Exactly! And since Farook took special pains to destroy his own PERSONAL iPhone, but did nothing to his WORK iPhone, I am confident that if the FBI ever does get into the phone, they'll find nothing in it except the San Bernardino Department of Health roster of phone numbers (some of which will be out of date) and records of calls that he had made to his clients and co-workers.
And perhaps some text messages like "Mrs. Jones wants to reschedule your 3 o'clock appointment for next week".
The Court's order is quite specific; the hack must only run on the target device and no others. That means that Apple is prohibited from testing the hack to see if it works. That also means that the court is, as usual, shooting off their mouths knowing virtually nothing about technology.
So, let the FBI open the phone. They have every right to do that. What they DON'T have the right to do is to conscript Apple to write custom software specifically for this task. The software to do this DOES NOT EXIST. It would have to be written, tested (although the literal order of the court would prohibit any testing, because the software that Apple is ordered to create may ONLY work on the subject device and NO OTHER, precluding any testing on any other iPhone 5C), and the Feds expect Apple to do this work for free.
If I were Tim Cook, I'd say "We'd be happy to decrypt that phone for you. The Professional Services cost for this will be TEN BILLION DOLLARS, payable in advance. My programmers will begin work as soon as your check clears."
Why would you think that Syed Farook used his work-issued phone when coordinating this terrorist attack - when Farook went to special pains to destroy his PERSONAL iPhone, but didn't bother with his work iPhone?
I'm very much on Apple's side on this. There's no evidence at all that Farook used his work-issued phone for criminal purposes. If the San Bernardino Department of Health (the owners of the phone) had bothered to configure the mobile device management features, they would be able to take control of the phone and the entire point would be moot. If the SBDH, under urging by the FBI, hadn't changed Farook's iCloud password prematurely, then Apple - which DOES have ways to get into anybody's iCloud account - would have been able to log in to iCloud and force the phone to send current backups right to them, and the entire point would be moot.
No, there are SEVERAL government fuckups along the way, but now the FBI wants to get a do-over at Apple's expense.
Given that the Human race is arguably somewhere between 500,000 and one million years old, it doesn't seem likely that we humans will ever need to worry about that before our race ends, or we leave this planet. Ben Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanac had an excellent analysis of the "new" Gregorian calendar system; it will, most likely, be accurate as is for another 24,000 years. And all we'll need to do to fix it for the NEXT 24,000 years will be to add an extra leap day.
Big whoop. The commissars of the ominously named "Trust and Safety Council" have been trying to purge Twitter of all conservatives, or any users who are insufficiently communist. That may be PART of the reason why Twitter is shedding users and the stock price is cratering.
When Twitter goes bankrupt later this year, perhaps something more inclusive can be formed from the debris.
The cops tried, and starting last year, Apple has been refusing to help. Back in iOS7, it wasn't that much of a chore for Apple to unlock a phone - but that's exactly WHY Apple wrote iOS8 and iOS9 to make it nearly impossible for Apple to break into newer iPhones. And even the hack that the Feds are demanding for Farook's phone wouldn't work on an iPhone 6 or newer, because they've enhanced the security in the hardware layer itself.
Of course, I read that the New York DA has a list of a few DOZEN cases they plan to file and demand Apple's help on, if Apple rolls over on this one.
I hope they don't. Apple, take this all the way to the Supreme Court!
The DoJ says that Apple's stand on not unlocking the terrorist's iPhone is "just marketing". JUST marketing? This is GENIUS-level marketing. I'm a PC and Android guy, but I'm tempted to buy a 128GB iPad just to show some solidarity with Apple. Most of us Libertarians don't have much use for the big-government stance that Apple has always shown, but if this is the case that it takes to put some daylight between Apple and the Socialists, then I guess I can't complain.
