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What kind of a democracy do we live in where we rely on corporations to protect the people from an overreaching government?

by tbabb 11y ago

dpweb 11y ago
We're seeing a real power struggle between these powerful tech corps and governments. What was really revealing was Tim Cook's answer on 60 minutes when pinned down about Apple's international tax strategies - why don't you being this money back to the US thereby making it taxable. His answer essentially: because I don't want to. Privacy, tax avoidance, H1Bs - more showdowns to come.
- traskjd 11y ago
  >> because I don't want to. Well, he also doesn't HAVE to. If you don't HAVE to do something, especially if it's beneficial to not do that thing, why would you?
  - empressplay 11y ago
    Because you're a good person, perhaps?
    - hueving 11y ago
      That's not how taxes work. Why don't you donate extra money to the government that there is no law saying you have to pay?
- sigzero 11y ago
  Nothing revealing about that. It's an obvious stance for Apple to take. Change the tax laws.
USANEEDSHELP 11y ago
The US of A is not a democracy it's supposed to be a republic. When companies act as the mouthpiece for the people, they are not doing so because they are protecting the people. They are doing it to protect their own interests (corporatism) and any company that is speaking out in this situation, is merely playing lip service to the people (consumers/products). There's nothing they can do. They are at the mercy of the government, laws and any types of intimidation that may be applied by the any agency of the state. Only the people of the US of A can rise up and make a true difference. We must stop believing that we are here to serve the state (government). We must stand up and demand that the state serve the people.
altitudinous 11y ago
Apple believes they are serving the people by protecting their privacy. The FBI believes they are serving the people by hunting down terrorists. Just two different beliefs in what serving the people means.
- merpnderp 11y ago
  Yeah, but Apple didn't fail to read the public Facebook of an immigrant to see if they were a foaming at the mouth, fully supportive of killing a bunch of civilians, crazed loonbat terrorist, before giving them the ok to come on over and kill some people. The FBI et al did.
- notthegov 11y ago
  This sounds like you are saying truth is relative. Isn't there one best way to serve the people? Which is by protecting tenets of classical liberalism and natural rights; and ideally promoting and defending these ideas elsewhere to prevent such things as terrorists. I am weary of this idea that no man is wrong except the man who says he is right. The FBI is an institution that was built by a seriously flawed megalomaniac. I think in terms of building a just and reasonable federal law enforcement agency, you'd 1) need to pass a federal amendment and 2) not build it upon an overreaching and power hungry organization built by J. Edgar Hoover. We can do better.
  - throwawayukcyb 11y ago
    > Isn't there one best way to serve the people? No. Not unless you are omniscient and all-powerful. And even then, still no, because different people are different and want different things. No one is claiming that the FBI is without fault or even that its actual goal is serving the people. But there are plenty of people out there who have a sincerely held -- and in a few cases even informed -- belief that the FBI is on the right side of this debate.
    - notthegov 11y ago
      That's a distortion of what I meant. So respecting natural rights and popular sovereignty are not the right way to serve people? Your perspective on this was the point of Professor Bloom's book, The Closing of the American Mind. I don't personally care what ill-informed people who are victims of the American Historical Association think about classical liberalism and human freedom. The FBI will not exist in the future, solely because it is a threat to human freedom and in a better world, such a powerful authoritarian organization won't be needed.
bdrool 11y ago
…something something eternal vigilance…
joeblau 11y ago
Aren't corporations people now anyways[1]? Basically, it's just people protecting themselves :). [1] - http://www.npr.org/2014/07/28/335288388/when-did-companies-become-people-excavating-the-legal-evolution http://www.npr.org/2014/07/28/335288388/when-did-companies-b...
chimeracoder 11y ago
> rely on corporations to protect the people from an overreaching government? Corporations aren't fundamentally different from the government. Both are just groups of people, at an abstract level. It's actually not uncommon for local governments to literally exist as incorporated entities. Or for corporations to serve as the de facto government for a region. It's a relatively recent phenomenon that we view these as completely different concepts, but they're not as distinct as we often think. It's more accurate to think of government as a special case of corporations rather than a completely different concept.
- rough-sea 11y ago
  Well... yes, they are groups of people, but governments are rather different. Governments include everyone and act on their behalf. They are also responsible for creating and enforcing law. The distinction is valid.
  - chimeracoder 11y ago
    > Governments include everyone and act on their behalf. They are also responsible for creating and enforcing law. It's more accurate to think of governments as a special case of corporations. Governments don't always "include everyone", and as we've seen, they definitely don't necessarily act on their constituents' behalf. In certain contexts, corporations have also been responsible for creating and enforcing law, even though that's not the context we are used to today in the US.
    - Avshalom 11y ago
      It's more accurate to think of corporations as a special case of governments, what with corporations being a recent legal structure created by governments.
- lazaroclapp 11y ago
