and I for one would stand by them for doing so.
Apple Encryption Engineers, If Ordered to Unlock iPhone, Might Resist
231–240 of 376 posts
Re: Apple Encryption Engineers, If Ordered to Unlock iPhone, Might Resist
#232Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder if there's any advantage for Apple to form their own sovereign nation to operate out of. They are already richer than many existing countries. Can't they just buy out a Singapore-sized island somewhere?
I've always thought of Singapore as the "Apple" of countries. Incredibly modern, clean, organised, and well-presented. But run according to very strict rules, like banning chewing gum entirely, and $500 fines for littering.
Funny how a lot of Americans think banning chewing gum is oppressive but don't realize the similarity in the USA entirely banning Kinder Surprise eggs.
Lots of arbitrary stuff is banned in a lot of countries. Singapore just thought the littering cons of gum outweighed the pros.
Note that stuff like nicotine gum and other "therapeutic" chewing gum is still allowed, they just don't allow the candy that leads to littering.
And honestly looking around in a lot of cities where the entirety of downtown is slowly growing into a white blob composed of little individual pieces of squashed chewing gum I don't blame them.
Re: Apple Encryption Engineers, If Ordered to Unlock iPhone, Might Resist
#233Surely the moral responsibility of a manager ordering such work done is just as great as that of an Engineer carrying it out. So why is the debate entirely about the Engineers refusing to do the work, and nobody is talking about managers refusing to give the order?
I'm not saying that anyone should refuse, I think that's a foolish idea and as has been pointed out the Government has many tools and sanctions available it can use to compel compliance. I just find the current debate somewhat blinkered.
Re: Apple Encryption Engineers, If Ordered to Unlock iPhone, Might Resist
#234Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
> Does this mean that "unreasonable burden" is relative? 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…
I don't mean relative based on the task cause that is obvious. I mean relative based on financial situation. Take two hypothetical companies, one with huge amounts of cash reserves, and another that is just a startup with no cash reserves. The government takes both to court over the same situation as Apple. The same task ends up requiring the same large sum of money and 1 months time from each company. Obviously this could really hurt the startup and while it'll hurt the larger company, it won't be as big of a burden.
Does the "unreasonable burden" mean something different in this case? Who makes the call as to when this crosses the line? Something just doesn't feel logically right to me if this line moves at the whim of the current decider (judge? jury? someone else?) despite being an identical request with identical financial impact (just relatively different). There has to be some sort of guideline definition for "unreasonable" somewhere, right?
Re: Apple Encryption Engineers, If Ordered to Unlock iPhone, Might Resist
#235Surely the moral responsibility of a manager ordering such work done is just as great as that of an Engineer carrying it out. So why is the debate entirely about the Engineers refusing to do the work, and nobody is talking about managers refusing to give the order? I'm not saying that anyone should refuse, I think that's a foolish idea and as has been pointed out the Government has many tools and sanctions available…
The manager can easily be replaced by hundreds of others working at Apple. The engineers not.
Re: Apple Encryption Engineers, If Ordered to Unlock iPhone, Might Resist
#236Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh his is great! I couldn't summarize it sufficiently. 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 u…
So changing your opinion is a bad thing? If you think that people should keep their opinions you are a fucking retard.
Not at all. I'm saying the opposite.
Re: Apple Encryption Engineers, If Ordered to Unlock iPhone, Might Resist
#237Guess what happens if the FBI wins this, and Apple is forced to comply, and actually does decrypt this one phone, and probably later on hundreds or thousands of other iPhone 5 phones. Guess what: Apple will make the system so secure that this can never happen again.
This whole discussion has led me to reconsider the much too expensive iPhones, and my next phone might very well be an iPhone 6 or newer.
Re: Apple Encryption Engineers, If Ordered to Unlock iPhone, Might Resist
#238Taking this further down the rabbit hole: Suppose that only about 5 people can do what the FBI wants done. Suppose all 5 refuse, to the point of quitting Apple. Does the FBI now compel them to return to Apple and write the software or go to jail? And what if one of those engineers says that he doesn't actually know how to do it; Apple only thought he could, but he actually can't. Now we get into territory of proving…
They'll go to jail. That's the cost of resistance in a totalitarian society.
Re: Apple Encryption Engineers, If Ordered to Unlock iPhone, Might Resist
#239Question, does Apple employ any engineers that are not US citizens? Or are telecommute workers living in other countries? If so and they were one of the key engineers, what would happen if they refused? What type of international laws would come into play here?
The answer is yes on all counts. Apple has engineers in many different countries. To take your question in a completely different way, China could compel their Apple manufacturing staff to install a back-doored chip into Apple devices on the production line. Seems reasonable if the US government is asking for a software back door into all phones.
> China could compel their Apple manufacturing staff to install a back-doored chip into Apple devices on the production line. Seems reasonable if the US government is asking for a software back door into all phones.
Wouldn't that be opening a whole different can of international worms? In this hypothetical,
- Is China doing this with or without Apple's knowledge?
- If not, then it's a very very different situation than the US. I wouldn't equate them at all in such a case.
- If so, then Apple presumably would openly fight this and could even move all of their production outside of China as an extreme last resort. Against the US government, they don't have such a last resort situation since the company is based in the US. And unless every essential employee is a non-US citizen, then Apple has no such last resort. Hence why I am asking my original question of what international laws come into play here?
Re: Apple Encryption Engineers, If Ordered to Unlock iPhone, Might Resist
#240Guess what happens if the FBI wins this, and Apple is forced to comply, and actually does decrypt this one phone, and probably later on hundreds or thousands of other iPhone 5 phones. Guess what: Apple will make the system so secure that this can never happen again. This whole discussion has led me to reconsider the much too expensive iPhones, and my next phone might very well be an iPhone 6 or newer.
If your adversary is a well funded government agency you need to do a lot more than buy an iPhone.
If you're still alive when "they" want information they'll just extraordinarily rendition you and torture you. Or they'll implement laws like UK RIPA which require you to make available the unencrypted version when asked by a court. Or they'll install covert surveillance equipment.