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This seems like an instance in which a small number of people could strongly affect an outcome - in which civil disobedience could matter. For Apple to comply

This seems like an instance in which a small number of people could strongly affect an outcome - in which civil disobedience could matter. For Apple to comply with the court's order would require some of its employees to act. If whoever at Apple is told to comply with the court's order declines to do so, then what? If every Apple employee asked to supply information to the FBI refuses, then what? If every coder Apple tries to hire to comply with the court order declines to come aboard...how will the FBI get what it wants? Of course, those critical people would have to be willing to lose their jobs or not accept employment. Long ago, Rosa Parks declined to give up her seat on the bus in favor of a white passenger. She was arrested for it, and we have a better country for her pains. This is an opportunity for Parks v.2016 - if you're asked by Apple to do anything to comply with the court order, don't do it.

generj 11y ago
I guarantee job offers and a gofundme legal defense would be offered to any dissenting employees insanely quickly on this issue. If Tim Cook was really upset he could start a new company called "Screw the FBI LLC" which coincidentally hired employees after they got fired from Apple...
- XorNot 11y ago
  You do realize Tim Cook is the CEO aka the one who is ultimately doing the firing in this scenario right? The US Government are not majority stakeholders in Apple.
  - swombat 11y ago
    In the UK there is this concept of a "shadow director", which is someone who, while not officially a director of the company, actually has executive power indirectly in some way. The legal concept exists to point out that a shadow director can be held legally accountable in the same way a director can. Perhaps a similar concept applies here. If the FBI can compel action from Apple it is basically a shadow CEO of Apple.
ghshephard 11y ago
Apple/Tim have already made it abundantly clear that they will follow the law. If you read the briefing, it makes it clear that every reasonable legal argument you can make agrees with Apples position.
- studentrob 11y ago
  Yeah I don't think there's anything Apple could do but complete the request. Anything short of that would result in the dissolution of the company through daily fines from the government, which shareholders wouldn't like. Apple could find someone to pay to complete the task, even if it required a significant raise. Don't suicide over nothing. Apple isn't. Even if Apple did have to do this to survive, it wouldn't be the end of the tech world, it would just hurt a lot. And it wouldn't make us safer. Regardless of the current judge's decision, this case will likely be in court for two years at bare minimum [1] The pressing issue is whether or not Congress will eventually pass an anti-encryption bill. This would be a bad idea for our security and economy. We can help people understand this by a) allowing the bill to pass and watching idly as criminals change to use other encrypted communications software, hurting the IT industry in the process, or b) educating people I'm interested in starting a grassroots campaign to do (b). If you'd like to help, email me at stillastudent on google's email service. [1] http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-03-04/apple-and-the-fbi-what-happens-next http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-03-04/apple-and-the...
  - jkestner 11y ago
    In some ways, it's a good thing that the FBI decided to take it public, where Apple could effectively argue their side. Though this has been built on many small victories that has forced sunshine.
einarvollset 11y ago
Do you honestly think Rosa Parks risking her life and limb to protest racial injustice is even remotely equivalent to an engineer at Apple refusing to comply with a court order to look at the information on the iPhone's of the two nut jobs that killed: Shannon Johnson Bennetta Bet-Badal Aurora Godoy Isaac Amanios Larry Kaufman Harry Bowman Yvette Velasco Sierra Clayborn Robert Adams Nicholas Thalasinos Tin Nguyen Juan Espinoza Damian Meins Michael Wetzel ? Listen, I understand you feel passionate about securing your privacy, but it would likely help your case to keep things a little more in perspective
- csallen 11y ago
  The parent is making an analogy, the point of which is to compare one singular aspect of situation A to one singular aspect of situation B. So no, it's safe to say that the parent isn't claiming that situation A and situation B are equivalent.
  - einarvollset 11y ago
    I asked for "even remotely equivalent" based on: This is an opportunity for Parks v.2016 - if you're asked by Apple to do anything to comply with the court order, don't do it. Seems fair?
    - csallen 11y ago
      Hmm, I think if you take that sentence in context, it's clear he's saying it's Parks v.2016 only in the sense of committing worthwhile civil disobedience -- an opportunity to do some good while risking legal consequences. He wasn't saying that Apple's fight is as noble and necessary as Parks' was, nor was he saying that the government's goal of stopping terrorist attacks is as sinister as the goal of enforcing segregation. I think it was unfair for you to interpret his argument that way.
      - einarvollset 11y ago