  The difference is that corporations have (mostly) voluntary membership but unelected leadership, whereas nations have (mostly) involuntary membership and elected leadership. So it still stands that it should not be the expected state of affairs that corporations are seen as stewards of the common good, rather than the government. It really ought to be the other way around, and the fact that it isn't is sign of a problem. I don't remember who said it, but there is a quote along the lines of: "People should look to the private sector for growth, and to the government for justice. Increasingly, they look to the government for growth and to the private sector for justice." Edit: Found proper quote and source thanks to mbrock's pointing out where I likely heard it last. The quote is: "We have come to rely upon capitalism for justice and the government for economic stimulation, precisely the opposite of what reason would suggest." - Donald Kaul And it comes from here: http://articles.philly.com/1990-10-17/news/25891604_1_budget-mess-medicare-costs-national-ills http://articles.philly.com/1990-10-17/news/25891604_1_budget... (Timothy Taylor did quote Kaul in the podcast mentioned in the comment below)
staunch 11y ago
A corporatocracy. It's not so surprising when you consider that corporations can span many countries. Apple doesn't need the U.S. nearly as much as the U.S. needs Apple.
wskinner 11y ago
Just like governments, corporations are groups of individual people nominally organized around a common goal. If the government overreaches to a degree that will have a significant negative effect on corporations' bottom lines, as would Apple being forced to backdoor its software, we should absolutely expect corporations to step in on the side of their customers. Of course corporations will be pragmatic about when they step in to "protect the people" as you put it. But let's not kid ourselves about governments ever being fully (mostly, even) on the side of the people.
- ignoramous 11y ago
  > But let's not kid ourselves about governments ever being fully (mostly, even) on the side of the people. Exactly. What kind of democracy is this?
  - prewett 11y ago
    It's not, it's a republic. In fact, the Founding Fathers considered democracy a terrible form of government. "Democracy is the most vile form of government" (James Madison) "A simple democracy is the devil's own government." (Benjamin Rush, signed Declaration of Independence) "Democracy will soon degenerate into an anarchy..." (John Adams) "The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not." (Thomas Jefferson) Many, many more at http://www.godtheoriginalintent.com/democracy_republic_quotes.html http://www.godtheoriginalintent.com/democracy_republic_quote... (sorry about the choice of web site, but the selection of quotations is impressive.)
    - arrrg 11y ago
      That’s simply a discrepancy in definitions. ”Democracy” as used in your quotes is not “democracy” as used elsewhere here. With democracy the people you quoted meant something more specific than the people using it here. Today democracy is simply a catch-all term.
    - tamana 11y ago
      That Jefferson quote shows a lot of chutzpah for a slave owner.
lazaroclapp 11y ago
Do keep in mind that we got the Magna Carta because the nobles and the church wanted limits on the power of the king, not because of the wishes of the people. So sometimes powerful interest groups do act in service of the common good and a stronger rule of law. That said, 13th century England was not supposed to be a government of the people and for the people, so being in a similar situation now is arguably less than ideal.
- cgio 11y ago
  Maybe 13th century England was not supposed to be a government of the people, but arguably all governments claim and have always claimed to be for the people.
  - deciplex 11y ago
    Eh, I'm not so sure about that. We don't really have many even nominal principalities these days, so it's hard to imagine a state where both the people and the government are expected to serve the sovereign as a matter of course. But republicanism is more the outlier, historically, even if it enjoys a lot of contemporary success (whether in practice or in theory, is a matter of some debate, but nonetheless...).
  - lazaroclapp 11y ago
    Not really. Kings and emperors might have had a moral duty towards the people, but that is hardly equivalent to them "serving" the people or governing "for" the people. Then there are colonies like the Belgian Congo and some Spanish possessions in the Americas, which were very explicitly run for the benefit of the respective European crown, not their inhabitants. Theocracies have generally been about pleasing God, not the people, with the underlying assumption that God's plan is definitionally the best for the people and that the priest class has unquestionable knowledge of such plan. There are probably even more examples. Governments explicitly "on behalf of the people" are more or less an historical rarity, even if all governments have needed to keep people below the successful armed revolt threshold as a practical matter.
- BEEdwards 11y ago
selfinterest 11y ago
If only corporations truly had the interests of the citizens at heart. -- Speaking at the Mobile World Congress, an annual tech and telecommunications conference here, Mr. Zuckerberg said that Facebook would play its part in the fight against global terrorism, but that weakening the digital security of technology companies was a bad idea. -- “I don’t think building back doors is the way to go, so we’re pretty sympathetic to Tim and Apple,” said Mr. Zuckerberg, in reference to Apple’s chief executive, Timothy D. Cook. That's about at weak as "protection" gets. He's giving a speech at a tech conference so he needs to mention the elephant in the room. He hedges, knowing that consumer trust is the cornerstone of Facebook's ability to collect and monetize data. That he needs to throw cautious support to Apple to have the people on his side, but that he also needs to show that Facebook is against terrorism. Because we all cower like a fucking scared bunch of children whenever we hear the word "terrorist" and we want