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I'm sorry, but I don't buy the collective security reasoning. I'm not convinced that there aren't large custom databases of shared private keys that can be used
I'm sorry, but I don't buy the collective security reasoning. I'm not convinced that there aren't large custom databases of shared private keys that can be used to grant individual, time adjusted master keys that would allow the FBI to enforce their 4th amendment duties while making it impossible for a single master key to be discovered and instantly break every devices encryption.
Apple would be very liable for keeping this giant database of individual private keys safe. So would tbe FBI. But I have no doubt that it could be done. It would just take political will and perhaps a bit of novel cryptography, but if Bitcoin has shown me anything, it is that there are lots of remaining solutions to existing problems using crypto.
Your issue is that you're starting with a first principle based on what applied technology can currently do instead of starting with the first principle based on the relationship between an individual, the government, and public.
We should be thinking about how we can use new cryptographic technologies to assist humans instead of insisting that humans must be subjected to the technological limitations of a consumer electronics company.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
This clearly states the government has the right to warranted search and seizure for cases in which it needs to protect the public at large.
This is what takes precedence, not what Apple's current crop of cryptographers can come up with.
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EDIT: I'm sorry, but I have a rate limited account because my conservative opinions are not valued by the HackerNews community. I have some follow ups to your comments:
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> However, I also don't think Apple has a responsibility—even as a "citizen" of the country—to explicitly allow government access.
First, please see my other comment related to the third-party doctrine for reference:
I would argue that if we are to allow publicly chartered corporations to store and maintain access to privished works that they would have to be held liable to both the individual as well as the government. Just as banks are liable to both individual customers as well as the government.
Apple clearly doesn't want this responsibility. They don't want to be liable to both the individual and the government. Or perhaps anyone. They sell shiny toys. They're really not that important and perhaps they don't really care that much about privacy beyond how it affects sales.
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> That it does. But what it does not state is that the government has a right to create laws mandating that free citizens, not accused of any crime, must only create or possess items that the government can obtain access to.
Again, please see my comment related to the third-party doctrine.
We're going to need some new laws related to privished works. Right now you don't really have the right to privacy outside of your private person and private property. A bank will let the government open safety deposit boxes. The bank has the keys to the vault and you don't so I think we have already have some historical precedence with which to base these new legal fundamentals.
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> Whilst I don't know whether I agree, this is an argument that needs more exposure on HN.
Yeah, I wouldn't hold your breathe... I don't think you realize just how dogmatic this place is. If you say anything about being in support of the government, intellectual property, or dare question the values of the open source community, you're just immediately downvoted to fucking oblivion.
Also, I kind of like being a prick to who I imagine are a bunch of stuck up yuppies, so there's that as well.
But where the fuck else am I to go in San Francisco? Everywhere I am I'm just surrounded by a bunch of fearful techie drones with their fucking athleisure clothing. Everyone always has fucking headphone on and is glued to their god damned phones, I can't start a conversation with anyone anyways. There's no discourse happening anywhere!
All I can do now is just fucking rant and rave on HackerNews comments in the hope that someone out there might be fucking listening for a god damned change!!!!
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> However, your last three paras are quite insufferable and if I were you I would reconsider your relationship with the HN community.
I have considered my relationship with HackerNews to be over for quite some time. Right now I'm just seeing how far I can push it before I get banned.
That you vehemently disagree with me is WHY I AM SO FUCKING PISSED OFF! Everyone here uses the downvote button for disagreement because they're lazy fucking assholes who can't really approach my arguments.
This is the number one place for discussion about technology on the web, or perhaps anywhere. I'm very well qualified to talk about tech and tech policy. Yet my ideas are constantly shit on by a bunch of ignorant and dogmatic cocksuckers. I want to see just how long YOU could put up with this abuse before you FUCKING SPRUNG A GOD DAMNED LEAK IN YOUR BRAIN!
This whole "community" is insufferable and my actions are really a quite logical reflection of the kind of discourse that takes place in these forums.
> This clearly states the government has the right to warranted search and seizure for cases in which it needs to protect the public at large.
