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They could be fined hundreds of thousands daily for refusing to act. We recently found out this happened to Yahoo in 2008 [1] via the FISA court. Apple shareh

They could be fined hundreds of thousands daily for refusing to act. We recently found out this happened to Yahoo in 2008 [1] via the FISA court. Apple shareholders wouldn't like that. I'm pretty sure Tim Cook and his lawyer mean it when they say they will comply with the law. Apple engineers need not worry so much about quitting their jobs over this. If I were there I would stick with Tim Cook. Consider, If Apple loses this case, this becomes a gigantic public debate where we scramble to enact legislation that removes this power from the government. If Apple wins this case, and the government pursues anti-encryption laws, this becomes a gigantic public debate. If the case is delayed for 2 years and goes to the supreme court, this becomes a gigantic public debate. Regardless, since this is in the public sphere, whether-or-not-we-put-back-doors-in-phones is going to become a gigantic public debate. The only way it doesn't become a big debate is if Obama comes out and says he's been informed on the issue and now realizes encryption in our phones is, on balance, a good thing. [1] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/11/yahoo-nsa-lawsuit-documents-fine-user-data-refusal http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/11/yahoo-nsa-lawsu...

enraged_camel 11y ago
I'm not seeing any sort of "gigantic public debate." Sure, it looks that way from within our tech bubble, but let's be real: the overwhelming majority of people in the United States do not give a shit and could not care less. And among the remaining small minority, encryption is way down on the list of issues they care about and choose to spend time and mental energy on. Further complicating things is the fact that this is a complex topic and most people (including almost all lawmakers and law enforcement agencies) are too ignorant to understand the important nuances, and they have no interest in changing that because, frankly, encryption is hard.
- peteretep 11y ago
  When you look at how well protected Americans health records are, and how judges have said a search of your person doesn't extend to your phone, I think you are entirely wrong to suggest this doesn't extend beyond the tech industry.
  - ohyeshedid 11y ago
    You're correct as everything is dependent on the tech industry. That's part of why this is such an important fight for Apple, because it directly effects just about any industry that requires privacy these days.
- ohyeshedid 11y ago
  Exactly. People are already aware. It's being covered in all forms of media, across all demographics. Awareness and understanding are wildly different concepts. People are aware, they just don't understand. The public can't be properly educated in the matter, because it's so nebulous and complex that it requires dedication to understand it. That goes for most of the issues we face as a society.
  - studentrob 11y ago
    That's so defeatist. How do you know unless you try? You are the one with the knowledge. Try!
    - ohyeshedid 11y ago
      No, its acknowledgement that sometimes the few are left to defend the rights of many. This is how it works in a lot of areas. If Apple loses this round, our best hope is they push this debate to the SCOTUS and set the proper precedent there. Educating the masses isn't going to change much, as we have no say in the current system. Think about this: Do you think the President, or any of the candidates, know much of anything about technology? Do you think they understand the intricacies of encryption? Would they even be able to name standard cypher suites? No, because that's not part of their education or job function. They rely on the few, their advisors, just like they do with most major issues. I've seen your comments on this story, more power to you for wanting to start a grassroots education movement. I've also seen you muddy the waters with making comments about anti-encryption laws; this is an extremist fabrication on your part and not part of the actual current issues. As I've said elsewhere, directly in response to you, the outcome may be similar but the approach is completely different. If you manipulate outrage to reach your desired goal, you're just as bad as they are. You could've taken the time to read my other comments about this before declaring me defeatist, but instead you jumped to conclusions based on a small sampling; is this what your education is about?
      - studentrob 11y ago