to feel like we're so important that the security of our stupid instagram pictures, grocery lists, and sexts is that fucking important. True, it's not his place to speak his mind. He needs to speak for the thousands of employees at Facebook. He needs to speak for their stock price, their financial well being, their ability to send their children to college, to show up to work happy that they are the scions and mechanics of a good, benevolent engine of prosperity, peace, and progress. Therefore, it's pointless to listen to what any of these people - Zuckerberg, Cook, Pichai - say. They speak for their companies, big, gray amalgamations with no feelings, no brothers, no father or mother, just a lot of interchangeable children and no goddamn soul. They speak for the business decisions that will keep their investors, boards, and employees happy. They could have extremely radical or enlightened views about encryption and terrorism, but they shut up and they do their job - make the stock price go up. Play up our protection of the consumer, but make sure we're still open to spying for the FBI and the CIA. Talk both sides of the issue, leave everyone feeling happy, let the storm roll over, keep making money. It's just business, nothing personal.
tn13 11y ago
I think free market has always done a better job of protecting Individual liberties from the government. In fact a lot of Americans take for granted what these profit mongering corporations are doing for them. If this had to happen in China or India the corporations would bend over and grease up because there you wont succeed without government's approval at every step. I really wonder what Apple would do if Chinese government asks similar backdoor. May be they have already complied.
- Avshalom 11y ago
  When has this free market existed? And how has it not been explicitly provided by the government; what markets we've had at various points in history have always been fought for and defended from others by their parent governments.
  - tn13 11y ago
    That is the only job governments are supposed to do. Protect freedom of its subjects from outsiders. You cant credit the Bank's security guard for the wealth that the bank builds.
    - Avshalom 11y ago
      You can when the bank was created by the guard in the first place.
timr 11y ago
Before you get too breathless over this, know that Apple has been unlocking phones for the government, in nearly this exact situation, for a long time now: http://www.npr.org/2016/02/22/467602161/the-seeds-of-apples-standoff-with-doj-may-have-been-sown-in-brooklyn http://www.npr.org/2016/02/22/467602161/the-seeds-of-apples-... This is an entirely new stance from Apple. Historically, they've been on the other side.
- themartorana 11y ago
  They were pretty clear that there are major differences in the case in the article you linked to. It's not rare for a company to provide info/help to law enforcement when asked/compelled. It was easy to do on iOS 7. The ask in this case is totally different.
  - timr 11y ago
    "They were pretty clear that there are major differences in the case in the article you linked to." No, there really aren't. From the article: "The cases are different, but the underlying legal question is very similar," says Alex Abdo, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union. "The question in the New York case is whether the government can rely on this very old statute to conscript Apple into government service." Moreover, the "ask" in this case is nearly identical. Apple is being asked only to bypass the 10-failed-attempt device wipe, so that investigators can enumerate all 10,000 codes: http://arstechnica.com/apple/2016/02/encryption-isnt-at-stake-the-fbi-knows-apple-already-has-the-desired-key/ http://arstechnica.com/apple/2016/02/encryption-isnt-at-stak... ...which means that it's effectively exactly the same thing that Apple has done in previous cases. The only technological difference is one that has been manufactured by Apple. This whole thing boils down to a question of whether or not Apple should facilitate a brute-force attack on a single phone, under a search warrant, for a known criminal. And they've done same thing 70-some times in the past.
    - aljones 11y ago
      but it wasn't a brute force attack those 70 times so how is it the same thing?
dragonwriter 11y ago
Especially given that corporations only exist through an exercise of government power.
thrownear 11y ago
"The world is a business" clip from the film The Network... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKkRDMil0bw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKkRDMil0bw
snowwrestler 11y ago
Well who the heck do you think run corporations?
jstalin 11y ago
Apple has an incentive to serve its customers and provide a product that they want. Governments have no such incentive and indeed do their best to ignore the wishes of their "customers." Companies measure success by profit. Governments measure success by the whims of unaccountable bureaucrats and egomaniacial politicians.
Bud 11y ago
The kind where we've allowed the GOP and Roger Ailes' propaganda apparatus to demagogue about terrorism and security for far too long without challenging the lies, and so now we have a population which has been thoroughly groomed to accept this kind of dangerous trespassing on our privacy without objection. So Apple is all we've got left. The top-rank leftists in our politics today—Hillary, Sanders, and Obama—are all failing us.
- adventured 11y ago
  Failing? No, Hillary and Obama are giddy participants, eager to push forward the exact same agenda you're talking about. They are the political creators after all, directly responsible. Hillary couldn't be more of a hawk and Obama has pushed forward on spying at every opportunity. Ailes? Laughable compared to real political power in DC; Obama is the head of the US military and NSA, he's the one choosing to push the actual programs forward. You might as well try blaming Glenn Beck or Sean Hannity, they're sideshow clowns next to real power.
zouhair 11y ago
An oligarchy?
odiroot 11y ago
USA is not the world.

