You're drawing a false dichotomy when you talk about technology and policy as separate issues. If you are unable to overhear my encrypted messages, were you st

You're drawing a false dichotomy when you talk about technology and policy as separate issues. If you are unable to overhear my encrypted messages, were you stopped by the technology of the Salsa20 algorithm or my policy of not giving you the keys? Or were you stopped by the government's policy of not compelling their production for you? Maybe you were stopped by your own policy of not beating people with rubber hoses? In the hypothetical that Apple did not have the capability to defeat the 5C's passcode counter, is the FBI thwarted because of a technically secure cryptosystem or because it is the policy in the United States to allow such cryptosystems to be marketed and sold? Policy and technology do not exist in a vacuum. Apple is obviously going to close the custom image loophole in response to this "debate"; so clearly the boundary between technology and policy is fluid. But merely taping a policy out for silicon, as Apple is going to do in the next chip, does not address any of the underlying issues. Sure, in the instant case Apple "technically can" unlock the iPhone, but that is always true: we could create a law such that all phones must be backdoored for example. Assuming Apple loses here, mark your calendar, because we'll have that battle next year when a terrorist uses the new silicon. There is a line somewhere for what is reasonable to compel. Reasonable people can disagree about where that line is, but let's not paint "people in technology" with a broad patronizing brush of "it's not technology, it's policy, therefore your rules don't apply". Technology is merely policy that's machine-readible.