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The Verge podcast walt-ctrl-delete was talking about this. Nilay Patel, editor at the verge, raised a pretty interesting point which was Supreme Court cases are

The Verge podcast walt-ctrl-delete was talking about this. Nilay Patel, editor at the verge, raised a pretty interesting point which was Supreme Court cases are often picked. Actors can pick what case they want to appeal or prosecute. They pick the case with the best facts and the right time and try to maximize their chance a decision will be written into law. Roe v. Wade was brought up, although I don't know enough about the case to argue, but it was an example they referenced. This is a good case for the Gov't. You have 2 people ruthlessly kill a bunch of civilians and they are already both dead. They can't testify and it is fairly likely the data on the phone is meaningless. So the government can make a strong case, their are really no known parties who are alive and have intimate knowledge of the attackers, and Apple can be represented as being "pro terror". So you raise a good point. Caveat, I would change "The government" to Governments as the U.S. is certainly violating the U.S. constitution but also certainly not the only government involved.

danso 11y ago
This is the case with most court cases in which social reform is desired...you don't want to risk your case losing because of obvious flaws, because the case will be used as precedent for future cases...nevermind that the court tends to not revisit the same issues, over and over, in a short time span. One of the more recent famous ones I can think of was DC vs Heller (2008), which ruled that the 2nd Amendment applies to D.C. and other federal enclaves, which challenged D.C.'s strict gun control laws. From Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_v._Heller https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_v._Heller > In 2002, Robert A. Levy, a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute, began vetting plaintiffs with Clark M. Neily III for a planned Second Amendment lawsuit that he would personally finance. Although he himself had never owned a gun, as a Constitutional scholar he had an academic interest in the subject and wanted to model his campaign after the legal strategies of Thurgood Marshall, who had successfully led the challenges that overturned school segregation It's not just court battles, but grassroots movements, too. Rosa Parks was not the first person to fight back against Montgomery's bus seating, but she was the one whom civil rights leaders thought would be the best person to rally around when organizing the boycott and pursuing a court case: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_Parks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_Parks > NAACP organizers believed that Parks was the best candidate for seeing through a court challenge after her arrest for civil disobedience in violating Alabama segregation laws, although eventually her case became bogged down in the state courts while the Browder v. Gayle case succeeded
rpgmaker 11y ago
> Actors can pick what case they want to appeal or prosecute. They pick the case with the best facts and the right time and try to maximize their chance a decision will be written into law. Looking at it from that perspective, would it have been better if Apple had picked another case to make its stand?
- dantiberian 11y ago
  This is the point Ben Thompson has been talking about recently. https://stratechery.com/2016/apple-versus-the-fbi-understanding-iphone-encryption-the-risks-for-apple-and-encryption/ https://stratechery.com/2016/apple-versus-the-fbi-understand...

danso 11y ago

This is the case with most court cases in which social reform is desired...you don't want to risk your case losing because of obvious flaws, because the case will be used as precedent for future cases...nevermind that the court tends to not revisit the same issues, over and over, in a short time span. One of the more recent famous ones I can think of was DC vs Heller (2008), which ruled that the 2nd Amendment applies to D.C. and other federal enclaves, which challenged D.C.'s strict gun control laws. From Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_v._Heller https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_v._Heller > In 2002, Robert A. Levy, a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute, began vetting plaintiffs with Clark M. Neily III for a planned Second Amendment lawsuit that he would personally finance. Although he himself had never owned a gun, as a Constitutional scholar he had an academic interest in the subject and wanted to model his campaign after the legal strategies of Thurgood Marshall, who had successfully led the challenges that overturned school segregation It's not just court battles, but grassroots movements, too. Rosa Parks was not the first person to fight back against Montgomery's bus seating, but she was the one whom civil rights leaders thought would be the best person to rally around when organizing the boycott and pursuing a court case: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_Parks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_Parks > NAACP organizers believed that Parks was the best candidate for seeing through a court challenge after her arrest for civil disobedience in violating Alabama segregation laws, although eventually her case became bogged down in the state courts while the Browder v. Gayle case succeeded

rpgmaker 11y ago

> Actors can pick what case they want to appeal or prosecute. They pick the case with the best facts and the right time and try to maximize their chance a decision will be written into law. Looking at it from that perspective, would it have been better if Apple had picked another case to make its stand?

dantiberian 11y ago
This is the point Ben Thompson has been talking about recently. https://stratechery.com/2016/apple-versus-the-fbi-understanding-iphone-encryption-the-risks-for-apple-and-encryption/ https://stratechery.com/2016/apple-versus-the-fbi-understand...