        > If Apple loses this round, our best hope is they push this debate to the SCOTUS [editing what I wrote, I missed something you said] I believe our best hope is to start informing the public about encryption so that when more laws about encryption start appearing, then they are knowledgeable enough to let their representatives know how they feel about it. The idea is to inform enough so that the government is unable to spread FUD and an alarmist view that we will be safer when US phones have back doors. Because we won't. Other encryption tools exist that are not governable by the US. [end edit] > Think about this: Do you think the President, or any of the candidates, know much of anything about technology? No. I've been thinking this for 8 years since patent trolls started becoming a nuisance. I'm happy to see we now have a couple of computer science graduates as representatives, including Ted Lieu who has been pretty vocal on this DOJ vs. Apple case. > because that's not part of their education or job function Hmm. They're supposed to have advisors or lobbyists for this. My argument is, in part, tech is missing a sufficient amount of those in the White House and DC. There can and should be more. > I've seen your comments on this story, more power to you for wanting to start a grassroots education movement. I've also seen you muddy the waters with making comments about anti-encryption laws; this is an extremist fabrication on your part and not part of the actual current issues. As I've said elsewhere, directly in response to you, the outcome may be similar but the approach is completely different. If you manipulate outrage to reach your desired goal, you're just as bad as they are. You could've taken the time to read my other comments about this before declaring me defeatist, but instead you jumped to conclusions based on a small sampling; is this what your education is about? Sorry hold up a moment here. Since when is providing facts muddying the waters? In most of my comments I'm citing sources directly. I also welcome debate. There literally are laws on the table at the state level in NY and CA that would require phone manufacturers to only sell phones that are decryptable when they are sold. Is it muddying the waters to call these anti-encryption bills? What would you call them? I certainly wouldn't call what I wrote extremist. I'm sorry if you're offended by what I wrote. I have no control over that. You are the one claiming the populace can't be educated. I have difficulty seeing how a person who clearly benefited from some form of education growing up can stand by this particular viewpoint. However, I do respect your opinion, and I apologize if I missed some of your remarks and mischaracterized your position. HN doesn't have any notification system for comments, so I probably miss some. I can't be expected to read every comment from one user before I respond to one of their comments can I? Please feel free to email me if you would like to discuss it further, or I can talk on the phone. I'm not trying to manipulate anybody. I'm saying, let's put facts on the table and let people decide for themselves. If some people choose to ignore the facts, that's fine. If some technologists don't want to participate in sharing the facts, that's fine. But what's wrong with encouraging technologists to try? Again I welcome criticism of any of the words I write. If I'm being biased in some way I want to know about it, because if I appear biased here on HN then it will be more obvious to the layperson.
- studentrob 11y ago
  > too ignorant to understand the important nuance Lindsey Graham came around. Sam Harris changed his point of view after a fairly combative initial stance against technologists. We will never know if we can inform the public unless we try. There are some good analogies out there supporting encryption. Use them. I recommend the one from Sam Harris' third video on the subject. There is also the whack-a-mole argument. Honestly, the biggest thing standing in the way of the public being informed is not the unwillingness of the public to listen. It's the technologists' unwillingness to try to educate them. I understand your trepidation. In life, we scientists are often ignored. But sometimes we are right and I do feel if we push hard here we can figure out ways to reach people.
  - hobs 11y ago
    The technologists are constantly ignored by the populace, and major news outlets have been braying about this for years, Snowden being the most recent gigantic newsworthy event where it was in-arguably shown the united states spies on us way more than it lets on, and we should choose encryption if we value our privacy. What is the outcome of this major revelation? Much of the public thinks no different than before in regards to government spying or encryption, and security practices are not fundamentally different even after years of media advertising what happened. Many people don't even know the significance of Snowden. We should definitely push harder for the correct stance on encryption but I cant help and think your hope is a bit pollyannish. How many interviews did Tim Cook give again? How many news outlets brayed this at the top of their lungs? https://www.google.com/search?q=new+york+times+apple+fbi&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8#q=apple+fbi&tbm=nws https://www.google.com/search?q=new+york+times+apple+fbi&ie=...