        No I'm sorry, but I respectfully disagree here: if he was not trying to draw an equivalence between segregation and this case, and instead was merely trying to say that civil disobedience would be appropriate, then he should not have mentioned Rosa Parks. Doing so clearly attempts to drawn an equivalence. If he didn't mean that, then why not draw it to eg the Oregon occupiers?
simonh 11y ago
It's not a small number of people though. Surely if anyone is going to refuse, it should be the manager ordering the change refusing to give the order. Why should the little guy at the bottom have to carry the can? So logically, that applies from Apple's legal counsel and management all the way down the chain. That makes up a large pyramid shaped chunk of the Apple reporting hierarchy. Now in no way am I saying that a manager's career is worth more than that of a low level engineer. That because ethically speaking any dissent should begin with a manager and just because of that it's a non starter. My point is that the potential damage such individual action could do to Apple as an organization, taken to it's logical conclusion, could be catastrophic. So we're not just talking about a small handful of people taking a personal stand that just affects them. The people the buck stops with are Tim Cooke and Apple's legal and leadership teams, and they have responsibilities to Apple and their employees. It's nowhere near as simple as you're making out.
- wehadfun 11y ago
  I agree the software engineer should not be the one. All they will do is get someone else to do it.
746F7475 11y ago
>For Apple to comply with the court's order would require some of its employees to act. If whoever at Apple is told to comply with the court's order declines to do so, then what? If every Apple employee asked to supply information to the FBI refuses, then what? If every coder Apple tries to hire to comply with the court order declines to come aboard...how will the FBI get what it wants? This will never happen. People like to keep their jobs. At the end of the day it will be on Apple's CEO's shoulders to comply with the court ruling. If people under him refuse to do it he has no option but to fire them and find someone who will do it. Obviously Apple could refuse completely from complying with the law, but that means they have to be ready to face the penalties, which will first be fines and later jail time.
flatline 11y ago
It's really not the same thing at all. Parks was standing against a wide-sweeping injustice leveled at a minority, of which she was a part. While we all have some vested interest in having Apple win the case, in reality very few people are ever going to be directly affected by this ruling. Many people are going to come down on the side of law enforcement and be happy to do the work, and many more just won't care. It's not an issue of one person standing up to fight a clear social injustice, it's an issue of a corporation complying with a highly specious legal action. Tim and the Apple board are by far and away the only ones in a position to stand up to this in a way that matters, everyone else may as well not exist.
gardano 11y ago
My first thought was civil disobedience on the part of Apple's developers too… But I couldn't make it work out in my head how that could result in a positive outcome.
jfoutz 11y ago
The more elegant solution for a 'rogue employee' is to leak the signing key and blame the FBI.
- uptown 11y ago
  You don't think Apple has extreme protections around their signing key?
  - kenshaw 11y ago
    Eh, probably just sitting on a USB key on Tim Cook's desk with a Post-It note attached saying "DO NOT LOSE". I'm also guessing that they routinely send out to Kinko's to get copies of the source code / signing key printed out for backup. (sarcasm)
- aback 11y ago
  More elegant: leak the OS build itself, so that the specific attack vector they warned about comes to pass.
Lawtonfogle 11y ago
>Long ago, Rosa Parks declined to give up her seat on the bus in favor of a white passenger. And before her others did the same (such as Claudette Colvin), but they weren't considered sympathetic enough, and so nothing happened. We need to remember that Parks was a calculated political tactic, less we find ourselves with a bunch of Colvins and not a single Parks.
niels_olson 11y ago
If I were to Tim Cook, I would probably have an all hands meeting and tell them every single employee "no matter what you do, I respect your decision. I will make sure that your family is taken care of"
AnthonyMouse 11y ago
> This is an opportunity for Parks v.2016 - if you're asked by Apple to do anything to comply with the court order, don't do it. As far as I know there isn't even anything that obligates Apple to punish any of their employees for refusing. If Apple's employees refused to do it they could just put the contract out for bids instead. Then the contractor would be responsible for ensuring that the software is secure (which they can't do), against damage to Apple's six hundred billion dollar business (which probably no one would be willing to insure against), so there probably wouldn't be very many bidders. If there were any bids at all they would be very large and Apple having followed a public bidding process would have a very exact and market-proved cost to submit to the FBI. And when that cost is fifty billion dollars, it would kind of prove Apple's point about the unreasonableness of the request.

