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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.)
Code is text that conveys meaning, which is one possible definition of "speech" in written form, but it really carries two purposes: to instruct a computer to behave in a certain manner (in which sense, code is a machine) and to convey the intent of the program to humans.
You can write a functional equivalent of any program with meaningless identifiers, variables like x, y, z, functions like func1, func2, etc. Yet we don't do that, and there's a good reason. Computer languages are meant to be read by humans as well as computers.
But, code is not speech.
Yes it is. This is a legal question that's been settled already by several cases. Here's a quote from one of them (Universal City Studios vs Corley)
Communication does not lose constitutional protection as “speech” simply because it is expressed in the language of computer code. Mathematical formulae and musical scores are written in “code,” i.e.,symbolic notations not comprehensible to the uninitiated, and yet both are covered by the First Amendment. If someone chose to write a novel entirely in computer object code by using strings of 1’s and 0’s for each letter of each word, the resulting work would be no different for constitutional purposes than if it had been written in English.
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.
for one in aSetWithOneMore {
change(one).intoOneWithPlus(4)
if ( one.isNot(five) ) {
print("The numbers don't jive!!")
\\/* At this point increase players score. */
}
}
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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.
Ultimately it shouldn't matter...
Because the next version of all smart devices should not update unless unlocked.
Let the FBI put that in their pipe and smoke it.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Have you never seen COBOL?
PROCEDURE DIVISION.
Calculator.
PERFORM 3 TIMES
DISPLAY "Enter First Number : " WITH NO ADVANCING
ACCEPT Num1
DISPLAY "Enter Second Number : " WITH NO ADVANCING
ACCEPT Num2
DISPLAY "Enter operator (+ or *) : " WITH NO ADVANCING
ACCEPT Operator
IF Operator = "+" THEN
ADD Num1, Num2 GIVING Result
END-IF
IF Operator = "*" THEN
MULTIPLY Num1 BY Num2 GIVING Result
END-IF
DISPLAY "Result is = ", Result
END-PERFORM.
STOP RUN.
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.
It would seem to me that EFF's line of defense is dependent on the Citizens United vs Federal Election Commission, where it was ruled that corporations have the same constitutional rights to free speech as people. If Apple did not have such a right, then the government could force them to produce and sign code. I personally was unhappy with the Citizens United vs FEC ruling, but this is an area where it could have a positive impact on me.