So you see absolutely no incongruence in paying the police to do a job, then financially supporting companies which endeavor to hinder them from doing that job?
No more than I see an incongruence in my tax dollars funding both police and public defenders, or Congress and the Supreme Court, or any of the above and the ACLU.
Have you ever heard of the concept of “checks and balances?” The idea that giving any part of our government unfettered power is a bad idea is kind of foundational to our entire theory of government.
That the various parts of the government should check and balance one another is a given.
That a corporation should be given power to hinder the government is antithetical to any form of governance which values the public good.
Not true. Checks and balances are part of society and all power sources. Not just the group of people labeled “government.”
On the contrary. Apple is helping them to do their job (operating within the Anglo-American legal tradition of respect for private property) by placing roadblocks in the way of cheating.
Private sector car companies provide vehicles that assist the escape of criminals. Were the authorities to request the fitting of a universal “kill switch” I’d be against that as well.
Hmmm… the scenario is perhaps less hypothetical than I thought:
A company called Zerodium claims to have a rootkit exploit that can be effected silently via a web page. They intend to sell the exploit to interested parties (e.g., governments, big-ass data-miners) for a lot of money. No encryption in the world is worth a pinch of salt if the government can pwn your phone (which would give them direct access to you encryption keys).
The pure, unadulterated trust you have for both the government and police, as demonstrated in this thread and the Controversial Encounters thread, really is quite something.
"The contest expired at the end of October, and Zerodium today announced one hacking team had successfully created a browser-based jailbreak for iOS 9.1 and iOS 9.2, the latest versions of iOS 9, earning $1 million. "
And if those hackers have any sense at all, they will now sell the exact same info to Apple for a couple of million, leaving Zerodium high and dry.
Seeing as Snapchat is where you share nudes and lack of encryption means they can be hacked just like the Fappening, I completely disagree.
There’s a reason why encryption is so attractive right now. No one wants to be hacked and have their stuff stolen.
The purpose of government is to protect my rights. The purpose of corporations is to take my money in exchange for as little of substance as possible.
I trust the government far more than I would ever trust any corporation.
No experience of that from the government, huh? Geez, if you have a weird trick for getting off the IRS mailing list, the least you could do is post some pop-up ads and share it with us…
Note that one of the standard terrorist revenue streams is garden-variety crime of the sort that is thwarted by properly securing electronic devices and communications.
Even when they have explicitly stated a desire to infringe your rights and the corporation explicitly defends them? This isn’t good guys versus bad guys here. It’s a bunch of assholes who would sell you out in a New York minute versus another group of assholes who would sell you out, but in this case the first group of assholes is trying to defend your rights (for money, obviously) and the second group of assholes is trying to infringe them.
You are right to hate corporations. But you are wrong to blindly trust the government. For the time being, it is in Apple’s financial interest to create services to protect their users’ rights. You can support that without having to support all the bullshit Apple has been associated with now and in the past.
My rights are not infringed by the government putting reasonable limits on the kinds of encryption civilians are allowed to have. Nor are my rights defended by making it easier for drug dealers, human traffickers, pirates, child pornographers, and terrorists to carry out their criminal deeds in secrecy.
And you manage to pile yet another layer of nonsense on top of an accumulation that would already stop neutrinos. Obviously, the definition of “reasonable” should defer to the people who understand the issue (the tech industry) and ignore the people who don’t (politicial hacks). In this case, the former have explained by presentation of clear and irrefutable facts that the government’s position (“we want a magic back door that us good guys* can use but criminals, hostile governments, etc can’t”) is not merely unreasonable, but outright impossible.
*Stop snickering!
If the tech industry can’t provide secure encryption and a way for law enforcement to crack it if need be, then they shouldn’t be allowed to market it. It’s as simple as that.
If there is a known way to crack it, it is by definition not secure.
Then you’re saying we shouldn’t have cell phones, computers, or the internet. Because what you’re asking for is literally impossible.