    - ethbro 11y ago
      Snowden and the NSA dragnet are a bit more abstract than a personal right to encryption on a device in ones ownership.
      - tremon 11y ago
        How so? To me, dragnet surveillance is a lot easier to explain and conceptualize to non-techies than personal encryption. And I use encryption on all my devices (except my android phone, it's still running 4.x)
- lolidaisuki 11y ago
  It doesn't even seem like "gigantic public debate" among the technological groups. There is very minimal amount of actual debating happening.
melvinmt 11y ago
> They could be fined hundreds of thousands daily for refusing to act. Apple's revenue is $658 million per day (2015), not sure if they care too much about "hundreds of thousands".
- daurnimator 11y ago
  revenue != profits. Will people please stop quoting revenue figures for things like this.
  - beedogs 11y ago
    Their profits are still in the dozens of millions, per day. Will people please stop splitting hairs?
    - hamiltonkibbe 11y ago
      1 order of magnitude difference isn't my definition of splitting hairs
- BinaryIdiot 11y ago
  Haven't there been situations in which government fines can increase exponentially? If something like that applied to Apple it could drive them to bankruptcy very quickly. In theory at least; not sure if the government would actually do that.
- dolske 11y ago
  The feds threatened Yahoo with a fine of $250,000/day, _doubling every week_. It doesn't take long for that to become astronomical. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2014/09/15/you-think-youve-got-bills-government-could-have-fined-yahoo-trillions-of-dollars/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2014/09/15...
  - EGreg 11y ago
    How does the government merely name a number out of thin air and the company now has to pay it? Can the government just declare the moon to be their property tomorrow? How would they enforce the delivery of these funds?
nhangen 11y ago
What if Apple moves their HQ out of the country...
- rev_bird 11y ago
  Julian Assange set up shop outside of the US, now he lives in the basement of an office building.
  - stephenr 11y ago
    Julian Assange isn't an American citizen, so why would he have ever "set up shop" in America?
    - rev_bird 11y ago
      I made my point less clear by trying to be concise. I just meant that in a lot of ways the influence of the United States isn't limited by its borders.
- rubyfan 11y ago
  There is no place to go. We need to fix here because we actually have a shot of fixing it here.
  - eggy 11y ago
    Iceland with its pirate political party, and it still belongs to the European Economic Area, or Ireland, which has a growing tech sector, and it is part of the EU. Ireland is a tax-haven too. The U.S. government complains about Apple's tax havens, but the revenue lost by this move in jobs, and money in the U.S. is quite a bargaining chip.
gaur 11y ago
> this becomes a gigantic public debate where we scramble to enact legislation that removes this power from the government. No such thing will happen. The public will forget this ever happened, and politicians will do nothing to prevent the government from doing this again.
- studentrob 11y ago
  I don't plan to let that happen. Do you? I'll fight this as long as it's under discussion. Talk to your friends and family, contact your representatives and let them know you care. If we as technologists, the only ones who understand the tech side of things, are silent, then yes this defeatist attitude will win. We need not be silent.
  - pducks32 11y ago
    I'm with you there
  - gaur 11y ago
    > contact your representatives and let them know you care. Unless you have a lot of money, your representatives don't care. It seems like the only way to make progress is to support stronger encryption, with less of a possibility of engineering backdoors.
    - nickff 11y ago
      This is not true; there are any number of studies and interviews which have shown that elected representatives will only act in favor of donors if the voters are silent or supportive. No congressman or senator will ignore dozens of letters and phonecalls (, though there has been some debate as to the utility of e-mails).
      - CWuestefeld 11y ago
        I don't see why the myth persists. If money really did speak so loudly, Jeb! would already have clinched the GOP nomination.
