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New Legislation Would Ban US Government From Purchasing Apple Products (arstechnica.com)
HughPickens.com writes: Cyrus Farivar reports at ArsTechnica that Congressman David Jolly has introduced the "No Taxpayer Support for Apple Act," a bill that would forbid federal agencies from purchasing Apple products until the company cooperates with the federal court order to assist the unlocking of a seized iPhone 5C associated with the San Bernardino terrorist attack. "Taxpayers should not be subsidizing a company that refuses to cooperate in a terror investigation that left 14 Americans dead on American soil," said Jolly, who announced in 2015 that he's running for Senate, joining the crowded GOP primary field to replace Sen. Marco Rubio. "Following the horrific events of September 11, 2001, every citizen and every company was willing to do whatever it took to side with law enforcement and defeat terror. It's time Apple shows that same conviction to further protect our nation today." Jolly's bill echoes a call from Donald Trump last month to boycott Apple until it agrees to assist the FBI. Not to fear, GovTrack gives Jolly's bill a 1% chance of being enacted.
That is a bill of attainder and is unconstitutional.
I'm all for open systems, but there's a slight problem here: this is mainly about smartphones, not PCs, and there aren't exactly a lot of open options here.
Of course, you would think that with the size of the US Government, they could work out a deal with Samsung or one of the Android phone makers to supply bare phones which could then be flashed with a government-made version of Android or AOSP, similar to CyanogenMod. But by the same token, the government could certainly do this for their PCs too, making their own custom Linux distro.
But instead, the Government is doubling down on crippled, closed, proprietary platforms that the Government has almost zero control over: Windows 10 on PCs/laptops and Apple iPhones.
And it's not like other countries' governments are doing much better (though they wouldn't have the economies of scale the USG has, except maybe China). At best, we're seeing some European municipalities adopting Linux but that's about it.
One thing the govt can always do, whether we like it or not, is revert to the control of encryption that was common in the 1990s and earlier. They could, by law, restrict encryption for export, etc. One reason Apple should not push to hard, but then again Apple has no problem providing all kinds of decryption support in China.
The US was founded upon fear of an excessively powerful central government, as the British crown was seen massively abusing their power. So strong protections were built-in that weakened law enforcement for the benefit of civil liberties. There have always been other systems of government that are slightly more effective at catching or prosecuting criminals, but Americans knew, for hundreds of years, those trade-offs weren't worth it.
The limiting of government power was so ingrained that the US seems to be the only major nation without a state broadcaster. Outside the US, everybody in the world knows the VOA, but they are NOT allowed to operate inside the US at all. We believed the ability of the current government to directly influence the electorate, was too much power and control to give to our representatives, and settled on allowing only operation on foreign soil, with aggressive protections against even incidental domestic operation.
A warrant, today, gets the FBI exactly the same information it did 50 years ago... They can tap and record all the calls that occur after the warrant is issued, get a log of all previous calls that were made, etc.
Computers have made US law enforcement lazy. They expect they can get a warrant and will automatically be handed an archive with the contents of ALL of your communications for the past several YEARS. The information they got with a warrant decades ago is no longer good enough for them, and they're going to insist on the power they've gotten accustomed to, and refuse to allow privacy to make a comeback.
Remember, it was only a year ago that the entire contents of your phone were siphoned off by the police whenever you were pulled over just for speeding. This was done under the laws that allows them to look for weapons in the vicinity that you might be able to reach for, and which got extended to allow into evidence incriminating documents that just happened to be found in the process of searching for weapons.
And what did the police do with their gigabytes of all your personal information they siphoned off your phone? Maybe look for patterns of terrorism and drug dealing? No. Why they instead they thought it would be a good idea to look for any nude photos you might have, and share them with their friends. Hooray for law enforcement keeping us all safe!
The San Bernardino case is pretty damn obviously worthless, too. The FBI has already FAILED to protect the public. The shooters already carried out their attacks, and were shot dead. FBI and Homeland Security failed miserably to identify them as threats, despite there being ample publicly available information to identify them as ISIL sympathizers. It's the same story as the 9/11 attacks all over again. Homeland Security had MORE INFORMATION than they were able to process and deal with, yet they use attacks as a lame excuse to expand their power, their budget, and get access to much more information, which again, they don't have any hope of being able to process in a timely manner.
Homeland Security has become better and better at revealing details after the fact, but is still useless at identifying individuals who pose a threat before they can carry out their plans to murder people. Apple unlocking iPhones for the FBI is more of the same... It won't possibly help identify future threats, it'll just be a little bit more information the FBI can publish about their past.
This was settled back in the early 90s with the PGP case. Code for encryption programs falls under the constitutional protections of freedom of speech. A new federal law or court ruling cannot override constitutional rights, and there's absolutely no hope of
It's a shame Homeland Security has gone so far the wrong way. Part of the NSA's purview is to help IMPROVE our domestic security against attack and interception by foreign governments. Under a cloud of p
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
If there is a way to be an asshole in public, someone in the GOP will do it. And the rest will follow, otherwise they might get kicked out of the pack for being "too librul".
Heck, Trump just told the public he is well hung during a presidential debate. For the Republicans a "big tent" means that any level of stupid is allowed. The fact that so many Republicans hold elected office is a measure of the blind idiocy of the American public.
Why is Snark Required?
But ... the reason for this hall of fame hissy fit is that the phone is *too* secure. They can't break into it, so they're gonna show apple who's boss and stop buying their stuff
When really, this is the exact opposite of the correct response. If the iPhone is so secure that the FBI is having to run through all this legal crap to even get an attempt at breaking in (which still might fail) the gubmint should be switching to iPhones across the board.
This signature is false.