The entire thing is a Trojan horse. The FBI and federal law enforcement agencies in general have spent the last three years trying to find the perfect case; a terrible person with an iPhone and some plausible excuse as to why the feds have to demand that Apple break their own encryption schemes. And here comes Syed Farook, the poster child for terrible, with a locked iPhone that's actually owned by the San Bernardino Department of Health. If there weren't 12 bodies, I'd suspect that it was staged by the feds.
Wasn't it Forbes that required users to disable their ad-blockers, and then served up ads laced with malware? Wired isn't worth paying for (I did for years, but it's just old and tired now) and it's ESPECIALLY not worth the risk of having my PC hacked.
I thought that this was a great idea when I first read about it. As a dues-paying, card-carrying big-L Libertarian, I have long believed that even if we don't win any seats, that when the difference in votes between the D and the R are fewer than L, that both the Democrats and the Republicans will start to try to co-opt our voters- and our IDEAS.
However, I didn't sign up for the project, because I'm not moving to New Hampshire. I'm sure it's a delightful place, but I lived in Bath, Maine for 4 years and I've had enough of the snow and cold weather. Now I live near Sacramento, CA, and the snow here is perfect; it's OVER THERE, on the mountaintops where it is pretty, and not down here in my driveway.
That Eric the Red guy was a real estate speculator; yes, it was a lot warmer in the green land 1100 years ago (they had dairy farms on the coast!) but they still needed to convince people from Iceland to come over!
The biggest cost factor for nuclear power _IS_ the level of irrational political opposition. When you have to litigate and re-litigate and re-RE-litigate every application and every engineering change a dozen times over, it becomes nearly impossible to do anything.
The E6B (and its smaller brethren such as the one I used to carry in my flight jacket pocket) is nothing but a circular slide rule with a couple of special index points for minutes calculations.
That said, there is nothing "just" about a slide rule. It scores as one of humanity's finest achievements.
I _DO_ know who my Representative and Senators are, and even though they don't read them, I email them regularly with what I want them to do. If you cannot be bothered to know who your representatives are, then you are a major contributor to the problem.
Yes, low taxes are a solution. Solution to what? Wasteful spending, crony capitalism, and fraud.
Your thoughts on emigration and "Somalia" are completely fact-free, similar to you keeping tabs on your government representatives. As for the United States, I did invest 21 years of my life to protect the US and the Constitution, and I still consider myself bound to those oaths I took "... to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic...." I do not intend to see that investment in years and sweat wasted.
As I said, the 16th and 17th Amendments greatly reduced the Constitutional protections. The Federal government and the States were intended to be in some tension; each protective of its own powers. The States were protected from the whims of the Feds because the State governments appointed the Senators, and a Senator who is beholden to his State isn't going to cut state powers. And the income tax completely removed all of the fiscal constraints on the Federal government.
An interesting sidenote; during the debates about the approval of an income tax, one proposal would have placed a limit of 10% on the Federal income tax. This proposal was defeated because nobody wanted to ever suggest that it might get that high.
I've got a great idea; get 38 states to pass laws demanding a new Constitutional Convention, and then get yourself appointed to the Convention to rewrite the Constitution.
The purpose of the Constitution isn't to make government easy or convenient or practical. The purpose of the Constitution is to make it as difficult as possible for wannabe-tyrants to grab enough power to rule over the people who would rather be LEFT ALONE. Passage of the 16th and 17th Amendments (income tax and direct election of Senators) gutted most of the protection that we're supposed to have.
No, people don't tune in all the time to see their representatives in action.
In fact, most people can't be bothered to read the columns in the newspapers that show how each of the reps voted. And come the next election, the reps LIE about what they voted for.
You want REAL governmental reform? The problem is that tax day, April 15, is almost exactly 6 months away from Election Day. When the taxes come due, people don't remember who they voted for, and come election day, they've forgotten much of the pain of paying their income taxes. Move Election Day to the April 16, and you'll see some REAL governmental reform.
"it's a good idea to start debating these issues now."
