> breaking locks, drilling into safes But that's only "reasonable" to ask of a Bank because bank's are in the business of giving time-limited vaults and thus e

> breaking locks, drilling into safes But that's only "reasonable" to ask of a Bank because bank's are in the business of giving time-limited vaults and thus evicting customers. The customer knows the bank is hard and crunchy on the outside, but sees that once inside the vault their safe-deposit box is only behind sheet-metal walls. It's not only physically fairly easy, but the bank has the equipment on-site and does the lock-drilling routinely. Apple is not in the business of cracking hardware security modules. And imagine if they make a mistake under intense media scrutiny and the data is lost forever - they'd take the heat and their reputation would be tarnished forever. It's absolutely unreasonable to ask Apple to take such risk, at great cost, in an area they aren't skilled in or practiced at. > This is privacy advocates trying to shift the Overton window: where a search pursuant to a valid court order somehow becomes a privacy violation. If one were to characterize a side's entire message as being a rhetorical trick, I think it would be as easy to say almost exactly the same thing in reverse. You're suggesting that the government can compel pretty much anyone to do anything already so we might as well just codify it and move along. Privacy advocates are thinking of privacy, not the law. By that I mean, there's a certain amount of liberty people are willing to entrust to the government in trade for protection but many people see the cost to their liberties going up without any protection on the table. Monitoring someone used to take a 24/7 staff and now it's the default setting. There's simply, factually, less privacy. You keep talking of the delicate and time-tested balance, etc. But consider this - (valid) government rules at the will of the people. The people don't think in terms of law, they think in terms of their needs and want. Privacy is a dial - Safety is a dial - government-surveillance is a consequence. All precedent bows to the people, and to deny the will of the people because the constitution, statute, and precedent (may) not yet be up to date with that will misses entirely, the point of law and government. It doesn't matter if government has been doing something for 1500 years - if it's not providing a value to the people it's not a power the people need to grant. There's absolutely no reason not to walk the government's powers back if it can't justify needing them.