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> "Should the FBI be able to compel technology companies to use their resources against their own and their Customers right to Security." That's far too long a

> "Should the FBI be able to compel technology companies to use their resources against their own and their Customers right to Security." That's far too long and complicated for average citizens to parse and grasp implications immediately and intuitively. The second half of your question veers heavily into leading a person toward the conclusion you want them to have. Not ideal. Moreover, I think an average poll responder would get confused by the second half of the question as you've phrased it. Perhaps try to phrase it like a simple headline or poll question that gets to the heart of the matter: "Should government be able to force companies to change or disable your passwords?" Here, I think, you have a much greater chance of grabbing the attention of the casual onlooker. Admittedly, it's a mostly true statement of the core issue here, while leveraging the need to hook a reader at a glance. An article/reporter/anchor can dive deep into the case particulars or not, cover and present its view of what's at stake in asking the question, include discussion of a "right to security" that may or may not be enjoyed by companies and individuals. But you want citizens to immediately grok what you're asking, and be able to, on their own, extrapolate possible implications that matter to them. This is going to be far more powerful in getting people to invest themselves in the issue--they must be able to imagine, see, understand that what's at stake could affect them. The first half of the battle is this: You've got to get people to fucking care. And you can't get them there if you confuse or lose them at the start.

scrollaway 11y ago
> "Should government be able to force companies to change or disable your passwords?" And phrased like that, everybody will answer yes. The dire implications of this case are not that easy to explain to someone who doesn't understand the basics of encryption/security. Welcome to give it another try, though...
- bobwaycott 11y ago
  > And phrased like that, everybody will answer yes. The normal, non-technologists I know would most certainly find the idea that their passwords could be changed against their will--or, in the absence of their assent after death--pretty unsettling and inherently wrong. It's relatively trivial to provide analogous (though not entirely homologous) situations--e.g., should the government be able to force your mortgage company to change the locks on your house so they can get in to execute a search warrant?--that people would have immediate pause and find it worth considering. I don't know many people who would just thumbs up the suggestion that Facebook could be forced by the government to change/disable their account password. Or their banking passwords, email password, etc. If people became aware of a national conversation focused on the government trying to secure the power/precedent to force Facebook, Google, Apple, etc. to change/disable their passwords via a court order, I think very many more people will refuse to accept such an issue at face-value. > The dire implications of this case are not that easy to explain to someone who doesn't understand the basics of encryption/security. HN is a predictably poor place to discuss gaining widespread understanding by the masses on certain things. We too often fall into the trap of thinking that people must understand technical details of some thing X in order to understand implications of related thing Y. I think this is nonsense. People don't need to understand all the math and physics behind rocket science to understand that an unexpected explosion during liftoff has dire implications. We can explain that to people without ever showing them an equation, or talking about scientific laws/principles. There is no reason we cannot have a meaningful and productive conversation on this issue without losing the majority of American citizens as soon as we bring up the technical details. Technologists haven't gotten much of anywhere getting the average American to understand, much less know why they should care about, encryption. Hell, we still engage in arguments here on HN about why you shouldn't roll your own encryption, even though all the programmers out there should already know that. We simply aren't going to get anywhere saying we first have to educate normal people on encryption. And it's plain wrong to think that an issue like this needs to be framed within a context that requires people to understand the basics of encryption. That's a no-win trajectory for carrying on a public conversation. You simply have to appeal to people using language that isn't overly biased, presents issues in the simplest possible ways (and builds up from there), and actually gets them involved in the conversation. It would, without any doubt, be