You mean that every SF writer in the last 70 years has been writing in vain because pointy-headed pseudo-intellectuals haven't bothered to READ it?
Besides, it's baloney. Whoever pays for the rockets is going to want SOME return on their investment, and any Mars colony will certainly require support from Earth, at least at first. Saying "Any Mars colony should be independent from its founding" is a sneaky way of trying to eliminate any Mars colony attempt. I haven't bothered to check, but I predict that Jacob Haqq-Misra is a communist who is trying to prevent any capitalistic attempt to found such a colony.
I'd be more impressed by that argument if the U.S. Government actually behaved in accordance with the Constitution. It hasn't done that in a VERY long time.
In the United States, the Constitution was written to put three branches of government IN CONFLICT with each other, so that no one - nor even any two - branches of government can become destructive of liberty. But we don't use it as written any more, and many of the "progressive" elements of the early 1900s have conspired to rip down the barriers.
The first was the 17th Amendment, allowing direct election of Senators. The Senate was DESIGNED to be the body that represented the STATES interests, while the House was directly elected. The 17th Amendment allowed for the Federal Government to tramp on the responsibilities and rights of the States. The 16th Amendment allowing for an income tax (introduced earlier, but passed with the 17th in 1913) allowed the Federal Government to grow rapidly.
For government, terrorism just makes them look bad - but political opposition can remove them from power. That's why encryption hysteria ALWAYS is about protecting government from the citizens. We need to stop electing lefty governmental flunkies like Clinton, Bush, and Obama, and start to reduce the size and power of government. The Democrats and the "mainstream" Republicans are in this together, against "We, the People". We need to elect small government conservatives and Libertarians, not communists, socialists and progressives.
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Exactly! And since Farook took special pains to destroy his own PERSONAL iPhone, but did nothing to his WORK iPhone, I am confident that if the FBI ever does get into the phone, they'll find nothing in it except the San Bernardino Department of Health roster of phone numbers (some of which will be out of date) and records of calls that he had made to his clients and co-workers.
And perhaps some text messages like "Mrs. Jones wants to reschedule your 3 o'clock appointment for next week".
The Court's order is quite specific; the hack must only run on the target device and no others. That means that Apple is prohibited from testing the hack to see if it works. That also means that the court is, as usual, shooting off their mouths knowing virtually nothing about technology.
It was an iPhone 5C, running iOS9. Different license agreement.
We can easily prevent more such tragedies by better vetting jihadi war brides from Pakistan. Which the government REFUSES to even consider.
So, let the FBI open the phone. They have every right to do that. What they DON'T have the right to do is to conscript Apple to write custom software specifically for this task. The software to do this DOES NOT EXIST. It would have to be written, tested (although the literal order of the court would prohibit any testing, because the software that Apple is ordered to create may ONLY work on the subject device and NO OTHER, precluding any testing on any other iPhone 5C), and the Feds expect Apple to do this work for free.
If I were Tim Cook, I'd say "We'd be happy to decrypt that phone for you. The Professional Services cost for this will be TEN BILLION DOLLARS, payable in advance. My programmers will begin work as soon as your check clears."
Why would you think that Syed Farook used his work-issued phone when coordinating this terrorist attack - when Farook went to special pains to destroy his PERSONAL iPhone, but didn't bother with his work iPhone?
I'm very much on Apple's side on this. There's no evidence at all that Farook used his work-issued phone for criminal purposes. If the San Bernardino Department of Health (the owners of the phone) had bothered to configure the mobile device management features, they would be able to take control of the phone and the entire point would be moot. If the SBDH, under urging by the FBI, hadn't changed Farook's iCloud password prematurely, then Apple - which DOES have ways to get into anybody's iCloud account - would have been able to log in to iCloud and force the phone to send current backups right to them, and the entire point would be moot.
No, there are SEVERAL government fuckups along the way, but now the FBI wants to get a do-over at Apple's expense.