s_q_b 11y ago
Apple has quarter trillion dollars of cash on hand. Without calculating interest or expected value, at 100k a day, Apple could hold out for over a millennium. I'm sure Apple has a legal army gaming out each one of these scenarios.
- acqq 11y ago
  > Apple could hold out for over a millennium. No, it doesn't work that way (see the post from dolske 7 hours ago): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11310214 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11310214 Under these rules in only a few months all the money would be gone.
  - s_q_b 11y ago
    My point was that Apple swings a big stick in this argument.
- kabdib 11y ago
  $250B can buy a lot of members of congress.
cubano 11y ago
Your nativity on how "criminal justice" and law enforcement works is kinda astounding to me. If a judge orders an injunction against these citizens and they don't comply, he won't fine them, he will jail them, which is an incredible hardship, esp. against people not used to the prison industrial complex and its dehumanizing effects. Perhaps sitting in jail for weeks or months will endure these guys to the IT masses as martyrs-to-the-cause, but I would fully expect them to cave after a little while.
- chiph 11y ago
  I think he meant Apple will be fined. The engineers, if directly ordered by the court to "fix" [0] the software will be charged with contempt of court, and jailed. [1] I mean this in the sense of to deal with or correct a problem, and also to influence the result by improper or illegal methods
  - Zigurd 11y ago
    That's when it gets interesting. Creating code is not like being compelled to testify. Is the DoJ going to have a prosecutor ask them "Now what would be the next line of code?" until they get a working tool? The coders have an excellent case against them being jailed. The government has already stated their fallback position - that they want Apple's source code and signing keys. Apple will probably at that point secure their signing keys and code, perhaps by moving them offshore. It will be interesting to see if some defense contractor can make head or tail of Apple's code, build system, etc. That could be a comedy I'd pay to watch.
    - chiph 11y ago
      The developers need to talk to their own lawyer about the future. If they stay at Apple, the firm might pay for their legal costs. But if they leave, they'll have to pay their lawyers themselves. Even if someone like the EFF comes in to defend them pro-bono, they're going to be out of work and un-hireable (no company is going to take on that potential liability).
- Lawtonfogle 11y ago
mizchief2 11y ago
I wouldn't count on that "gigantic public debate" We found out that our government spies on all of our digital activities and just recently was announced that the data the NSA collects will be made available to the FBI as well as other agencies for domestic purposes, not just for catching terrorist. And what is the response from the general public? "Well I have nothing to hide, so I have nothing to fear"
kelseydh 11y ago
I doubt they could be fined. The government can not force someone to continue to be an employee of a company. Please cite me an example of somebody who hasn't broke the law being forced to work against their will for months to do something as an employee.
kelseydh 11y ago
There is good evidence that public debate is starting to turn. Senator Lindsay Graham, a national security hawk, is beginning to state reservations with the FBI's strategy. That's a big deal: https://youtu.be/zsjZ2r9Ygzw?t=14m30s https://youtu.be/zsjZ2r9Ygzw?t=14m30s
techdragon 11y ago
If they charged Apple a million dollars a day... They could just pay indefinitely and still be in a comfortable financial position... The expense may actually prove valuable as their willingness to "pay the cost of defiance" might make them seem more appealing to customers and increase the value of their products.
- acqq 11y ago
  > If they charged Apple a million dollars a day... They could just pay indefinitely It doesn't work that way: "dolske 7 hours ago: The feds threatened Yahoo with a fine of $250,000/day, _doubling every week_. It doesn't take long for that to become astronomical." In just 26 weeks it's 16 trillions per day if I calculated right.
norea-armozel 11y ago
"They could be fined hundreds of thousands daily for refusing to act. We recently found out this happened to Yahoo in 2008 [1] via the FISA court. Apple shareholders wouldn't like that." How does that work if say someone resigned some months before the events of the terrorist attack from Apple? And they still refuse to work for Apple? There's no legal obligation for me to work for Apple or anybody in the US Constitution. All I got to do is pay taxes where applicable. Taxes don't include writing software for a random agency.