generj 11y ago

I guarantee job offers and a gofundme legal defense would be offered to any dissenting employees insanely quickly on this issue. If Tim Cook was really upset he could start a new company called "Screw the FBI LLC" which coincidentally hired employees after they got fired from Apple...

XorNot 11y ago
You do realize Tim Cook is the CEO aka the one who is ultimately doing the firing in this scenario right? The US Government are not majority stakeholders in Apple.
- swombat 11y ago
  In the UK there is this concept of a "shadow director", which is someone who, while not officially a director of the company, actually has executive power indirectly in some way. The legal concept exists to point out that a shadow director can be held legally accountable in the same way a director can. Perhaps a similar concept applies here. If the FBI can compel action from Apple it is basically a shadow CEO of Apple.

ghshephard 11y ago

Apple/Tim have already made it abundantly clear that they will follow the law. If you read the briefing, it makes it clear that every reasonable legal argument you can make agrees with Apples position.

studentrob 11y ago
Yeah I don't think there's anything Apple could do but complete the request. Anything short of that would result in the dissolution of the company through daily fines from the government, which shareholders wouldn't like. Apple could find someone to pay to complete the task, even if it required a significant raise. Don't suicide over nothing. Apple isn't. Even if Apple did have to do this to survive, it wouldn't be the end of the tech world, it would just hurt a lot. And it wouldn't make us safer. Regardless of the current judge's decision, this case will likely be in court for two years at bare minimum [1] The pressing issue is whether or not Congress will eventually pass an anti-encryption bill. This would be a bad idea for our security and economy. We can help people understand this by a) allowing the bill to pass and watching idly as criminals change to use other encrypted communications software, hurting the IT industry in the process, or b) educating people I'm interested in starting a grassroots campaign to do (b). If you'd like to help, email me at stillastudent on google's email service. [1] http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-03-04/apple-and-the-fbi-what-happens-next http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-03-04/apple-and-the...
- jkestner 11y ago
  In some ways, it's a good thing that the FBI decided to take it public, where Apple could effectively argue their side. Though this has been built on many small victories that has forced sunshine.

einarvollset 11y ago

Do you honestly think Rosa Parks risking her life and limb to protest racial injustice is even remotely equivalent to an engineer at Apple refusing to comply with a court order to look at the information on the iPhone's of the two nut jobs that killed: Shannon Johnson Bennetta Bet-Badal Aurora Godoy Isaac Amanios Larry Kaufman Harry Bowman Yvette Velasco Sierra Clayborn Robert Adams Nicholas Thalasinos Tin Nguyen Juan Espinoza Damian Meins Michael Wetzel ? Listen, I understand you feel passionate about securing your privacy, but it would likely help your case to keep things a little more in perspective

csallen 11y ago
The parent is making an analogy, the point of which is to compare one singular aspect of situation A to one singular aspect of situation B. So no, it's safe to say that the parent isn't claiming that situation A and situation B are equivalent.
- einarvollset 11y ago
  I asked for "even remotely equivalent" based on: This is an opportunity for Parks v.2016 - if you're asked by Apple to do anything to comply with the court order, don't do it. Seems fair?
  - csallen 11y ago
    Hmm, I think if you take that sentence in context, it's clear he's saying it's Parks v.2016 only in the sense of committing worthwhile civil disobedience -- an opportunity to do some good while risking legal consequences. He wasn't saying that Apple's fight is as noble and necessary as Parks' was, nor was he saying that the government's goal of stopping terrorist attacks is as sinister as the goal of enforcing segregation. I think it was unfair for you to interpret his argument that way.
    - einarvollset 11y ago
      No I'm sorry, but I respectfully disagree here: if he was not trying to draw an equivalence between segregation and this case, and instead was merely trying to say that civil disobedience would be appropriate, then he should not have mentioned Rosa Parks. Doing so clearly attempts to drawn an equivalence. If he didn't mean that, then why not draw it to eg the Oregon occupiers?

