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The Law Is Clear: the FBI Cannot Make Apple Rewrite Its OS (backchannel.com)
An anonymous reader cites a post by Susan Crawford, Harvard Law Professor and former Obama Special Assistant: From her column at Backchannel, "Barack Obama has a fine legal mind. But he may not have been using it when he talked about encryption last week. [...] The problem for the president is that when it comes to the specific battle going on right now between Apple and the FBI, the law is clear: twenty years ago, Congress passed a statute, the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) that does not allow the government to tell manufacturers how to design or configure a phone or software used by that phone -- including security software used by that phone.
The problem with this whole debate, is assuming making a system that is secure is beyond the means of mortal men. And will need a big organization to make such a system.
The truth is. If Apple are shown to be insecure, the bad guys will not use apple, they may make their own OS, which doesn't have the back doors. It may not be a fancy but secure for what is needed.
So Apple is loosing business, and the bad guys are still going under the radar.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
The USA is in perpetual war and illegal acts are justified by the wartime status, terrorism, the children, etc.
Give them another week or to... they'll butcher the law, renege the whole thing. Make modifications so that they can do whatever the fuck they want... and there's nothing any of us can do about it. We pay them taxes, they use that money in return to fuck us over again.
When has this, or the previous, administration really cared about what the law says when the law disagrees with what the administration wants to accomplish?
"Barack Obama has a fine legal mind."
To be blunt, this is unsubstantiated. For someone who has as many degrees and has held as many academic positions as Obama has, his scholarly writings are strangely absent.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
I know how much you ACs love to hate on the president, but at least get your facts straight. The last time a president had as few executive orders per year (over the term of his presidency) as Obama was when Grover Cleveland was president. So if you're going to bitch and moan about Obama exercising his presidential authority, remember that presidents like Reagan did a lot more "ram rodding their way down everyone's throats" than Obama has (to the tune of 50% more).
source: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu...
LOLWUT? There is no such thing as "pick and choose". The law is explicit:
https://www.law.cornell.edu/us...
The FBI is in check. Find some other law that authorizes law enforcement agencies to tell Apple how to make a phone.
I'm not jumping into the middle of this fight (I'm not educated enough on the subject) but I will say that there is nothing inherently wrong with an executive order. Many laws that congress writes delegate various powers to the executive--this is why we have a Code of Federal Regulations to go along with US code (USC enables the executive branch to do something, and the CFR is the details of that something... at least in theory). An executive order is a reasonable way for the President (the head of the executive branch) to direct HOW the executive branch does something. The problem arises when executive orders purport to enable or forbid something the executive branch has no power to enable or forbid.
Simply counting how many executive orders a president issues is meaningless in a vacuum. One has to actually ANALYZE those orders to determine if "screw the laws and precedents" is accurate with regard to a particular president.
What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
How is changing the maximum number of logins considered "rewriting" an operating system? If a parameter's hard wired it shouldn't magically become different in relation to the operating system's functionality than parameters that aren't. In other words, if I change the Windows account lockout threshold I don't consider it as rewriting Windows.
hmm, OK, here we have another poor soul who is either completely brainwashed, or shilling for the Democrats? Maybe too much NPR or MSNBC?
If you care to learn, please listen: people do not have a problem with executive orders in general as long as they are minor and exist within the bounds of existing law, they have a problem with executive orders that violate existing law or the constitution. The thing that people are pissed about is the number of EOs that blatantly violate the law and have been found to violate existing law and are therefore overturned. Obama has had 12 plus unanimous votes by the supreme court to overturn his EOs for blatant violation of the law. That is unprecedented in modern history and I believe an all time record across all presidents.
Beyond that, when a president comes out and says he will not work with Congress because he can't get his way 100% of the time, so he will get his pen and his phone out and try to make law using EOs, that is a huge red flag for our republic, because that is not how our system was designed. Our system was designed for compromise. I compromise a little on my position, you on yours, and we meet in the middle. If Obama were a patriot, he would have behaved like Bill Clinton. When Clinton lost the Congress in the midterms, he realized that the people had spoken and he "triangulated" to the middle and worked with congress. This is what made his tenure successful. We got a balanced budget, a budget surplus, welfare to work reforms and a lot of other good things. When the same thing happened to Obama, instead of acting like a leader, taking his medicine and compromising to work with congress, he acted like a spoiled little 5 year old brat, saying that because he couldn't get his way, he didn't want to play. Obama is the president, and he has the ability and responsibility to govern for all the people, not just the minority that elected the democrats currently in Congress.
If it weren't so sad it would be funny all of the failures and betrayals that Obama has pulled off.
- Most transparent administration ever: nope, close to if not the most closed in recent history.
- Keep America safe: number of successful terrorist attacks on US soil: 7 and Obama is still unable to call Islamic terrorisim by name...
- Number of people killed directly by Obama using drones: more than 2500 killed trying to take out ~250 people, the rest were innocents
- Created ISIS by pulling completely out of Iraq and creating power vacuum (directly predicted on multiple occasions by GW Bush and dozens of other foreign policy advisers). The status of forces agreement argument was a complete farce. Where the fuck in the world ever does the conquered country dictate to the conquerors how the conquering soldiers are treated. Ridiculous. Now we have genocide and refugees...
- Comprehensive immigration reform: had control of the house, senate and white house for 2 years and did nothing on this at all
- Closing Gitmo: Had control of the house, senate and white house for 2 years, didn't do it, now he pretends to try when he can't
- Claimed to be a staunch supporter of marriage: came out in support of gay marriage, celebrated SC ruling with a rainbow white house
- Claimed he would mend fences in the global community: most of the rest of the world still hates us, and now our allies can't count on us - Obama has threatened to shoot down allied, Israeli jets if they dare to defend themselves against the radicals in Iran who routinely threaten to wipe Israel off the map and call the US the great Satan.
- Negotiated with Iran (who has broken every promise they have made in the past 30 years) and guaranteed that in 10 years Iran will have nuclear weapons
- Allowed our ambassador and heroes in Lybia to be killed by terrorists on 9/11 and then ordered no action to be taken for 20 hours because he was illegally shipping arms into Syria to arm ISIS fighters in the fight against Assad and didn't want to be caught. Had Obama been a real commander in chief, AF
There are 11 million illegal immigrants in the US. What exactly is your plan to deport them? To round them up? Where are you going to house and feed them while you do? Are you going to build some sort of colossal prison-city?
It's all very well to talk about deportation, but it's not a practical idea at this point, and to even attempt to do so would be both ruinously expensive and necessitate the vast expansion of police numbers and powers. We would destroy our society in this vain and foolhardy attempt.
For my part, I have been an illegal immigrant before, staying on a tourist visa in Central America for several years*. I would still be there today, building a better life for myself, if I could have managed it. I was far from the only gringo there trying to do so. I can say from personal experience that it takes an exceptional kind of person to pack up and leave their entire family and try to settle in a new country, and many American families are also proud to attest to this. As far as I can tell, there is no economic or social argument to be made against the free flow of labor other than simple racism. I see no reason why this latest group of immigrants should not be granted the same opportunities our ancestors were. I believe that it is a moral imperative to do so, as well as patriotic. And not to belabor the point, but there really isn't an alternative: a wall might keep some people out, but the immigrants in the country now are here to stay.
* My reasons were complicated and not worth getting into.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.