enraged_camel 11y ago

I'm not seeing any sort of "gigantic public debate." Sure, it looks that way from within our tech bubble, but let's be real: the overwhelming majority of people in the United States do not give a shit and could not care less. And among the remaining small minority, encryption is way down on the list of issues they care about and choose to spend time and mental energy on. Further complicating things is the fact that this is a complex topic and most people (including almost all lawmakers and law enforcement agencies) are too ignorant to understand the important nuances, and they have no interest in changing that because, frankly, encryption is hard.

peteretep 11y ago
When you look at how well protected Americans health records are, and how judges have said a search of your person doesn't extend to your phone, I think you are entirely wrong to suggest this doesn't extend beyond the tech industry.
- ohyeshedid 11y ago
  You're correct as everything is dependent on the tech industry. That's part of why this is such an important fight for Apple, because it directly effects just about any industry that requires privacy these days.
ohyeshedid 11y ago
Exactly. People are already aware. It's being covered in all forms of media, across all demographics. Awareness and understanding are wildly different concepts. People are aware, they just don't understand. The public can't be properly educated in the matter, because it's so nebulous and complex that it requires dedication to understand it. That goes for most of the issues we face as a society.
- studentrob 11y ago
  That's so defeatist. How do you know unless you try? You are the one with the knowledge. Try!
  - ohyeshedid 11y ago
    No, its acknowledgement that sometimes the few are left to defend the rights of many. This is how it works in a lot of areas. If Apple loses this round, our best hope is they push this debate to the SCOTUS and set the proper precedent there. Educating the masses isn't going to change much, as we have no say in the current system. Think about this: Do you think the President, or any of the candidates, know much of anything about technology? Do you think they understand the intricacies of encryption? Would they even be able to name standard cypher suites? No, because that's not part of their education or job function. They rely on the few, their advisors, just like they do with most major issues. I've seen your comments on this story, more power to you for wanting to start a grassroots education movement. I've also seen you muddy the waters with making comments about anti-encryption laws; this is an extremist fabrication on your part and not part of the actual current issues. As I've said elsewhere, directly in response to you, the outcome may be similar but the approach is completely different. If you manipulate outrage to reach your desired goal, you're just as bad as they are. You could've taken the time to read my other comments about this before declaring me defeatist, but instead you jumped to conclusions based on a small sampling; is this what your education is about?
    - studentrob 11y ago
      > If Apple loses this round, our best hope is they push this debate to the SCOTUS [editing what I wrote, I missed something you said] I believe our best hope is to start informing the public about encryption so that when more laws about encryption start appearing, then they are knowledgeable enough to let their representatives know how they feel about it. The idea is to inform enough so that the government is unable to spread FUD and an alarmist view that we will be safer when US phones have back doors. Because we won't. Other encryption tools exist that are not governable by the US. [end edit] > Think about this: Do you think the President, or any of the candidates, know much of anything about technology? No. I've been thinking this for 8 years since patent trolls started becoming a nuisance. I'm happy to see we now have a couple of computer science graduates as representatives, including Ted Lieu who has been pretty vocal on this DOJ vs. Apple case. > because that's not part of their education or job function Hmm. They're supposed to have advisors or lobbyists for this. My argument is, in part, tech is missing a sufficient amount of those in the White House and DC. There can and should be more. > I've seen your comments on this story, more power to you for wanting to start a grassroots education movement. I've also seen you muddy the waters with making comments about anti-encryption laws; this is an extremist fabrication on your part and not part of the actual current issues. As I've said elsewhere, directly in response to you, the outcome may be similar but the approach is completely different. If you manipulate outrage to reach your desired goal, you're just as bad as they are. You could've taken the time to read my other comments about this before declaring me defeatist, but instead you jumped to conclusions based on a small sampling; is this what your education is about? Sorry hold up a moment here. Since when is providing facts muddying the waters? In most of my comments I'm citing sources directly. I also welcome debate. There literally are laws on the table at the state level in NY and CA that would require phone manufacturers to only sell phones that are decryptable when they are sold. Is it muddying the waters to call these anti-encryption bills? What would you call them? I certainly wouldn't call what I wrote extremist. I'm sorry if you're offended by what I wrote. I have no control over that. You are the one claiming the populace can't be educated. I have difficulty seeing how a person who clearly benefited from some form of education growing up can stand by this particular viewpoint. However, I do respect your opinion, and I apologize if I missed some of your remarks and mischaracterized your position. HN doesn't have any notification system for comments, so I probably miss some. I can't be expected to read every comment from one user before I respond to one of their comments can I? Please feel free to email me if you would like to discuss it further, or I can talk on the phone. I'm not trying to manipulate anybody. I'm saying, let's put facts on the table and let people decide for themselves. If some people choose to ignore the facts, that's fine. If some technologists don't want to participate in sharing the facts, that's fine. But what's wrong with encouraging technologists to try? Again I welcome criticism of any of the words I write. If I'm being biased in some way I want to know about it, because if I appear biased here on HN then it will be more obvious to the layperson.
studentrob 11y ago
> too ignorant to understand the important nuance Lindsey Graham came around. Sam Harris changed his point of view after a fairly combative initial stance against technologists. We will never know if we can inform the public unless we try. There are some good analogies out there supporting encryption. Use them. I recommend the one from Sam Harris' third video on the subject. There is also the whack-a-mole argument. Honestly, the biggest thing standing in the way of the public being informed is not the unwillingness of the public to listen. It's the technologists' unwillingness to try to educate them. I understand your trepidation. In life, we scientists are often ignored. But sometimes we are right and I do feel if we push hard here we can figure out ways to reach people.
- hobs 11y ago
  The technologists are constantly ignored by the populace, and major news outlets have been braying about this for years, Snowden being the most recent gigantic newsworthy event where it was in-arguably shown the united states spies on us way more than it lets on, and we should choose encryption if we value our privacy. What is the outcome of this major revelation? Much of the public thinks no different than before in regards to government spying or encryption, and security practices are not fundamentally different even after years of media advertising what happened. Many people don't even know the significance of Snowden. We should definitely push harder for the correct stance on encryption but I cant help and think your hope is a bit pollyannish. How many interviews did Tim Cook give again? How many news outlets brayed this at the top of their lungs? https://www.google.com/search?q=new+york+times+apple+fbi&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8#q=apple+fbi&tbm=nws https://www.google.com/search?q=new+york+times+apple+fbi&ie=...
  - ethbro 11y ago
    Snowden and the NSA dragnet are a bit more abstract than a personal right to encryption on a device in ones ownership.
    - tremon 11y ago
      How so? To me, dragnet surveillance is a lot easier to explain and conceptualize to non-techies than personal encryption. And I use encryption on all my devices (except my android phone, it's still running 4.x)
lolidaisuki 11y ago
It doesn't even seem like "gigantic public debate" among the technological groups. There is very minimal amount of actual debating happening.