That it does. But what it does not state is that the government has a right to create laws mandating that free citizens, not accused of any crime, must only create or possess items that the government can obtain access to.
I agree with you on the technological assessment.
However, I also don't think Apple has a responsibility—even as a "citizen" of the country—to explicitly allow government access. From a cost, liability, and product standpoint it is in their interest to build themselves out of these legal middleman situations. If you hold this against them that's your right, but it's exactly that reason why I own an iphone. I suspect I'm not alone.
I'm firmly of the camp we should be aiming to reduce terrorism by becoming a smaller target, NOT by treating everyone like a potential terrorist. Technology can certainly help with this: look at TOR, twitter, end-to-end encryption, etc. fostering open and fearless conversation allowing us to improve generation over generation.
Also, I would be much more sympathetic to the FBI if it seemed like there was something relevant to national security on the phone. I don't recall them ever attempting to convince anyone of that. The San Bernadino incident seemed like a couple going postal rather than a deep-rooted international religious conspiracy.
Response to your EDIT (I value your conservative viewpoint, <3): I do not hold Apple liable for writing infallible crypto. In fact, I fully expect them to be hacked. But the stronger their crypto, the more value they have, regardless of their intentions or what they care about. It's kind of beautiful, in a way that makes me uncomfortable: their profits from me are directly correlated to their dedication to crypto. The more energy they put into it, the more money I want to give them. You are exactly correct. I see this as a very efficient free market transaction—something I would expect a (fiscal?) conservative to value.
Finally, I view the guarantee of privacy as finally having some kind of bulwark against the arms race governments have been waging against their citizens since the invention of the standing national army. Just because governments have had the luxury of violating my privacy does not mean they should.
Social conservative. And kind of a redneck motherfucker as well. Christian but without believing in the miracles of Christ. I guess that makes me agnostic. I support the idea of a local community church. I tend to think of the Bible as a mixture of good story telling and timeless moral lessons. I'm also a country musician and songwriter and I'm the CTO of a Bitcoin startup. I'm moving from San Francisco to Texas in June for what should seem like pretty obvious reasons. This fucking city, these fucking techies, and just about everyone on HN is constantly shitting on everything I hold dear. Ya'll hate rednecks, country music, the government, Christians, and moral lessons.
I think the people who despise my way of life will eventually see the error in their ways. Us conservatives have been holding this shit together before, during, and after the revolutionary split from our British forefathers. We kept all of British common law and their liberal political inventions, we just changed the flag and where the taxes went. We kept the country intact after Marxism ravaged the planet and directed the working man in to unions that I'm a proud supporter of. We're most definitely going to keep the ship on course through these troubled times of technocratic buffoonery that's coming out of Silicon Valley these days.
I'm a real conservative. Not those clowns over at the GOP. To be honest a lot of great democrats have been flying a flag that I think properly balances conservative and progressive ideals. I'm not really lopsided in my beliefs, I'll just always want to balance things out. Right now we fucking need a really large dose of conservatism, and I mean in legal and moral philosophy, in order to fight the war against these technological disruptors. Silicon Valley is hyper-progressive and I think incredibly reckless and dangerous to the way of life that I consider good and just.
If I'm sounding like Edmond Burke, good, I think the dude laid great foundations for exactly this kind of legal and moral conservatism that exists within the framework of liberal democracies like the United States.
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> Just because governments have had the luxury of violating my privacy does not mean they should.
You really shouldn't look at it only in this way. You should also try and look at it from the perspective of what the public gains from transparency, especially related to commercial activities. Capitalism needs open and public marketplaces, as well as public courts enforcing private wrongs, in order to function. We need public credit reports, we need public criminal reports, we need public records for property titles and for public records for asset ownership in publicly chartered corporations. All of these political inventions gave us the world that made a company like Apple possible in the first place.
BTW, one of the reasons I love Bitcoin so much is precisely because it is public infrastructure and precisely because it is completely open and transparent. It is a feature that all transactions are public knowledge!
Government is about these basic arrangements between public infrastructure and private individuals. The social contract. Like any trade or contract, it must be balanced and freely agreed to. To receive these rights we must also cede other rights. This trade-off is the one that is always missing from discussion in this forum.