What kind of a democracy do we live in where we rely on corporations to protect the people from an overreaching government?

by tbabb 11y ago

What kind of a democracy do we live in where we rely on corporations to protect the people from an overreaching government?

dpweb 11y ago

We're seeing a real power struggle between these powerful tech corps and governments. What was really revealing was Tim Cook's answer on 60 minutes when pinned down about Apple's international tax strategies - why don't you being this money back to the US thereby making it taxable. His answer essentially: because I don't want to. Privacy, tax avoidance, H1Bs - more showdowns to come.

traskjd 11y ago
>> because I don't want to. Well, he also doesn't HAVE to. If you don't HAVE to do something, especially if it's beneficial to not do that thing, why would you?
- empressplay 11y ago
  Because you're a good person, perhaps?
  - hueving 11y ago
    That's not how taxes work. Why don't you donate extra money to the government that there is no law saying you have to pay?
sigzero 11y ago
Nothing revealing about that. It's an obvious stance for Apple to take. Change the tax laws.

USANEEDSHELP 11y ago

The US of A is not a democracy it's supposed to be a republic. When companies act as the mouthpiece for the people, they are not doing so because they are protecting the people. They are doing it to protect their own interests (corporatism) and any company that is speaking out in this situation, is merely playing lip service to the people (consumers/products). There's nothing they can do. They are at the mercy of the government, laws and any types of intimidation that may be applied by the any agency of the state. Only the people of the US of A can rise up and make a true difference. We must stop believing that we are here to serve the state (government). We must stand up and demand that the state serve the people.

altitudinous 11y ago

Apple believes they are serving the people by protecting their privacy. The FBI believes they are serving the people by hunting down terrorists. Just two different beliefs in what serving the people means.

