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Apple’s dangerous game

washingtonpost.com

101–110 of 113 posts

Re: Apple’s dangerous game

#101

The article asks: > How is the public interest served by a policy that only thwarts lawful search warrants? Perhaps the answer is that judges act as rubber stamps now, authorizing way too many search warrants. The author assumes that the judges are fairly applying the 4th amendment.

And that the 4th Amendment doesn't apply outside USA, and Apple is inside the USA.

Re: Apple’s dangerous game

#102
post #62

I feel nauseated by the higher than thou attitude of Apple. While Apple is pointing fingers at Google about collecting user data, let's see what kinds of business Apple and Google are in. Apple's main strength is designing product, farm them out to contractors for assembly, market the products and sell them. When it comes to child labor or near slavery like working condition that the Chinese assembly line workers lab…

Tell me, was me.com also built using child labour? Or does Android run on nothing but the thin air? If not, can all makers show something like http://www.apple.com/supplier-responsibility/ ?

Re: Apple’s dangerous game

#103

Kerr's argument sounds silly when you use analogies with conventional devices. Nobody would argue that a highly secure safe should have a backdoor that can be used by the manufacturer to open it.

Safes do have a back door. Drills.

If you get possesion of a safe, you can physically cut it open (given enough money, expertise and time).

Re: Apple’s dangerous game

#104

For a moment I thought I was reading a Xinhua article.

This could be the reason why iPhone 6 has not been approved in China. With heavy smuggling they will get plenty. A lot of arguments assume the (American) government is decent, but iPhone is a global device. Let's hope Apple products have the same security all over the world.

Re: Apple’s dangerous game

#105
Looking at this from outside the US, the situation looks very different. Any argument that can be made that US law enforcement should have a right to require access to the contents of phones, and that it is immoral to foil lawful requests to access user data applies has to pass a simple test. Would you make exactly the same argument in favour of government access in China, Russia, Iran, etc?

Apple has customers and suers across the globe. Any portection or lack thereof they put into their OS affects all of them, not just the ones in the US. Their policy has to serve all of those people equally. User protections in iOS8 protect users in these countries just as much as they portect user data in the US. Weaknesses and gaps in that portection expose user data in those countries just as much as they expose them in the US.

Re: Apple’s dangerous game

#106

Orin Kerr is clearly a lawyer. He argues not for what is right but for what is permissible given the existing body of law. Where the existing body of law is wrong, his writings have no sympathy for the damage inflicted on its victims nor any sense that resisting such wrongs is noble. If the government never abused its authority, I would be much more sympathetic to Kerr's position. Given the facts of prosecutorial abu…

Sad to see a legal expert sounding like an apologist and a shill for the entitlement mentality which seems to afflict the security, law enforcement and entertainment industrial complexes.

Their sense of ENTITLEMENT is ENORMOUS.

"We are ENTITLED to YOUR PRIVATE DATA."

Re: Apple’s dangerous game

#107
His argument for why Apple should assist the government in obtaining private information shows how easy it is to write the meaning of the constitution however you please, at least when a society is in the middle of intense technological evolution:

    The civil libertarian tradition of American privacy law, 
    enshrined in the Fourth Amendment, has been to see the 
    warrant protection as the Gold Standard of privacy 
    protections. ... the government must go to a neutral
    magistrate and make that case before it conducts the 
    search. ... But when the government does make that 
    showing, on the other hand, the public interest in
    solving crime outweighs the privacy interest. That’s
    the basic balance of the Fourth Amendment

Re: Apple’s dangerous game

#108
post #46

So basically, the author wants every "secure" software system to have a backdoor. iOS versions prior to 8 all had a backdoor and he's lamenting that Apple has closed this backdoor. Not only that, if this applies to the iPhone, it must apply to any and all encryption software. While it's widely known that the government already has backdoors into a lot of popular software, codifying this in law or expecting that all s…

> iOS versions prior to 8 all had a backdoor and he's lamenting that Apple has closed this backdoor. iOS versions prior to version 8 didn't have a backdoor - I believe the difference is just that less content was stored encrypted before.

In that case, prior versions are just in-securable. If less content was encrypted, however, why would investigators need Apple's help in getting to the data when the data is stored in unencrypted right on the device?

Re: Apple’s dangerous game

#109

Orin Kerr is clearly a lawyer. He argues not for what is right but for what is permissible given the existing body of law. Where the existing body of law is wrong, his writings have no sympathy for the damage inflicted on its victims nor any sense that resisting such wrongs is noble. If the government never abused its authority, I would be much more sympathetic to Kerr's position. Given the facts of prosecutorial abu…

Orin Kerr is definitely a lawyer, and has been working and writing on digital crime and civil rights for years. For example, he was part of the defense team during weev's appeal of his conviction. I do think he thinks beyond the technicalities of the law. And I think he's correct that there are legitimate reasons to pierce device encryption. If a victim is murdered, and their phone is locked, it sure would be nice to…

> 1) A passcode is probably not covered by Fifth Amendment protections. Thus a phone owner who refuses to lock their phone could be punished by the court anyway.

No, Kerr either doesn't know the case law or is completely ignoring a huge chunk of it to make his point. I prefer the latter, but regardless, his point about the 5th Amendment is completely wrong as this is far from a settled issue and other courts have ruled differently:

http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/federal-appeals-court-fifth...

Re: Apple’s dangerous game

#110
post #65

I know these "blow-by-blow" comments can seem petty, but there are just so many things wrong with this post. It's sad, because I have a lot of respect for Kerr (besides being a very intelligent guy, he participated in weev's legal defense pro bono). > That’s hugely important. And under Apple’s old operating system, cryptography protects iPhones from rogue police officers, too. Kerr is a lawyer, not a techie, and it r…

Well said.
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