melvinmt 11y ago

> They could be fined hundreds of thousands daily for refusing to act. Apple's revenue is $658 million per day (2015), not sure if they care too much about "hundreds of thousands".

daurnimator 11y ago
revenue != profits. Will people please stop quoting revenue figures for things like this.
- beedogs 11y ago
  Their profits are still in the dozens of millions, per day. Will people please stop splitting hairs?
  - hamiltonkibbe 11y ago
    1 order of magnitude difference isn't my definition of splitting hairs
BinaryIdiot 11y ago
Haven't there been situations in which government fines can increase exponentially? If something like that applied to Apple it could drive them to bankruptcy very quickly. In theory at least; not sure if the government would actually do that.
dolske 11y ago
The feds threatened Yahoo with a fine of $250,000/day, _doubling every week_. It doesn't take long for that to become astronomical. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2014/09/15/you-think-youve-got-bills-government-could-have-fined-yahoo-trillions-of-dollars/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2014/09/15...
- EGreg 11y ago
  How does the government merely name a number out of thin air and the company now has to pay it? Can the government just declare the moon to be their property tomorrow? How would they enforce the delivery of these funds?

nhangen 11y ago

What if Apple moves their HQ out of the country...

rev_bird 11y ago
Julian Assange set up shop outside of the US, now he lives in the basement of an office building.
- stephenr 11y ago
  Julian Assange isn't an American citizen, so why would he have ever "set up shop" in America?
  - rev_bird 11y ago
    I made my point less clear by trying to be concise. I just meant that in a lot of ways the influence of the United States isn't limited by its borders.
rubyfan 11y ago
There is no place to go. We need to fix here because we actually have a shot of fixing it here.
- eggy 11y ago
  Iceland with its pirate political party, and it still belongs to the European Economic Area, or Ireland, which has a growing tech sector, and it is part of the EU. Ireland is a tax-haven too. The U.S. government complains about Apple's tax havens, but the revenue lost by this move in jobs, and money in the U.S. is quite a bargaining chip.

gaur 11y ago

> this becomes a gigantic public debate where we scramble to enact legislation that removes this power from the government. No such thing will happen. The public will forget this ever happened, and politicians will do nothing to prevent the government from doing this again.

studentrob 11y ago
I don't plan to let that happen. Do you? I'll fight this as long as it's under discussion. Talk to your friends and family, contact your representatives and let them know you care. If we as technologists, the only ones who understand the tech side of things, are silent, then yes this defeatist attitude will win. We need not be silent.
- pducks32 11y ago
  I'm with you there
- gaur 11y ago
  > contact your representatives and let them know you care. Unless you have a lot of money, your representatives don't care. It seems like the only way to make progress is to support stronger encryption, with less of a possibility of engineering backdoors.
  - nickff 11y ago
    This is not true; there are any number of studies and interviews which have shown that elected representatives will only act in favor of donors if the voters are silent or supportive. No congressman or senator will ignore dozens of letters and phonecalls (, though there has been some debate as to the utility of e-mails).
    - CWuestefeld 11y ago
      I don't see why the myth persists. If money really did speak so loudly, Jeb! would already have clinched the GOP nomination.