merpnderp 11y ago
Yeah, but Apple didn't fail to read the public Facebook of an immigrant to see if they were a foaming at the mouth, fully supportive of killing a bunch of civilians, crazed loonbat terrorist, before giving them the ok to come on over and kill some people. The FBI et al did.
notthegov 11y ago
This sounds like you are saying truth is relative. Isn't there one best way to serve the people? Which is by protecting tenets of classical liberalism and natural rights; and ideally promoting and defending these ideas elsewhere to prevent such things as terrorists. I am weary of this idea that no man is wrong except the man who says he is right. The FBI is an institution that was built by a seriously flawed megalomaniac. I think in terms of building a just and reasonable federal law enforcement agency, you'd 1) need to pass a federal amendment and 2) not build it upon an overreaching and power hungry organization built by J. Edgar Hoover. We can do better.
- throwawayukcyb 11y ago
  > Isn't there one best way to serve the people? No. Not unless you are omniscient and all-powerful. And even then, still no, because different people are different and want different things. No one is claiming that the FBI is without fault or even that its actual goal is serving the people. But there are plenty of people out there who have a sincerely held -- and in a few cases even informed -- belief that the FBI is on the right side of this debate.
  - notthegov 11y ago
    That's a distortion of what I meant. So respecting natural rights and popular sovereignty are not the right way to serve people? Your perspective on this was the point of Professor Bloom's book, The Closing of the American Mind. I don't personally care what ill-informed people who are victims of the American Historical Association think about classical liberalism and human freedom. The FBI will not exist in the future, solely because it is a threat to human freedom and in a better world, such a powerful authoritarian organization won't be needed.

bdrool 11y ago

…something something eternal vigilance…

joeblau 11y ago

Aren't corporations people now anyways[1]? Basically, it's just people protecting themselves :). [1] - http://www.npr.org/2014/07/28/335288388/when-did-companies-become-people-excavating-the-legal-evolution http://www.npr.org/2014/07/28/335288388/when-did-companies-b...

chimeracoder 11y ago

> rely on corporations to protect the people from an overreaching government? Corporations aren't fundamentally different from the government. Both are just groups of people, at an abstract level. It's actually not uncommon for local governments to literally exist as incorporated entities. Or for corporations to serve as the de facto government for a region. It's a relatively recent phenomenon that we view these as completely different concepts, but they're not as distinct as we often think. It's more accurate to think of government as a special case of corporations rather than a completely different concept.

rough-sea 11y ago
Well... yes, they are groups of people, but governments are rather different. Governments include everyone and act on their behalf. They are also responsible for creating and enforcing law. The distinction is valid.
- chimeracoder 11y ago
  > Governments include everyone and act on their behalf. They are also responsible for creating and enforcing law. It's more accurate to think of governments as a special case of corporations. Governments don't always "include everyone", and as we've seen, they definitely don't necessarily act on their constituents' behalf. In certain contexts, corporations have also been responsible for creating and enforcing law, even though that's not the context we are used to today in the US.
  - Avshalom 11y ago
    It's more accurate to think of corporations as a special case of governments, what with corporations being a recent legal structure created by governments.
lazaroclapp 11y ago
The difference is that corporations have (mostly) voluntary membership but unelected leadership, whereas nations have (mostly) involuntary membership and elected leadership. So it still stands that it should not be the expected state of affairs that corporations are seen as stewards of the common good, rather than the government. It really ought to be the other way around, and the fact that it isn't is sign of a problem. I don't remember who said it, but there is a quote along the lines of: "People should look to the private sector for growth, and to the government for justice. Increasingly, they look to the government for growth and to the private sector for justice." Edit: Found proper quote and source thanks to mbrock's pointing out where I likely heard it last. The quote is: "We have come to rely upon capitalism for justice and the government for economic stimulation, precisely the opposite of what reason would suggest." - Donald Kaul And it comes from here: http://articles.philly.com/1990-10-17/news/25891604_1_budget-mess-medicare-costs-national-ills http://articles.philly.com/1990-10-17/news/25891604_1_budget... (Timothy Taylor did quote Kaul in the podcast mentioned in the comment below)

staunch 11y ago

A corporatocracy. It's not so surprising when you consider that corporations can span many countries. Apple doesn't need the U.S. nearly as much as the U.S. needs Apple.

wskinner 11y ago

Just like governments, corporations are groups of individual people nominally organized around a common goal. If the government overreaches to a degree that will have a significant negative effect on corporations' bottom lines, as would Apple being forced to backdoor its software, we should absolutely expect corporations to step in on the side of their customers. Of course corporations will be pragmatic about when they step in to "protect the people" as you put it. But let's not kid ourselves about governments ever being fully (mostly, even) on the side of the people.

