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EFF On Why FBI Can't Force Apple To Sign Code (boingboing.net)
New submitter Kurast writes with this article at Boing Boing: Code is speech: critical court rulings from the early history of the Electronic Frontier Foundation held that code was a form of expressive speech, protected by the First Amendment. The EFF has just submitted an amicus brief in support of Apple in its fight against the FBI, representing 46 "technologists, researchers and cryptographers," laying out the case that the First Amendment means that Apple can't be forced to utter speech to the government's command, and they especially can't be forced to sign and endorse that speech. In a "deep dive" post, EFF's Andrew Crocker and Jamie Williams take you through the argument, step by step. (You can follow along by reading the brief itself (PDF), too.)
It is true that the FBI cannot force Apple to produce new code that does not today exist.
But, code is not speech.
What the FBI cannot do is force a company to do something that will cause it irreparable harm and devalue its entire business model. Forcing Apple to produce this code goes against Apple's right to be free of unreasonable seizures, as the FBI would in effect be seizing 80% of the value of the company, if not more, to get a backdoor into all iPhones.
First, the FBI does not have a right to a backdoor into all iPhones. Second, Apple has a right to retain the value of its enterprise. Speech has nothing to do with it, and no reasonable person sees this as a free speech issue. This can and should be laughed out of court until Apple et al make the correct legal arguments.
Look. I see EFF lawyers saying code is speech and is protected. And I see EFF lawyers saying code is math and is not eligible for patent protection and sometimes not even eligible for copyright protection. I want an EFF lawyer to explain their stand on how these three mechanisms apply to code before this story gets posted AGAIN and it had better be consistent.
ah you think the constitution is your ally. When your precious constitution declared warrantless search and seisure to be unlawful, we merely declared our our borders to be hundreds of miles long. We declared our wiretaps to be constitutional through "metadata."
When the constitution declared the first amendment sacrosanct, we merely declared those who spoke against us as "enemy combatants" and had them executed by drone without so much as a second thought. We bombed the news stations that refused to fall in line with our message during our wars, and we openly slaughtered their journalists in the field. When it was reported, we sentenced the whistleblower to rot in prison.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Code is instructions to a computer to do something.
Agreed.
The computer cannot interpret code as an expression, because computers are not sentient. Code cannot therefore be considered expression, as it is not being written to convey ideas to other people.
Your argument goes off the rails here. I absolutely can convey ideas to other people through code. You are making the mistake of presuming the computer is the audience for the ideas being conveyed. That is incorrect. Other people are the audience, the computer is merely the means. Saying code cannot be used to convey ideas is as absurd as saying written music cannot convey ideas because you need a musical instrument to play it.
The government can mandate you buy a product, why not a mandate to open a product. If you believe the government can force you to do an action, why not another? What makes this any different than any other government force?
They already dictate your 4th amendment rights, so restricting your 1st for the "public good" is no stretch.
Just trying to make you think about the scope, that once you start giving up your rights for something you want, the government can limit your other rights.
Don't being a hypocrite when it comes to picking and choosing which rights you want to defend, defend them all.
And I see EFF lawyers saying code is math and is not eligible for patent protection and sometimes not even eligible for copyright protection.
Some code cannot be copyrighted, though this is the exception rather than the rule. For example I can write a hello world program but I can't copyright it because it is too basic to be considered a creative work but I can write a word processor and I can copyright that. In principle no code should be eligible for patents because the code should be adequately protected by copyright. You shouldn't be able to patent math. Patents should only be for tangible goods. But there is a sufficient level of creativity in coding that allowing a copyright is reasonable. (presuming we think copyright itself is reasonable which is a separate discussion)
I don't think the EFF is being inconsistent at all in their stance on these issues.
Should a car company be compelled into having to add government mandated components (air bag, seat belt, side mirrors, headlights, etc) to their designs which are eventually made into real and tangible objects?
Free speech is not absolute and courts recognize the need to balance freedom of speech with public interests. In the case of safety regulation, you'd be hard to find any judge who thinks that requiring safety devices is violating free speech. Now if the government mandated what specific colors a car company could use, that is different. The government can regulate the type of paint (lead-free, anti-corrosive agents, chemical base) but not the color.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.