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I have no problem with the pseudo-anonymous transactions. I build products that embrace the public and transparent nature of the blockchain because I believe that marketplaces and accounting must be public and open, just like they've been for hundreds of years in prosperous and free societies. Tyrants love to hide private information. I feel if you want something to be private, you're not gonna send it to someone else over the Internet or even let it leave your house.
I'm not concerned with the contents of the San Bernadino phone. I'm concerned with the government's ability to uphold the 4th amendment and be allowed to protect the public interest when warranted. We operate under a system of precedent setting common law and yes, while later legislation and constitutional amendments are going to need to be made for crypto, that's probably decades away and in the meantime we need our courts to interpret and uphold the constitution in the meantime.
I think that there are more racists in San Francisco than there were back home, they just don't realize it here. Back home there just weren't any black people or jews. Everyone was just ignorant. Here, there are tons of different kinds of people but do you ever see some techie making friends with some black dude in the Western Addition? Do you ever see some Chinatown cat kicking it with a Mexican? Racism and classism exist everywhere and social liberals tend to be the group that just wants to ignore the problem. There is very little multicultural interaction in a place this diverse. There was one black dude in my town and he came to the same parties and hung with the rest of us. He pretended to not be a redneck and was all in to this inner city urban culture, at least in his clothes. He had a crew of what we called "wigger" friends as well... but then we'd see all of them out hunting and driving four wheelers around... there's just not that much to do in the sticks, regardless of what magazines you're getting your styles from.
For all the shit going on in the red counties of America at least they can talk about race. I don't know any black dudes who have ever called themselves "african american" yet I know tons of white people who consider themselves socially liberal who are afraid of using the term black and will insist on using the phrase "african american". Also, I've got African friends. They don't want to be called fucking "african american". They're also fine with black. And I'm fine with white. Social liberals are hung up on a battle of words. Trigger warnings and god damned safe zones. Social conservatives are more focused on reality, and there's nothing more real than what was working or what was broken yesterday or the week prior.
I personally think that when people move in to a new community that they should learn the customs, language and traditions of the dominant culture so they can be good neighbors. This is something you see a lot in social democracies like Norway and Sweden as well, cultural indoctrination programs. I bet Bernie Sanders leaves that part out! I love the idea of multiculturalism and I think everyone should have their voice. I love the Chinese New Years celebration and I love the Cherry Blossom Festival. I also love that a bunch of Chinese and Japanese dudes love going to baseball games, voting, and eating cheeseburgers. Welcome to America!
I'm also pro-immigration but mainly because I can't see how free trade can function in a global economy without having a mobile labor force to follow the jobs around. I believe we will one day have a world government based primarily on Anglo-American liberal democracies. I could see the USA, Canada, the UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa all starting this process within our lifetimes. This is basically what things like NAFTA, TTP, and other free trade agreements are headed towards. I do not understand the knee-jerk fear against a global government. It has just have a very small executive body with a ton of governance left to the states and hopefully most to local communities. I believe that most government duties for housing, social welfare, education and general infrastructure should be local and community oriented and that the federal and future world governments should have very limited rolls. Perhaps there is room for some global income redistribution, but I think that once we have completely open borders across the globe and equal access to advancements in digital contracts and strong intellectual property rights that we can get capitalism working for just about everyone on the planet as we transition to a global knowledge economy. Next stop, Mars, as a United Earth! Fuck it, The United Federation of Planets has a nice ring to it, doesn't it? :)
All that being said, there are big issues with ignorance, and you can say as much about ignorance in Silicon Valley as you can about rural Mississippi. I empathize with the people of the South and I know they are carrying around a lot of shame. It certainly doesn't help to have people questioning their "racial/ethnic/immigrant attitudes". Everyone remembers why there was a civil war and who lost. Put on "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" by The Band and I'm balling like a fucking baby... Southern identity is a very complicated and beautiful thing and there's a reason why most of the best art, food and culture in American comes from down there!
Civil rights trump religious rights and that's been the case since the very beginning. Whatever the fuck is going on in Indiana and North Carolina is not conserving any of the ideals that I hold dear.