It may be time for that hippocratic oath for engineers idea to become a reality. I'd take it and live by it.
Apple Encryption Engineers, If Ordered to Unlock iPhone, Might Resist
141–150 of 376 posts
Re: Apple Encryption Engineers, If Ordered to Unlock iPhone, Might Resist
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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".
revenue != profits. Will people please stop quoting revenue figures for things like this.
Their profits are still in the dozens of millions, per day. Will people please stop splitting hairs?
Re: Apple Encryption Engineers, If Ordered to Unlock iPhone, Might Resist
#143Taking 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…
There are a lot more than 5 people who can do what the FBI wants done. Your hypothetical doesn't really seem all that relevant.
So, what's next? Does the government round up coders they think are capable and force them to program?
Re: Apple Encryption Engineers, If Ordered to Unlock iPhone, Might Resist
#144I honestly feel that engineers need not fall on their swords over this. The decision is up to them, of course. But ultimately, shareholders would expect someone to comply with the court order should the DOJ win. Note that Yahoo was threatened with daily fines of $250,000 for failing to comply in a FISA court case in 2008, and we only just learned this in 2014 [1]. I don't think we would live in a forced back door wor…
> I don't think we would live in a forced back door world for too long. After another 2, 4, or 8 years, we will eventually realize that giving the government a back door to the iPhone did not give it a back door to the myriad of other encrypted communications tools out there. Terrorists will find other ways to hide their communications. I'm going to disagree with you here. Didn't we think, back in 2001, that we'd onl…
> I'm going to disagree with you here. Didn't we think, back in 2001, that we'd only have to live with pat-downs on every plane flight for so long? That the government would eventually realize that terrorists couldn't hijack planes once passengers knew that the proper response was to storm the cockpit rather than waiting for the usual ransom demand to be acquiesced to? That the terrorists would find other ways to cause terror?
Thank you for bringing this into the picture.
The thing is that once you give up a bit of your liberty to the state, you never get it back.
The TSA is an abomination. You can basically shred the whole Bill of Rights as soon as you step into an airport.
> You will get to choose between using paper and having some random police officer [1] decide that it's time for you to go down and he's absolutely sure he can find something you've done wrong [2].
"Show me the man and I'll show you the crime."
Re: Apple Encryption Engineers, If Ordered to Unlock iPhone, Might Resist
#145I honestly feel that engineers need not fall on their swords over this. The decision is up to them, of course. But ultimately, shareholders would expect someone to comply with the court order should the DOJ win. Note that Yahoo was threatened with daily fines of $250,000 for failing to comply in a FISA court case in 2008, and we only just learned this in 2014 [1]. I don't think we would live in a forced back door wor…
Yea, we can all blame someone else. I like this, "not my job to uphold the constitution", "its the courts fault for letting it get here", "its the politicians fault for going a long with this", "its the peoples fault for voting for them". The fact is, if nobody stands up for this, do you really think anyone is going to stand up and try to take away the back door to the iphone and get away with it? Do you really belie…
Engineers refusing to do the work might be counter-productive. It'd allow the FBI and its supporters to change the narrative to one potentially more favorable to them. Instead of a debate about encryption and privacy, they'd try to change it to a debate about respecting the courts that plays right into the "law and order" mindset. I don't know how it'd play out, but I'd hate to give the government yet another advantage, however slim it might be.
That said, there's probably one benefit to being forced to do the work: the engineers involved will be extremely motivated to stick it to the government by designing systems that can't be circumvented like this again. "Too bad, so sad - we can't do that any more. We're very, very sorry for the inconvenience."
Re: Apple Encryption Engineers, If Ordered to Unlock iPhone, Might Resist
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
They could be fined hundreds of thousands daily for refusing to act. We recently found out this happened to Yahoo in 2008 [1] via the FISA court. Apple shareholders wouldn't like that. I'm pretty sure Tim Cook and his lawyer mean it when they say they will comply with the law. Apple engineers need not worry so much about quitting their jobs over this. If I were there I would stick with Tim Cook. Consider, If Apple lo…
> 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".
Haven't there been situations in which government fines can increase exponentially? If something like that applied to Apple it could drive them to bankruptcy very quickly. In theory at least; not sure if the government would actually do that.
Re: Apple Encryption Engineers, If Ordered to Unlock iPhone, Might Resist
#147Question, 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?
Re: Apple Encryption Engineers, If Ordered to Unlock iPhone, Might Resist
#148I honestly feel that engineers need not fall on their swords over this. The decision is up to them, of course. But ultimately, shareholders would expect someone to comply with the court order should the DOJ win. Note that Yahoo was threatened with daily fines of $250,000 for failing to comply in a FISA court case in 2008, and we only just learned this in 2014 [1]. I don't think we would live in a forced back door wor…
an engineering strike sounds powerful.
might take a few years of striking though.
Re: Apple Encryption Engineers, If Ordered to Unlock iPhone, Might Resist
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
How exactly are they supposed to permanently remove all semblance of privacy? Short of infiltrating popular open source projects in plain view and proving the (potentially) unprovable, I don't see how this is possible.
Like this: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/03/tp-lin... If they can't quite do that, then they bring back the whole "export-grade cryptography" thing, except they call it "terrorist-grade cryptography" this time around. Then they start monitoring every crypto-capable open-source project's responsible disclosure system. When they see a vulnerability good enough to subvert that open-source project, t…
"Then they start monitoring every crypto-capable open-source project's responsible disclosure system. When they see a vulnerability good enough to subvert that open-source project, they shut down that project before the bug can be fixed. And then they suppress all knowledge of the bug."
...to exploit it? seriously?
i'm not saying it's impossible or unlikely, it just sounds like 1. it's a tremendous amount of work 2. it still doesn't actually solve the problem
Re: Apple Encryption Engineers, If Ordered to Unlock iPhone, Might Resist
#150I bet none of these engineers have spent a single night in jail. All it would take would be for a judge to send a single one to jail for the weekend, and they'd be happy to quickly bang out whatever the government wanted as soon as possible on Monday morning. The sentiment is nice, but I doubt the government is worried in the slightest. The government is all powerful and can be whatever it wants, lest we forget.
And yet we need people to be this bold.
Yes, but with their democratic votes or public stances, rather than internal business decisions... (since the former is presumably more impactful.)