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>This sits so unwell with me, gives such limitless tyrannical & dictatorial control to a company. Do you think Apple could get some "hackers" extradited if the

>This sits so unwell with me, gives such limitless tyrannical & dictatorial control to a company. Do you think Apple could get some "hackers" extradited if they don't live in the US? Its that old adage, one mans terrorist is another mans freedom fighter and some country's like Russia will point blank refuse extradition to the US as will other countries. Any business can put what they like in their terms and conditions, those T's & C's are still tertiary to regional and state law if they are even enforceable. Lawyers will let your put what ever you like in a contract, whether its reasonable and enforceable is another matter which only judges can decide. Now if you live in the EU, there is nothing wrong with reverse engineering code, the EU court has ruled this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28809559 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28809559 but the definition of a bug can be more vague because a coder might suggest a user reported bug is working as its coded, so the coder may not see it as a bug but the user might and her you just need to convince the judge. Grey area. Another example of what was a grey area of law was initiating an email send to an email server in order to track whether an email address existed or not. Once the status of an email address was known abort the reset of the communication. It was useful for tracking people globally, and spam filters were not that good at picking this up in the past. Anyway that process has effectively been ruled illegal by the EU now as your email address supplied by your employer has to be treated as a private and personal email address so then other personal & privacy laws come into play to make the game more complicated, but you used to be able to track people globally in businesses & military to spot when people had left an employer or been moved in some cases. Then you have the NSA putting out reverse engineering tools for free like https://ghidra-sre.org/ https://ghidra-sre.org/ making one wonder what is the point of law especially when you reproduce parts of the AT&T infrastructure in Romania? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29135559 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29135559 Now whilst the law might seem absolute, legislation is very intentionally left vague and its judges who make it closer to being absolute with narrow specific definitions when they make a judgement, but if there's one thing I have learnt, interpretation of the law can be surprisingly vague even by judges. So all in all this could actually be a marketing or reputation management exercise or both involving lawyers to reassure Apple customers they have made the right purchase. Running an entity beit a business or a govt can be incredibly nuanced like playing a game of chess, and sometimes its not the initial action we need to be concerned with but the resulting action.

rektide 5y ago
Personally, generally I could not be more uninterested in the international legal politics behind this all. None of it is at all progressive, none of it speaks to what humanity can or could do. It's the most anodyne, boring, real world, un-possible way to take the discussion. It's mired in endless fun-house mirrors of shit-show politics that hasn't wont and can't figure out how to adapt. I can't think of a single nation that shows leadership, that has anything interesting or useful to say, any means of embracing humanity, of raising potential. > Its that old adage, one mans terrorist is another mans freedom fighter and some country's like Russia will point blank refuse extradition to the US as will other countries. This is a great mentality, and I'd love to see more dynamic behind it. Alas. I see no nations espousing & helping the actual obvious Open Source & other progressive & pro-human, pro-enlightenment, anti-proprietary freedom fighters. I see no one standing up for more personal computing liberties. The international regime is hostile & un-comprehending of tech & it's possibilities, more interested in businesses & big tech than it is in trying to help good tech happen, which is the real oppression, the real struggle, one enacted via pervasive & harsh IP laws & seemingly ever-expanding copyright length. Sure, some nations celebrate punk-ish behavior & sticking it to the west, but I can think of precious few examples of nations actually helping the good. The recent AskHN about software/tech monastaries[1], & the complete worldwide lack of any answers whatsoever indicates to me that there is no real help or interest in the actual freedom fighters, anywhere in the world. If you want to look at the law, I think today's example, of Russia telling 13 big tech companies they have to establish offices in Russia[2], is a near perfect example of how tech and law intersect. This is particularly menacing & threatening & scary, but it mirrors most of the relationship worldwide: aggressive, at ends, seeking constraint & control & dominance, no interest in growth or humans or improving the human-computer relationship. The law rarely serves the people, rarely amplifies possibility. It's here to insist that some antiquated self-obsessed notion of justice can be served, even when that justice so often only serves a fading out of touch law, or big vested interests, not the people. Generally I consider myself extremely progressive & hopeful for what governance & governments can do and should do. And I think if government wanted to deploy tech to help the people, if it would stop allowing endless private control to reign, great things would happen (Ron Wyden for president, 2028). But right now trying to frame questions & challenges in terms of the law is not-great. The law affords deep & vast powers to it's vested interests & the ideas of law itself. Yet in your particular scenario, it also simultaneously jealously & vengefully guards actual access to it's means power, to the reigns of state-sponsored violence & enforcement. The question posed, about whether Apple could get access to this executive use of force, isn't particularly relevant to me, and I don't think it reflects on the widescale systematic bureaucratic control companies like Apple & the prevailing worldwide laws get to impose via EULAs against the people of humanity. Some of the comments on Facebook getting the OK from federal US Court of Appeals to also try to sue the NSO Group[3] are somewhat in line with your questions & scenarios. The comments there talk to the ability to try to pursue legal action, but the inability to actually get the state/states to do anything about it. In some ways, this is an ideal case. It shows that a state that wanted to support freedom fighters, that wanted to support emancipatory, liberated, pro-personal computing, might be able to. There's just not a lot of good guys out there trying to help spring us free from the walled gardens we're locked in. My apologies for not trying to take up the question better. I think there's interesting material here. But to me, these questions return us to a not-compelling legalistic mindset, a practical view, that isn't capable of adequately considering how entrapped humanity at large is by the corporation's abilities to write it's own rules, by the de-personalization & de-accessing of computing that the cloudification of the world has brought upon us, & consigned us into. Whether or not this tyranny has the power to cross international boundaries & come get us isn't a particularly interesting subproblem to me. Generally I feel like the world has conformed to the prevailing notions of corporate techno-sovereignty. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29309794 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29309794 (12 comments) [2] https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/moscow-says-13-foreign-tech-firms-must-be-represented-russian-soil-by-2022-2021-11-23/ https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/moscow-says-13-foreig... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29320398 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29320398 (7 comments) [3] https://www.reuters.com/technology/facebook-can-pursue-malware-lawsuit-against-israels-nso-group-us-appeals-court-2021-11-08/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/facebook-can-pursue-malwa... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29323095 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29323095 (15 comments)

