191–200 of 376 posts
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Exactly. People are already aware. It's being covered in all forms of media, across all demographics. Awareness and understanding are wildly different concepts. People are aware, they just don't understand. The public can't be properly educated in the matter, because it's so nebulous and complex that it requires dedication to understand it. That goes for most of the issues we face as a society.
That's so defeatist. How do you know unless you try? You are the one with the knowledge. Try!
Think about this: Do you think the President, or any of the candidates, know much of anything about technology? Do you think they understand the intricacies of encryption? Would they even be able to name standard cypher suites? No, because that's not part of their education or job function. They rely on the few, their advisors, just like they do with most major issues.
I've seen your comments on this story, more power to you for wanting to start a grassroots education movement. I've also seen you muddy the waters with making comments about anti-encryption laws; this is an extremist fabrication on your part and not part of the actual current issues. As I've said elsewhere, directly in response to you, the outcome may be similar but the approach is completely different. If you manipulate outrage to reach your desired goal, you're just as bad as they are. You could've taken the time to read my other comments about this before declaring me defeatist, but instead you jumped to conclusions based on a small sampling; is this what your education is about?
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You're in the territory of outright slavery. That would be a new low on all fronts.
Lavabit's amicus brief explicitly argues that interpreting the All Writs Act the way the government is trying to interpret it is prohibited by the Thirteenth Amendment.
Lavabit's problem was that they actually had access to the data, so they were capable of providing records and they didn't provide them. Then pen/trace laws require cloud email providers to provide this data to LE upon authorized request, and case law does not really support payment for hours expended to implement any data collection solution.
Demanding the SSL key in order to plug in their own packet capture (and we must presume appropriate filtering, yeah right) was a -- 'if you can't give us realtime feeds, we can get one ourself'.
So overall I think there are a lot of stark differences between Lavabit and Apple's case, thankfully. Apple is on much stronger legal footing. The corollary is iCloud and Apple has long since provided everything they had there, and there was no question they were required to do it.
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> They could be fined hundreds of thousands daily for refusing to act. Apple's revenue is $658 million per day (2015), not sure if they care too much about "hundreds of thousands".
The feds threatened Yahoo with a fine of $250,000/day, _doubling every week_. It doesn't take long for that to become astronomical. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2014/09/15...
I wonder if Apple would finance their legal fees if they resisted, or would that be considered some sort of encouragement? It might very well help public appeal if there was a person resisting the government compared to a large corporation. Then again, if they get to the point of ordering Apple to break their security seems like they already lost the case at that point.
> It might very well help public appeal if there was a person resisting the government compared to a large corporation. I was thinking that too, but then I reflected on the anti-Apple opinions I've seen in this case (mostly from a small subset of my Facebook friends). My fear is that it would actually do the opposite - it would give a face to the "spoiled" and "liberal nutjob" Silicon Valley nerds who "want to help t…
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> this becomes a gigantic public debate where we scramble to enact legislation that removes this power from the government. No such thing will happen. The public will forget this ever happened, and politicians will do nothing to prevent the government from doing this again.
I don't plan to let that happen. Do you? I'll fight this as long as it's under discussion. Talk to your friends and family, contact your representatives and let them know you care. If we as technologists, the only ones who understand the tech side of things, are silent, then yes this defeatist attitude will win. We need not be silent.
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> All it would take would be for a judge to send a single one to jail for the weekend On what grounds? None of them have broken the law and the order, should it come about, would be for Apple to perform this work, not specific employees (or, if they resign, ex-employees). What would be the route for the government to compel specific individuals – who do not own or control Apple's code or data, and individually are no…
1) Judge rules that Apple must disclose the information. 2) Judge issues a subpoena to an employee that another employee has said is capable of retrieving the information. "Do you have the capability to retrieve this PIN number?" "Yes, your honor." "Will you do so?" "No, your honor." "I find you in contempt. Lock this gentleman up."
The answer to this question is no, since the person would be no longer employed by Apple, would not possess the source code, and would not possess the signing key.
Even if you assumed that the court could force Apple to disclose these items to somebody who is now a third-party, it may be the case that there isn't any person who is capable of doing this. Are the same people at Apple responsible for code signing and writing the code necessary to do this?
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Our legal system is asked to make findings of fact all the time on technical matters. This would be just like any of the rest of those. Witnesses could be questioned. Expert testimony could be delivered. Etc. I understand that it's a common viewpoint on HN that the courts are ill equipped to make these determinations. Personally I think that viewpoint is vastly overstated, but that's a debate for another day. As to y…
> As to your question about "unreasonable burden", Apple made something like 50 billion dollars in profit last year. The burden is going to have to get pretty high before it starts to get unreasonable. A couple of hours (or dozens of hours, or hundreds of hours) isn't going to even begin to get there. Does this mean that "unreasonable burden" is relative? That just seems really weird to me that such a vague clause wo…
Yes, "unreasonable burden" SHOULD be relative. Not all tasks take the same amount of time.
An example I can use is a future court case that involves the safety of rockets transporting people to Mars. It becomes immediately obvious that any investigation and changes a court may demand would cost a large amount of money in such an expensive field.
It doesn't make sense for there to be a strict, absolute cap on burden, say $100000. Sure, that's the salary of an Apple engineer for the better part of the year, or several year's salary for people in other fields, but it's also a fraction of cost of a single rocket component and a tiny portion of the budget of a rocket launch for a company putting rockets into space.
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1) Judge rules that Apple must disclose the information. 2) Judge issues a subpoena to an employee that another employee has said is capable of retrieving the information. "Do you have the capability to retrieve this PIN number?" "Yes, your honor." "Will you do so?" "No, your honor." "I find you in contempt. Lock this gentleman up."
> "Do you have the capability to retrieve this PIN number?" The answer to this question is no, since the person would be no longer employed by Apple, would not possess the source code, and would not possess the signing key. Even if you assumed that the court could force Apple to disclose these items to somebody who is now a third-party, it may be the case that there isn't any person who is capable of doing this. Are…
If it reaches anything approaching this point (it won't) stopping it basically requires an individual to commit to doing the work then sabotaging the device when presented with it.
That's the act of civil disobedience. And you can expect to spend more than a night in jail should you grow the balls to do it.
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> too ignorant to understand the important nuance Lindsey Graham came around. Sam Harris changed his point of view after a fairly combative initial stance against technologists. We will never know if we can inform the public unless we try. There are some good analogies out there supporting encryption. Use them. I recommend the one from Sam Harris' third video on the subject. There is also the whack-a-mole argument. H…
What was sam harris's point of view?
Basically, he did a complete 180.
You should listen to both his first [1] and third [2] podcast on the subject. In the first one he really lambasted supporters of encryption, and in the third he changed his view completely.
He quotes a good analogy here [3] and concludes his thoughts with a final opinion here [4]
I don't fault him for his first podcast. He came up with a reasonable point of view given the facts he understood. And when presented with new information, he changed his mind.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQAmlVFjJ9k
[2] https://youtu.be/9HK4IBscfMQ