I think Apple was primarily caught off guard by how unwilling even technically sophisticated critics have been in any sort of substantive discussion on what the

I think Apple was primarily caught off guard by how unwilling even technically sophisticated critics have been in any sort of substantive discussion on what they announced. I know I have been surprised at how little specifics are present in the criticisms that have been published. As an example, if one is asserting that governments can force Apple to do a thing, it seems like one should be able to articulate how, exactly, that would happen. If it’s pressure under the rule of law (U.S. law enforcement, for example) I would expect organizations who employ lawyers to articulate the laws and precedents that would enable law enforcement to compel Apple to do something they don’t want to do. And if it is pressure happening outside the rule of law (authoritarians targeting dissidents), I would expect activists to be able to articulate what levers those regimes have to pull against Apple. I have not even seen basic before/after comparisons explained. Like, if Apple could resist altering their OS for the FBI in the San Bernardino case (and get applauded for it), why could they not resist altering their OS for the FBI in the future (and get mocked for suggesting they could)? How, legally, is a demand to develop a targeted approach to image scanning configuration different from a demand to develop a targeted approach to device encryption configuration? And if authoritarian regimes can force Apple to search client devices for offending material, why haven’t they already done so? There is a ton of content that basically starts with engineering topics like “it’s easy to add entries to a hash list” or “it’s possible to find collisions” and just go from there. But engineering is not the issue. What the FBI asked Apple to do in 2016 was not difficult. And it’s not difficult to scan client files on client devices for signatures. It’s not difficult to make software phone home to a server. A simpler version of what Apple announced (scan client files for signatures) would have been trivial for Apple to develop at any time since the iPhone launched. If someone could force Apple to do it, why didn’t they? There may be solid answers to these questions but that is not the conversation I’m seeing. What I’m seeing seems primarily to be an emotional conversation that builds on people’s ignorance of the current state of technology and the law to power activist engagement. I think Apple was expecting to announce something technical and legal and deal with technical and legal objections. But what they did was introduce fodder and fuel for what is essentially a set of intersecting social movements around the issues of privacy, censorship, and corporate power. And like many broad social movements, the details are maybe not as important as collective emotion and alignment. Maybe that’s what you mean by elite consensus. Personally I would not consider myself elite, but I do find the lack of specifics frustrating.