rektide 5y ago

Personally, generally I could not be more uninterested in the international legal politics behind this all. None of it is at all progressive, none of it speaks to what humanity can or could do. It's the most anodyne, boring, real world, un-possible way to take the discussion. It's mired in endless fun-house mirrors of shit-show politics that hasn't wont and can't figure out how to adapt. I can't think of a single nation that shows leadership, that has anything interesting or useful to say, any means of embracing humanity, of raising potential. > Its that old adage, one mans terrorist is another mans freedom fighter and some country's like Russia will point blank refuse extradition to the US as will other countries. This is a great mentality, and I'd love to see more dynamic behind it. Alas. I see no nations espousing & helping the actual obvious Open Source & other progressive & pro-human, pro-enlightenment, anti-proprietary freedom fighters. I see no one standing up for more personal computing liberties. The international regime is hostile & un-comprehending of tech & it's possibilities, more interested in businesses & big tech than it is in trying to help good tech happen, which is the real oppression, the real struggle, one enacted via pervasive & harsh IP laws & seemingly ever-expanding copyright length. Sure, some nations celebrate punk-ish behavior & sticking it to the west, but I can think of precious few examples of nations actually helping the good. The recent AskHN about software/tech monastaries[1], & the complete worldwide lack of any answers whatsoever indicates to me that there is no real help or interest in the actual freedom fighters, anywhere in the world. If you want to look at the law, I think today's example, of Russia telling 13 big tech companies they have to establish offices in Russia[2], is a near perfect example of how tech and law intersect. This is particularly menacing & threatening & scary, but it mirrors most of the relationship worldwide: aggressive, at ends, seeking constraint & control & dominance, no interest in growth or humans or improving the human-computer relationship. The law rarely serves the people, rarely amplifies possibility. It's here to insist that some antiquated self-obsessed notion of justice can be served, even when that justice so often only serves a fading out of touch law, or big vested interests, not the people. Generally I consider myself extremely progressive & hopeful for what governance & governments can do and should do. And I think if government wanted to deploy tech to help the people, if it would stop allowing endless private control to reign, great things would happen (Ron Wyden for president, 2028). But right now trying to frame questions & challenges in terms of the law is not-great. The law affords deep & vast powers to it's vested interests & the ideas of law itself. Yet in your particular scenario, it also simultaneously jealously & vengefully guards actual access to it's means power, to the reigns of state-sponsored violence & enforcement. The question posed, about whether Apple could get access to this executive use of force, isn't particularly relevant to me, and I don't think it reflects on the widescale systematic bureaucratic control companies like Apple & the prevailing worldwide laws get to impose via EULAs against the people of humanity. Some of the comments on Facebook getting the OK from federal US Court of Appeals to also try to sue the NSO Group[3] are somewhat in line with your questions & scenarios. The comments there talk to the ability to try to pursue legal action, but the inability to actually get the state/states to do anything about it. In some ways, this is an ideal case. It shows that a state that wanted to support freedom fighters, that wanted to support emancipatory, liberated, pro-personal computing, might be able to. There's just not a lot of good guys out there trying to help spring us free from the walled gardens we're locked in. My apologies for not trying to take up the question better. I think there's interesting material here. But to me, these questions return us to a not-compelling legalistic mindset, a practical view, that isn't capable of adequately considering how entrapped humanity at large is by the corporation's abilities to write it's own rules, by the de-personalization & de-accessing of computing that the cloudification of the world has brought upon us, & consigned us into. Whether or not this tyranny has the power to cross international boundaries & come get us isn't a particularly interesting subproblem to me. Generally I feel like the world has conformed to the prevailing notions of corporate techno-sovereignty. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29309794 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29309794 (12 comments) [2] https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/moscow-says-13-foreign-tech-firms-must-be-represented-russian-soil-by-2022-2021-11-23/ https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/moscow-says-13-foreig... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29320398 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29320398 (7 comments) [3] https://www.reuters.com/technology/facebook-can-pursue-malware-lawsuit-against-israels-nso-group-us-appeals-court-2021-11-08/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/facebook-can-pursue-malwa... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29323095 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29323095 (15 comments)