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This is the biggest issue, IMO. As I understand it, with governments, particularly the US, wanting Apple to get data off an Apple device, they couldn't because

This is the biggest issue, IMO. As I understand it, with governments, particularly the US, wanting Apple to get data off an Apple device, they couldn't because forcing Apple to write software to do this would be coerced speech, which is forbidden by the US court's interpretation of 1st amendment of the US constitution. (Obviously, this doesn't address breaking into the device, which the US did in the San Bernadino shooter case, which is more akin to law enforcement breaking into a safe or house with a warrant.) By implementing data harvesters, Apple's 1st amendment protections goes away, since the code is already written. What must be changed, by court order or what have you, is the configuration for what gets reported back. Again, IMO, it becomes much more like a "give us your files" subpoena, like Apple, Google, etc. get on a regular basis and must comply with. But IANAL.

schoen 5y ago
EFF (where I was working at the time) promoted Apple's first amendment argument in the San Bernadino case, which is a genuine argument in Apple's favor but not one that a court ended up deciding on in that case. There are also other arguments in Apple's favor there. In general, it hasn't been very clear what the courts will or won't allow law enforcement or spy agencies to commandeer tech companies into doing. As we saw with several other countries' legislation in this area, it's also something that typically comes with strict gag orders and so we don't really even know much about what governments have tried. I guess my main points would be: * when these issues actually end up in court, it's not yet clear whether the first amendment issue about software will or won't be the most important legal issue, and * especially in Australia and the UK, but very possibly also in other jurisdictions, there may already be tech companies that have lost secret fights over related issues and been forced to do things that users (or even most workers in those companies) haven't been told about, and * if you don't like governments being able to backdoor stuff, maybe try to promote technology architectures where it's harder to hide features and functionality! That last point reminds me how there's a kind of complicated side argument about how Apple's proprietary technology and paternalistic control most often make it harder for governments to spy on users, because there are comparatively fewer people to suborn or coerce in order to backdoor things, and it's harder to run code on the device that Apple doesn't approve of, and the company is very sensitive to public perception (maybe not this week!?), and has a big legal team to fight back against things. But when Apple does cooperate to increase governments' power in various ways -- e.g. banning specific apps from its app store, like it did with VPN and other anticensorship apps in China, among other cases, or doing this new scanning stuff -- it's also harder for users to override those decisions. (I'm definitely not speaking for EFF here -- I stopped working there a year ago this week.)

schoen 5y ago

EFF (where I was working at the time) promoted Apple's first amendment argument in the San Bernadino case, which is a genuine argument in Apple's favor but not one that a court ended up deciding on in that case. There are also other arguments in Apple's favor there. In general, it hasn't been very clear what the courts will or won't allow law enforcement or spy agencies to commandeer tech companies into doing. As we saw with several other countries' legislation in this area, it's also something that typically comes with strict gag orders and so we don't really even know much about what governments have tried. I guess my main points would be: * when these issues actually end up in court, it's not yet clear whether the first amendment issue about software will or won't be the most important legal issue, and * especially in Australia and the UK, but very possibly also in other jurisdictions, there may already be tech companies that have lost secret fights over related issues and been forced to do things that users (or even most workers in those companies) haven't been told about, and * if you don't like governments being able to backdoor stuff, maybe try to promote technology architectures where it's harder to hide features and functionality! That last point reminds me how there's a kind of complicated side argument about how Apple's proprietary technology and paternalistic control most often make it harder for governments to spy on users, because there are comparatively fewer people to suborn or coerce in order to backdoor things, and it's harder to run code on the device that Apple doesn't approve of, and the company is very sensitive to public perception (maybe not this week!?), and has a big legal team to fight back against things. But when Apple does cooperate to increase governments' power in various ways -- e.g. banning specific apps from its app store, like it did with VPN and other anticensorship apps in China, among other cases, or doing this new scanning stuff -- it's also harder for users to override those decisions. (I'm definitely not speaking for EFF here -- I stopped working there a year ago this week.)