s_q_b 11y ago

Apple has quarter trillion dollars of cash on hand. Without calculating interest or expected value, at 100k a day, Apple could hold out for over a millennium. I'm sure Apple has a legal army gaming out each one of these scenarios.

acqq 11y ago
> Apple could hold out for over a millennium. No, it doesn't work that way (see the post from dolske 7 hours ago): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11310214 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11310214 Under these rules in only a few months all the money would be gone.
- s_q_b 11y ago
  My point was that Apple swings a big stick in this argument.
kabdib 11y ago
$250B can buy a lot of members of congress.

cubano 11y ago

Your nativity on how "criminal justice" and law enforcement works is kinda astounding to me. If a judge orders an injunction against these citizens and they don't comply, he won't fine them, he will jail them, which is an incredible hardship, esp. against people not used to the prison industrial complex and its dehumanizing effects. Perhaps sitting in jail for weeks or months will endure these guys to the IT masses as martyrs-to-the-cause, but I would fully expect them to cave after a little while.

chiph 11y ago
I think he meant Apple will be fined. The engineers, if directly ordered by the court to "fix" [0] the software will be charged with contempt of court, and jailed. [1] I mean this in the sense of to deal with or correct a problem, and also to influence the result by improper or illegal methods
- Zigurd 11y ago
  That's when it gets interesting. Creating code is not like being compelled to testify. Is the DoJ going to have a prosecutor ask them "Now what would be the next line of code?" until they get a working tool? The coders have an excellent case against them being jailed. The government has already stated their fallback position - that they want Apple's source code and signing keys. Apple will probably at that point secure their signing keys and code, perhaps by moving them offshore. It will be interesting to see if some defense contractor can make head or tail of Apple's code, build system, etc. That could be a comedy I'd pay to watch.
  - chiph 11y ago
    The developers need to talk to their own lawyer about the future. If they stay at Apple, the firm might pay for their legal costs. But if they leave, they'll have to pay their lawyers themselves. Even if someone like the EFF comes in to defend them pro-bono, they're going to be out of work and un-hireable (no company is going to take on that potential liability).
Lawtonfogle 11y ago

mizchief2 11y ago

I wouldn't count on that "gigantic public debate" We found out that our government spies on all of our digital activities and just recently was announced that the data the NSA collects will be made available to the FBI as well as other agencies for domestic purposes, not just for catching terrorist. And what is the response from the general public? "Well I have nothing to hide, so I have nothing to fear"

kelseydh 11y ago

I doubt they could be fined. The government can not force someone to continue to be an employee of a company. Please cite me an example of somebody who hasn't broke the law being forced to work against their will for months to do something as an employee.

kelseydh 11y ago

There is good evidence that public debate is starting to turn. Senator Lindsay Graham, a national security hawk, is beginning to state reservations with the FBI's strategy. That's a big deal: https://youtu.be/zsjZ2r9Ygzw?t=14m30s https://youtu.be/zsjZ2r9Ygzw?t=14m30s

techdragon 11y ago

If they charged Apple a million dollars a day... They could just pay indefinitely and still be in a comfortable financial position... The expense may actually prove valuable as their willingness to "pay the cost of defiance" might make them seem more appealing to customers and increase the value of their products.

acqq 11y ago
> If they charged Apple a million dollars a day... They could just pay indefinitely It doesn't work that way: "dolske 7 hours ago: The feds threatened Yahoo with a fine of $250,000/day, _doubling every week_. It doesn't take long for that to become astronomical." In just 26 weeks it's 16 trillions per day if I calculated right.

norea-armozel 11y ago

"They could be fined hundreds of thousands daily for refusing to act. We recently found out this happened to Yahoo in 2008 [1] via the FISA court. Apple shareholders wouldn't like that." How does that work if say someone resigned some months before the events of the terrorist attack from Apple? And they still refuse to work for Apple? There's no legal obligation for me to work for Apple or anybody in the US Constitution. All I got to do is pay taxes where applicable. Taxes don't include writing software for a random agency.