billions of dollars, talent and infrastructure beyond even what is available to Apple. So why don't they do it ? Because once the precedent of making a company do your bidding is made private companies are fucked for life. The government is playing the big game here. If they break Apple we'll never ever again have a computer industry that protects the consumer. We don't live (at least for the time being) in a dictatorship and the constitution is still valid. You can't just through it away because of crime or "insert any other bogey man of the week".

    5. Re: pretending that back doors dont exist by beheaderaswp · · Score: 3, Informative

      The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

      There is a while bunch of privacy law that hangs on this.

      --
      Another consultant who stuck it out.

      "We are the Priests, of the Temples of Syrinx..."
  2. Re:Apple speaking out 2 sides of their mouth by kenwd0elq · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  3. facecrime by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    "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

  4. Re:Goodbye, Thirteenth Amendment? by currently_awake · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If they can be forced to help unlock a phone after the terror attack, then why can't they be forced to install spy programs on a known terrorist phone before the attack?