fantastic if more people understood encryption, digital security, digital privacy, etc. But Average Joes and Janes don't really think about the devices and services they use in that way. I know a great many people who are [what I think are] normal, non-technical citizens, and their eyes just glaze over at talk of encryption--much like how many people's eyes glaze over at seeing mathematical equations, as if they're looking at Japanese. The reason there is a higher propensity among potential Average American poll respondents to support the FBI on this issue is the way it's being framed. All I'm saying is that it's just as possible, and actually necessary, to frame the issue in a way that helps average Americans understand the dire implications of this case without having any need for understanding the basics of encryption, iOS, the Secure Enclave, trusted/signed code from Apple, and everything else that most HNers are discussing here.
  - scrollaway 11y ago
    > We too often fall into the trap of thinking that people must understand technical details of some thing X in order to understand implications of related thing Y. Is that what you got from my post? Because it's not what I meant at all. I don't believe people have to understand the technical details behind it, but they do have to understand that the FBI forcing an unlock sets a very bad precedent which would massively diminish the security of the iphone/next iphone and this would apply to everybody, not just the tewwowist, AND that they're using a super old obscure shady law to back all that. There is a lot of data to understand and you can't easily grasp that from a single, short sentence.
    - bobwaycott 11y ago
      Ah, my apologies then. This explanation sounds very different from your original suggestion that people need a basic understanding of encryption/security. I think we are quite close in agreement here.
      - scrollaway 11y ago
        I can see how my comment was misleading. My point was that those with a ground knowledge of encryption/security would most likely easily deduce this - but that doesn't mean you need such knowledge to understand what's going on.
ewzimm 11y ago
I think Tim Cook's letter put it well. We should be focusing on the specific law invoked here. The All Writs Act says that people need to hand over all information pertinent to a crime investigation. Traditionally, this has been interpreted to mean all documents that already exist. Should we expand our interpretation to include information that doesn't exist but could be created? If you had the ability to create information that could help in an investigation, should the government have the power to compel you to create it?
- bobwaycott 11y ago
  Oh, I absolutely agree. This is somewhat closer to what I'm trying to invoke here, but it's slightly different, and requires a different approach to engage the average American citizen in the conversation. I think getting people involved in understanding this aspect of the case is critically important, as this is the part of the case that would be precedent-setting and [I believe rightly] concerns Apple and others with the requisite technical background. The danger is this precedent could be extended in untold tangential ways outside the realm of preventing device-wiping after n failed password attempts. The trouble here, to me, is a majority of the average citizen who wonders what the All Writs Act is aren't going to bother finding out. They'll just accept the government's position that it allows them to ask for what they're asking. A smaller minority of those same citizens might go look up the All Writs Act, are probably not going to understand what it means. "What's a writ?" Hmmm. "What's "an alternative writ or rule nisi"?" I don't even understand what this means, much less how it applies. Oh well." Average people aren't going to become armchair legal (or encryption) experts overnight to resolve in their head where they stand on this issue. Thus, they're probably going to choose the path of least mental resistance, which will look something like, "Well, it is a terrorist's phone ... and I'm not a terrorist, so this probably doesn't actually affect me in any way ..." Anyway, I think you're definitely on the right track with this part of the order, and the specific law invoked. We just have to get that into simpler terms an average American can understand, minus the expert/legal/technical jargon, and then get them to understand the implications. Your questions and phrasing are pretty good starters, I think. I can imagine, with perhaps a wording change or two for personal taste, I could ask a non-lawyer, non-technologist that question and they'd react with something like, "Why the hell should the government be able to force me to create something that doesn't exist so they can conduct an investigation?" And that's exactly where we want people to be on this part of the issue at hand.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