ignoramous 11y ago
> But let's not kid ourselves about governments ever being fully (mostly, even) on the side of the people. Exactly. What kind of democracy is this?
- prewett 11y ago
  It's not, it's a republic. In fact, the Founding Fathers considered democracy a terrible form of government. "Democracy is the most vile form of government" (James Madison) "A simple democracy is the devil's own government." (Benjamin Rush, signed Declaration of Independence) "Democracy will soon degenerate into an anarchy..." (John Adams) "The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not." (Thomas Jefferson) Many, many more at http://www.godtheoriginalintent.com/democracy_republic_quotes.html http://www.godtheoriginalintent.com/democracy_republic_quote... (sorry about the choice of web site, but the selection of quotations is impressive.)
  - arrrg 11y ago
    That’s simply a discrepancy in definitions. ”Democracy” as used in your quotes is not “democracy” as used elsewhere here. With democracy the people you quoted meant something more specific than the people using it here. Today democracy is simply a catch-all term.
  - tamana 11y ago
    That Jefferson quote shows a lot of chutzpah for a slave owner.

lazaroclapp 11y ago

Do keep in mind that we got the Magna Carta because the nobles and the church wanted limits on the power of the king, not because of the wishes of the people. So sometimes powerful interest groups do act in service of the common good and a stronger rule of law. That said, 13th century England was not supposed to be a government of the people and for the people, so being in a similar situation now is arguably less than ideal.

cgio 11y ago
Maybe 13th century England was not supposed to be a government of the people, but arguably all governments claim and have always claimed to be for the people.
- deciplex 11y ago
  Eh, I'm not so sure about that. We don't really have many even nominal principalities these days, so it's hard to imagine a state where both the people and the government are expected to serve the sovereign as a matter of course. But republicanism is more the outlier, historically, even if it enjoys a lot of contemporary success (whether in practice or in theory, is a matter of some debate, but nonetheless...).
- lazaroclapp 11y ago
  Not really. Kings and emperors might have had a moral duty towards the people, but that is hardly equivalent to them "serving" the people or governing "for" the people. Then there are colonies like the Belgian Congo and some Spanish possessions in the Americas, which were very explicitly run for the benefit of the respective European crown, not their inhabitants. Theocracies have generally been about pleasing God, not the people, with the underlying assumption that God's plan is definitionally the best for the people and that the priest class has unquestionable knowledge of such plan. There are probably even more examples. Governments explicitly "on behalf of the people" are more or less an historical rarity, even if all governments have needed to keep people below the successful armed revolt threshold as a practical matter.
BEEdwards 11y ago

selfinterest 11y ago

If only corporations truly had the interests of the citizens at heart. -- Speaking at the Mobile World Congress, an annual tech and telecommunications conference here, Mr. Zuckerberg said that Facebook would play its part in the fight against global terrorism, but that weakening the digital security of technology companies was a bad idea. -- “I don’t think building back doors is the way to go, so we’re pretty sympathetic to Tim and Apple,” said Mr. Zuckerberg, in reference to Apple’s chief executive, Timothy D. Cook. That's about at weak as "protection" gets. He's giving a speech at a tech conference so he needs to mention the elephant in the room. He hedges, knowing that consumer trust is the cornerstone of Facebook's ability to collect and monetize data. That he needs to throw cautious support to Apple to have the people on his side, but that he also needs to show that Facebook is against terrorism. Because we all cower like a fucking scared bunch of children whenever we hear the word "terrorist" and we want to feel like we're so important that the security of our stupid instagram pictures, grocery lists, and sexts is that fucking important. True, it's not his place to speak his mind. He needs to speak for the thousands of employees at Facebook. He needs to speak for their stock price, their financial well being, their ability to send their children to college, to show up to work happy that they are the scions and mechanics of a good, benevolent engine of prosperity, peace, and progress. Therefore, it's pointless to listen to what any of these people - Zuckerberg, Cook, Pichai - say. They speak for their companies, big, gray amalgamations with no feelings, no brothers, no father or mother, just a lot of interchangeable children and no goddamn soul. They speak for the business decisions that will keep their investors, boards, and employees happy. They could have extremely radical or enlightened views about encryption and terrorism, but they shut up and they do their job - make the stock price go up. Play up our protection of the consumer, but make sure we're still open to spying for the FBI and the CIA. Talk both sides of the issue, leave everyone feeling happy, let the storm roll over, keep making money. It's just business, nothing personal.