Given that the Human race is arguably somewhere between 500,000 and one million years old, it doesn't seem likely that we humans will ever need to worry about that before our race ends, or we leave this planet. Ben Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanac had an excellent analysis of the "new" Gregorian calendar system; it will, most likely, be accurate as is for another 24,000 years. And all we'll need to do to fix it for the NEXT 24,000 years will be to add an extra leap day.
Worry about IMPORTANT things, not this.
You are not ALLOWED to disagree with the SJW Commissars. To disagree with their "enlightened wisdom" is a clear sign of badthink.
Big whoop. The commissars of the ominously named "Trust and Safety Council" have been trying to purge Twitter of all conservatives, or any users who are insufficiently communist. That may be PART of the reason why Twitter is shedding users and the stock price is cratering.
When Twitter goes bankrupt later this year, perhaps something more inclusive can be formed from the debris.
The cops tried, and starting last year, Apple has been refusing to help. Back in iOS7, it wasn't that much of a chore for Apple to unlock a phone - but that's exactly WHY Apple wrote iOS8 and iOS9 to make it nearly impossible for Apple to break into newer iPhones. And even the hack that the Feds are demanding for Farook's phone wouldn't work on an iPhone 6 or newer, because they've enhanced the security in the hardware layer itself.
Of course, I read that the New York DA has a list of a few DOZEN cases they plan to file and demand Apple's help on, if Apple rolls over on this one.
I hope they don't. Apple, take this all the way to the Supreme Court!
The DoJ says that Apple's stand on not unlocking the terrorist's iPhone is "just marketing". JUST marketing? This is GENIUS-level marketing. I'm a PC and Android guy, but I'm tempted to buy a 128GB iPad just to show some solidarity with Apple. Most of us Libertarians don't have much use for the big-government stance that Apple has always shown, but if this is the case that it takes to put some daylight between Apple and the Socialists, then I guess I can't complain.
The entire thing is a Trojan horse. The FBI and federal law enforcement agencies in general have spent the last three years trying to find the perfect case; a terrible person with an iPhone and some plausible excuse as to why the feds have to demand that Apple break their own encryption schemes. And here comes Syed Farook, the poster child for terrible, with a locked iPhone that's actually owned by the San Bernardino Department of Health. If there weren't 12 bodies, I'd suspect that it was staged by the feds.
Wasn't it Forbes that required users to disable their ad-blockers, and then served up ads laced with malware? Wired isn't worth paying for (I did for years, but it's just old and tired now) and it's ESPECIALLY not worth the risk of having my PC hacked.
I thought that this was a great idea when I first read about it. As a dues-paying, card-carrying big-L Libertarian, I have long believed that even if we don't win any seats, that when the difference in votes between the D and the R are fewer than L, that both the Democrats and the Republicans will start to try to co-opt our voters- and our IDEAS.
However, I didn't sign up for the project, because I'm not moving to New Hampshire. I'm sure it's a delightful place, but I lived in Bath, Maine for 4 years and I've had enough of the snow and cold weather. Now I live near Sacramento, CA, and the snow here is perfect; it's OVER THERE, on the mountaintops where it is pretty, and not down here in my driveway.
That Eric the Red guy was a real estate speculator; yes, it was a lot warmer in the green land 1100 years ago (they had dairy farms on the coast!) but they still needed to convince people from Iceland to come over!
The biggest cost factor for nuclear power _IS_ the level of irrational political opposition. When you have to litigate and re-litigate and re-RE-litigate every application and every engineering change a dozen times over, it becomes nearly impossible to do anything.
The E6B (and its smaller brethren such as the one I used to carry in my flight jacket pocket) is nothing but a circular slide rule with a couple of special index points for minutes calculations.
That said, there is nothing "just" about a slide rule. It scores as one of humanity's finest achievements.
I _DO_ know who my Representative and Senators are, and even though they don't read them, I email them regularly with what I want them to do. If you cannot be bothered to know who your representatives are, then you are a major contributor to the problem.