simonh 11y ago

It's not a small number of people though. Surely if anyone is going to refuse, it should be the manager ordering the change refusing to give the order. Why should the little guy at the bottom have to carry the can? So logically, that applies from Apple's legal counsel and management all the way down the chain. That makes up a large pyramid shaped chunk of the Apple reporting hierarchy. Now in no way am I saying that a manager's career is worth more than that of a low level engineer. That because ethically speaking any dissent should begin with a manager and just because of that it's a non starter. My point is that the potential damage such individual action could do to Apple as an organization, taken to it's logical conclusion, could be catastrophic. So we're not just talking about a small handful of people taking a personal stand that just affects them. The people the buck stops with are Tim Cooke and Apple's legal and leadership teams, and they have responsibilities to Apple and their employees. It's nowhere near as simple as you're making out.

wehadfun 11y ago
I agree the software engineer should not be the one. All they will do is get someone else to do it.

746F7475 11y ago

>For Apple to comply with the court's order would require some of its employees to act. If whoever at Apple is told to comply with the court's order declines to do so, then what? If every Apple employee asked to supply information to the FBI refuses, then what? If every coder Apple tries to hire to comply with the court order declines to come aboard...how will the FBI get what it wants? This will never happen. People like to keep their jobs. At the end of the day it will be on Apple's CEO's shoulders to comply with the court ruling. If people under him refuse to do it he has no option but to fire them and find someone who will do it. Obviously Apple could refuse completely from complying with the law, but that means they have to be ready to face the penalties, which will first be fines and later jail time.

flatline 11y ago

It's really not the same thing at all. Parks was standing against a wide-sweeping injustice leveled at a minority, of which she was a part. While we all have some vested interest in having Apple win the case, in reality very few people are ever going to be directly affected by this ruling. Many people are going to come down on the side of law enforcement and be happy to do the work, and many more just won't care. It's not an issue of one person standing up to fight a clear social injustice, it's an issue of a corporation complying with a highly specious legal action. Tim and the Apple board are by far and away the only ones in a position to stand up to this in a way that matters, everyone else may as well not exist.

gardano 11y ago

My first thought was civil disobedience on the part of Apple's developers too… But I couldn't make it work out in my head how that could result in a positive outcome.

jfoutz 11y ago

The more elegant solution for a 'rogue employee' is to leak the signing key and blame the FBI.

uptown 11y ago
You don't think Apple has extreme protections around their signing key?
- kenshaw 11y ago
  Eh, probably just sitting on a USB key on Tim Cook's desk with a Post-It note attached saying "DO NOT LOSE". I'm also guessing that they routinely send out to Kinko's to get copies of the source code / signing key printed out for backup. (sarcasm)
aback 11y ago
More elegant: leak the OS build itself, so that the specific attack vector they warned about comes to pass.

Lawtonfogle 11y ago

>Long ago, Rosa Parks declined to give up her seat on the bus in favor of a white passenger. And before her others did the same (such as Claudette Colvin), but they weren't considered sympathetic enough, and so nothing happened. We need to remember that Parks was a calculated political tactic, less we find ourselves with a bunch of Colvins and not a single Parks.

niels_olson 11y ago

If I were to Tim Cook, I would probably have an all hands meeting and tell them every single employee "no matter what you do, I respect your decision. I will make sure that your family is taken care of"

AnthonyMouse 11y ago

> This is an opportunity for Parks v.2016 - if you're asked by Apple to do anything to comply with the court order, don't do it. As far as I know there isn't even anything that obligates Apple to punish any of their employees for refusing. If Apple's employees refused to do it they could just put the contract out for bids instead. Then the contractor would be responsible for ensuring that the software is secure (which they can't do), against damage to Apple's six hundred billion dollar business (which probably no one would be willing to insure against), so there probably wouldn't be very many bidders. If there were any bids at all they would be very large and Apple having followed a public bidding process would have a very exact and market-proved cost to submit to the FBI. And when that cost is fifty billion dollars, it would kind of prove Apple's point about the unreasonableness of the request.