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.

Comments

Good to hear.

[jellomizer]

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.

Re:Good to hear.

[kheldan]

the bad guys will not use apple, they may make their own OS, which doesn't have the back doors.

This is true, or some version of it at any rate. Encryption isn't some Top Secret thing that only the government has. It's a mathematical fact, it's available to the general public in any number of different forms, and furthermore anyone with sufficient knowledge on the subject can write encryption software if need be. Screwing everyone else over on data security will not accomplish making anyone safer nor will it help catch criminals and foil terrorist plots. They'll just do an end-run around it. Or maybe they'll go back to using custom codebooks. Or any number of other long-standing methods of counter-surveillance. The entire premise that this is being demanded for 'national security' is so patina-thin, I can't believe anyone with an IQ even slightly above average would believe it anymore, given they've been following all this.

The FBI is being lazy at best, disingenuos and power-grabbing at worst.

President Obama is being improperly advised and/or technically ignorant at best, and being an enabler to the power-hungry and/or a power-grabber himself. Note that I voted for this man, twice! Wishing I'd not have done so now.

Apple needs to stand it's ground, and cetain people in the FBI need to stand down -- or perhaps be asked to resign.

Re:Good to hear.

[kheldan]

Because, as another AC pointed out for me, it's not like in 2012 (or in 2008 for that matter) there were any better choices. I did what I thought was the best I could, naively wanting to make my vote count for something. I won't be making the same mistake this time, I want to vote for some 3rd-party candidate, regardless of them not having a snowball's chance in hell, as a form of protest of how completely screwed up and useless our electroral system has become.

Unless Trump gets the candidacy. Then I have a moral dilemna on my hands: Vote for someone who has no chance of winning, as a protest, or vote for some Democrat, who has a chance of winning, so it's one more vote against Trump. Believe me I'm angry enough at all this for potentially putting me in this position. I want a clear conscience, one way or the other, but I'd just as soon not have to vote for someone who I don't like or believe in just to prevent someone I think is even worse from getting elected; I'm sick and tired of having to choose the 'least bad' instead of the 'best' because I don't have any other choices.

Don't bother trolling me about Trump, or Hillary, or any of the rest of them. I think they're all lying scumbags one way or another, I think none of them deserve to be POTUS, and I don't want to vote for any of them. I don't really want to vote for some 3rd-party (likely Libertarian) candidate either, but since there's no 'None of the Above' on our POTUS ballots, I can't use that as a form of protest either. Not voting at all is not an option, that makes me worse than people who vote blindly for whatever candidate their party trots out there (I'm not affiliated with any political party whatsoever).

Could we please have a President that doesn't suck ass? For once?

Re:Good to hear.

[Anonymous Coward]

For all the disappointments the Obama administration has brought, the most disappointing has been its lawlessness.

Let's address this claim one point at a time.

Re-writing laws through the EPA,

The *laws* in question specifically delegate the creation of the regulations *to* the EPA. They are acting *fully* within the bounds of those laws when they create their regulations.

refusing to enforce others,

The Executive has *always* had discretion on how to allocate its resources for enforcement of the law. This is true at the federal, state, and local level, and always has been.

using EOs as a fig leaf for outright lawbreaking,

Executive Orders are legal. That is a long-established fact. They cannot change the law, nor have any of his EOs purported to do so. Additionally, he's used *fewer* EOs (per term) than any of his predecessors back as far as Grover Cleveland.

re-writing Obamacare on the fly as if there were no separation of powers at all...

There was no 're-writing' of Obama care. This is just a duplicate of the prior two, and equally empty. He has, as he is legally empowered to do, declined to enforce certain aspects of the law (pertaining to the timeline by which small businesses must comply with those certain aspects of the law), thereby preventing fines and penalties being levied on innocent actors simply because they were unable to adjust their business practices and software (at the mercy of third parties) to comply with a new law in the initial timeline. This is (again) a *COMMON* occurrence at the Federal, State, and local levels, because sane people don't want good actors penalized for things beyond their control, or for failing while acting in good faith.

These are good points, but

[number6x]

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?

Really Ms. Crawford?

[dfenstrate]

"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.

Re:Barack "Executive Order" Obama...

[caladine]

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...

Re:Barack "Executive Order" Obama...

[Zak3056]

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.

Eleven Million

[Tenebrousedge]

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.