Yes, low taxes are a solution. Solution to what? Wasteful spending, crony capitalism, and fraud.
Your thoughts on emigration and "Somalia" are completely fact-free, similar to you keeping tabs on your government representatives. As for the United States, I did invest 21 years of my life to protect the US and the Constitution, and I still consider myself bound to those oaths I took "... to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic...." I do not intend to see that investment in years and sweat wasted.
As I said, the 16th and 17th Amendments greatly reduced the Constitutional protections. The Federal government and the States were intended to be in some tension; each protective of its own powers. The States were protected from the whims of the Feds because the State governments appointed the Senators, and a Senator who is beholden to his State isn't going to cut state powers. And the income tax completely removed all of the fiscal constraints on the Federal government.
An interesting sidenote; during the debates about the approval of an income tax, one proposal would have placed a limit of 10% on the Federal income tax. This proposal was defeated because nobody wanted to ever suggest that it might get that high.
I've got a great idea; get 38 states to pass laws demanding a new Constitutional Convention, and then get yourself appointed to the Convention to rewrite the Constitution.
The purpose of the Constitution isn't to make government easy or convenient or practical. The purpose of the Constitution is to make it as difficult as possible for wannabe-tyrants to grab enough power to rule over the people who would rather be LEFT ALONE. Passage of the 16th and 17th Amendments (income tax and direct election of Senators) gutted most of the protection that we're supposed to have.
No, people don't tune in all the time to see their representatives in action.
In fact, most people can't be bothered to read the columns in the newspapers that show how each of the reps voted. And come the next election, the reps LIE about what they voted for.
You want REAL governmental reform? The problem is that tax day, April 15, is almost exactly 6 months away from Election Day. When the taxes come due, people don't remember who they voted for, and come election day, they've forgotten much of the pain of paying their income taxes. Move Election Day to the April 16, and you'll see some REAL governmental reform.
"Why, in the age of Big Data and petaflops, don't we consider continuous voting?"
Because so far, nobody has been able to provide secure communications.
"it's a good idea to start debating these issues now."
You mean that every SF writer in the last 70 years has been writing in vain because pointy-headed pseudo-intellectuals haven't bothered to READ it?
Besides, it's baloney. Whoever pays for the rockets is going to want SOME return on their investment, and any Mars colony will certainly require support from Earth, at least at first. Saying "Any Mars colony should be independent from its founding" is a sneaky way of trying to eliminate any Mars colony attempt. I haven't bothered to check, but I predict that Jacob Haqq-Misra is a communist who is trying to prevent any capitalistic attempt to found such a colony.
I'd be more impressed by that argument if the U.S. Government actually behaved in accordance with the Constitution. It hasn't done that in a VERY long time.
In the United States, the Constitution was written to put three branches of government IN CONFLICT with each other, so that no one - nor even any two - branches of government can become destructive of liberty. But we don't use it as written any more, and many of the "progressive" elements of the early 1900s have conspired to rip down the barriers.
The first was the 17th Amendment, allowing direct election of Senators. The Senate was DESIGNED to be the body that represented the STATES interests, while the House was directly elected. The 17th Amendment allowed for the Federal Government to tramp on the responsibilities and rights of the States. The 16th Amendment allowing for an income tax (introduced earlier, but passed with the 17th in 1913) allowed the Federal Government to grow rapidly.
"Since the ruling class is usually safe from terrorists, and in bed with criminals, I’m guessing that “political opponents” will get the most spying."
http://pjmedia.com/instapundit...
For government, terrorism just makes them look bad - but political opposition can remove them from power. That's why encryption hysteria ALWAYS is about protecting government from the citizens. We need to stop electing lefty governmental flunkies like Clinton, Bush, and Obama, and start to reduce the size and power of government. The Democrats and the "mainstream" Republicans are in this together, against "We, the People". We need to elect small government conservatives and Libertarians, not communists, socialists and progressives.