tn13 11y ago

I think free market has always done a better job of protecting Individual liberties from the government. In fact a lot of Americans take for granted what these profit mongering corporations are doing for them. If this had to happen in China or India the corporations would bend over and grease up because there you wont succeed without government's approval at every step. I really wonder what Apple would do if Chinese government asks similar backdoor. May be they have already complied.

Avshalom 11y ago
When has this free market existed? And how has it not been explicitly provided by the government; what markets we've had at various points in history have always been fought for and defended from others by their parent governments.
- tn13 11y ago
  That is the only job governments are supposed to do. Protect freedom of its subjects from outsiders. You cant credit the Bank's security guard for the wealth that the bank builds.
  - Avshalom 11y ago
    You can when the bank was created by the guard in the first place.

timr 11y ago

Before you get too breathless over this, know that Apple has been unlocking phones for the government, in nearly this exact situation, for a long time now: http://www.npr.org/2016/02/22/467602161/the-seeds-of-apples-standoff-with-doj-may-have-been-sown-in-brooklyn http://www.npr.org/2016/02/22/467602161/the-seeds-of-apples-... This is an entirely new stance from Apple. Historically, they've been on the other side.

themartorana 11y ago
They were pretty clear that there are major differences in the case in the article you linked to. It's not rare for a company to provide info/help to law enforcement when asked/compelled. It was easy to do on iOS 7. The ask in this case is totally different.
- timr 11y ago
  "They were pretty clear that there are major differences in the case in the article you linked to." No, there really aren't. From the article: "The cases are different, but the underlying legal question is very similar," says Alex Abdo, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union. "The question in the New York case is whether the government can rely on this very old statute to conscript Apple into government service." Moreover, the "ask" in this case is nearly identical. Apple is being asked only to bypass the 10-failed-attempt device wipe, so that investigators can enumerate all 10,000 codes: http://arstechnica.com/apple/2016/02/encryption-isnt-at-stake-the-fbi-knows-apple-already-has-the-desired-key/ http://arstechnica.com/apple/2016/02/encryption-isnt-at-stak... ...which means that it's effectively exactly the same thing that Apple has done in previous cases. The only technological difference is one that has been manufactured by Apple. This whole thing boils down to a question of whether or not Apple should facilitate a brute-force attack on a single phone, under a search warrant, for a known criminal. And they've done same thing 70-some times in the past.
  - aljones 11y ago
    but it wasn't a brute force attack those 70 times so how is it the same thing?

dragonwriter 11y ago

Especially given that corporations only exist through an exercise of government power.

thrownear 11y ago

"The world is a business" clip from the film The Network... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKkRDMil0bw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKkRDMil0bw

snowwrestler 11y ago

Well who the heck do you think run corporations?

jstalin 11y ago

Apple has an incentive to serve its customers and provide a product that they want. Governments have no such incentive and indeed do their best to ignore the wishes of their "customers." Companies measure success by profit. Governments measure success by the whims of unaccountable bureaucrats and egomaniacial politicians.

Bud 11y ago

The kind where we've allowed the GOP and Roger Ailes' propaganda apparatus to demagogue about terrorism and security for far too long without challenging the lies, and so now we have a population which has been thoroughly groomed to accept this kind of dangerous trespassing on our privacy without objection. So Apple is all we've got left. The top-rank leftists in our politics today—Hillary, Sanders, and Obama—are all failing us.

adventured 11y ago
Failing? No, Hillary and Obama are giddy participants, eager to push forward the exact same agenda you're talking about. They are the political creators after all, directly responsible. Hillary couldn't be more of a hawk and Obama has pushed forward on spying at every opportunity. Ailes? Laughable compared to real political power in DC; Obama is the head of the US military and NSA, he's the one choosing to push the actual programs forward. You might as well try blaming Glenn Beck or Sean Hannity, they're sideshow clowns next to real power.

zouhair 11y ago

An oligarchy?

odiroot 11y ago

USA is not the world.