> Nothing Snowden alleges is illegal or unconstitutional... First, I did not claim it was unconstitutional or strictly illegal (since secret things can't be co

> Nothing Snowden alleges is illegal or unconstitutional... First, I did not claim it was unconstitutional or strictly illegal (since secret things can't be considered by normal courts or legislatures, everything is in a sense extralegal, which is itself a big problem). There are protections against unlawful search and seizure. Seizure in this case is data capture, search is viewing by a human (with or without a warrant). There was not any law granting the NSA the power to do domestic surveillance unless there was some suspected behavior involving foreign nationals or international circuits. But it's more relevant that our leaders repeatedly assured us that no such surveillance was going on. Blatant lies told to the public is as serious a breach of trust as an unconstitutional program. Thus I think the technical constitutionality (or even strict legality) of the program is more of a detail than the core issue. My suggestion of giving keys to each member of congress is simply for Apple to force the issue into the most democratic institution, effectively giving any member of congress veto power against unlocking the data. While this doesn't fit the exact delegation of powers that we're used to for such things, it does address the terrorism/kiddie-porn argument that Obama recently made... in other words, it addresses the meat of the emotional argument that our leaders are making. >But we're a long, long way from enforced smart contracts which do things like handle succession of new members &c. I can't wait until we're there, someday, but it'll take a good long while. I agree, but I think it might be a good strategic move for Apple if things start to look bad for Apple offering an unfettered secure-hardware / strong encryption platform. Apple could then claim that it had offered enough of a back door to prevent any interim attack should one occur. The government's strategy is to leverage public outrage about any attacks (large or small) to get back doors into everything. Apple does not want to be accused of stonewalling if an attack occurs and the government subsequently claims that decrypting one or two phones a few weeks ago could have prevented it.