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There are many issues here which have thus far been conducted in a legal or nebulous grey area of the law or flown under the notice of the general public for fa
by progressive_dad 11y ago
There are many issues here which have thus far been conducted in a legal or nebulous grey area of the law or flown under the notice of the general public for far too long:
Can the government compel the creation of original tools and IP outside the typical operations of a business? If so should they be required to compensate the business? Does the business then own the IP or the government? What happens when compelling a company to create IP or perform process outside of its typical operations is a net loss regardless of compensation? Should it be required to notify stockholders? Is it legal to make investments based on this PARTICULAR kind of inside government information? What if the entire company's operation may be plausibly undermined by the operation?
I think a more relevant example here would be whether the government could compel a bank or financial company to create or alter its financial reporting tools to falsify data or misreport to the subject of an investigation.
- tracker1 11y agoMy understanding is the government is generally supposed to pay for the cost of external requests to private entities, should they choose to bill for it.... Unfortunately, the cost of compliance for Apple is lost future revenue, not just the technical costs of the gimped iOS version.
- progressive_dad 11y agoThe specifics are important. If I said, "If a police officer gives you a lawful order do you have to comply?" you would immediately say, "yes". Now what if I said, "If a police officer demands that an entire neighborhood be subject to lengthy interrogation and be held for 24 hours in custody in order to solve a murder that took place there." You'd probably say that's ridiculous. That's essentially what I view to be the case here. In theory the procedure may be perfectly "lawful" but in practice is clearly overreach. We need case law around this. I believe this is as clear a case of overreach as Apple could wish for. Finally, I believe it should be legal precedent set in public for once.
- harryh 11y agoRequesting a trivial modification to a piece of software is overreach?
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- progressive_dad 11y agoIt becomes non-trivial due to the marketing of their devices as secure systems. Just as with the burden of proof in defamation actions is higher in the case of a public figures, the "triviality" of the modification in this case is held to a higher standard due to the purpose of the product. * I can't reply below this threshold but I'm enjoying the back and forth. People buy iphones because they believe that there are no ways to "trivially" access their personal information. Even for Apple to do so would be a breach of that trust. See: "Uber God Mode"
- harryh 11y agoPeople buy iPhones because they think that the FBI can't ever compel Apple to extract data from them? And even if that's true (which I really don't think it is) it's not a good enough reason. Say I started a bank and marketed my bank as an especially secure one. "Even the FBI will never be able to see your bank records. I won't let them!" I bet some customers might be interested in that. Just because I had marketed my bank that way doesn't mean my bank would gain some special legal protection against warrants.
- criddell 11y agoThe big difference between the two is that the banks have the information and are already subject to lots of record keeping regulations and so it is not an undue burden for them to comply with a subpoena demanding information. Apple does not currently have what the FBI is asking for and to comply would mean creating that software. If the government wants to pass a law requiring phone makers like Apple to include a back door, then that's what they should do. For me, this boils down to whether or not people are allowed to have strong encryption.