scrollaway 11y ago

> "Should government be able to force companies to change or disable your passwords?" And phrased like that, everybody will answer yes. The dire implications of this case are not that easy to explain to someone who doesn't understand the basics of encryption/security. Welcome to give it another try, though...

bobwaycott 11y ago
> And phrased like that, everybody will answer yes. The normal, non-technologists I know would most certainly find the idea that their passwords could be changed against their will--or, in the absence of their assent after death--pretty unsettling and inherently wrong. It's relatively trivial to provide analogous (though not entirely homologous) situations--e.g., should the government be able to force your mortgage company to change the locks on your house so they can get in to execute a search warrant?--that people would have immediate pause and find it worth considering. I don't know many people who would just thumbs up the suggestion that Facebook could be forced by the government to change/disable their account password. Or their banking passwords, email password, etc. If people became aware of a national conversation focused on the government trying to secure the power/precedent to force Facebook, Google, Apple, etc. to change/disable their passwords via a court order, I think very many more people will refuse to accept such an issue at face-value. > The dire implications of this case are not that easy to explain to someone who doesn't understand the basics of encryption/security. HN is a predictably poor place to discuss gaining widespread understanding by the masses on certain things. We too often fall into the trap of thinking that people must understand technical details of some thing X in order to understand implications of related thing Y. I think this is nonsense. People don't need to understand all the math and physics behind rocket science to understand that an unexpected explosion during liftoff has dire implications. We can explain that to people without ever showing them an equation, or talking about scientific laws/principles. There is no reason we cannot have a meaningful and productive conversation on this issue without losing the majority of American citizens as soon as we bring up the technical details. Technologists haven't gotten much of anywhere getting the average American to understand, much less know why they should care about, encryption. Hell, we still engage in arguments here on HN about why you shouldn't roll your own encryption, even though all the programmers out there should already know that. We simply aren't going to get anywhere saying we first have to educate normal people on encryption. And it's plain wrong to think that an issue like this needs to be framed within a context that requires people to understand the basics of encryption. That's a no-win trajectory for carrying on a public conversation. You simply have to appeal to people using language that isn't overly biased, presents issues in the simplest possible ways (and builds up from there), and actually gets them involved in the conversation. It would, without any doubt, be fantastic if more people understood encryption, digital security, digital privacy, etc. But Average Joes and Janes don't really think about the devices and services they use in that way. I know a great many people who are [what I think are] normal, non-technical citizens, and their eyes just glaze over at talk of encryption--much like how many people's eyes glaze over at seeing mathematical equations, as if they're looking at Japanese. The reason there is a higher propensity among potential Average American poll respondents to support the FBI on this issue is the way it's being framed. All I'm saying is that it's just as possible, and actually necessary, to frame the issue in a way that helps average Americans understand the dire implications of this case without having any need for understanding the basics of encryption, iOS, the Secure Enclave, trusted/signed code from Apple, and everything else that most HNers are discussing here.
- scrollaway 11y ago
  > We too often fall into the trap of thinking that people must understand technical details of some thing X in order to understand implications of related thing Y. Is that what you got from my post? Because it's not what I meant at all. I don't believe people have to understand the technical details behind it, but they do have to understand that the FBI forcing an unlock sets a very bad precedent which would massively diminish the security of the iphone/next iphone and this would apply to everybody, not just the tewwowist, AND that they're using a super old obscure shady law to back all that. There is a lot of data to understand and you can't easily grasp that from a single, short sentence.
  - bobwaycott 11y ago
    Ah, my apologies then. This explanation sounds very different from your original suggestion that people need a basic understanding of encryption/security. I think we are quite close in agreement here.
    - scrollaway 11y ago
      I can see how my comment was misleading. My point was that those with a ground knowledge of encryption/security would most likely easily deduce this - but that doesn't mean you need such knowledge to understand what's going on.

ewzimm 11y ago

I think Tim Cook's letter put it well. We should be focusing on the specific law invoked here. The All Writs Act says that people need to hand over all information pertinent to a crime investigation. Traditionally, this has been interpreted to mean all documents that already exist. Should we expand our interpretation to include information that doesn't exist but could be created? If you had the ability to create information that could help in an investigation, should the government have the power to compel you to create it?

bobwaycott 11y ago
Oh, I absolutely agree. This is somewhat closer to what I'm trying to invoke here, but it's slightly different, and requires a different approach to engage the average American citizen in the conversation. I think getting people involved in understanding this aspect of the case is critically important, as this is the part of the case that would be precedent-setting and [I believe rightly] concerns Apple and others with the requisite technical background. The danger is this precedent could be extended in untold tangential ways outside the realm of preventing device-wiping after n failed password attempts. The trouble here, to me, is a majority of the average citizen who wonders what the All Writs Act is aren't going to bother finding out. They'll just accept the government's position that it allows them to ask for what they're asking. A smaller minority of those same citizens might go look up the All Writs Act, are probably not going to understand what it means. "What's a writ?" Hmmm. "What's "an alternative writ or rule nisi"?" I don't even understand what this means, much less how it applies. Oh well." Average people aren't going to become armchair legal (or encryption) experts overnight to resolve in their head where they stand on this issue. Thus, they're probably going to choose the path of least mental resistance, which will look something like, "Well, it is a terrorist's phone ... and I'm not a terrorist, so this probably doesn't actually affect me in any way ..." Anyway, I think you're definitely on the right track with this part of the order, and the specific law invoked. We just have to get that into simpler terms an average American can understand, minus the expert/legal/technical jargon, and then get them to understand the implications. Your questions and phrasing are pretty good starters, I think. I can imagine, with perhaps a wording change or two for personal taste, I could ask a non-lawyer, non-technologist that question and they'd react with something like, "Why the hell should the government be able to force me to create something that doesn't exist so they can conduct an investigation?" And that's exactly where we want people to be on this part of the issue at hand.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]