Comment by slicktux | Hacker News Reader

Comment by slicktux | Hacker News Reader

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The fact of the matter is that U.S. founders would be appalled by DOJ IPhone request, but the common people are not; that is a problem. It is a problem because the U.S. founders made the U.S. Constitution to tell the Federal Government that the people are free, not the other way around; The U.S. Constitution has a purpose and not a meaning e.g. Article 1 Section 8 of the constitution; The fact that a federal government entity, such as the DOJ, wants access to a private 'citizens'' (yes, legally corporations are people) intellectual property is unconstitutional. This, sadly, illustrates the mindset of the Federal Government and the status-quo. What happened to the people being jurisprudence? The Federal Government is unbound and reckless and it needs to be bound; bound by the U.S. Constitution. The U.S. Constitution that was philosophically created to serve a purpose, and that is Limited Federal Government. . .everyone seems to start in the middle of a problem, but never the beginning. Beginning here being The Federal Government and the problems it has propagated. Maybe then people will realize that its solutions are just problems, solutions that solve problems they created. Now, apropos to the topic. . .yes the founders would be appalled and so should the people. The appeal to the founders argument is an appeal to look back to history and identify with true political values that made this country so great. Else you can just "sit back and listen and they will tell you when you'r wrong. . ."

> U.S. founders would be appalled by DOJ IPhone request, but the common people are not

That's not accurate. The latest poll has more Americans supporting Apple than the DOJ [1]

And that's an improvement over the first poll which had 51% supporting the FBI [2]

Progress has been made and more can be done. Let's continue educating each other about encryption and inform our representatives how we feel. All is not lost and we can still share facts to support a reasonable course going forward.

[1] http://www.dailydot.com/politics/apple-iphone-doj-fbi-wall-s...

[2] http://www.people-press.org/2016/02/22/more-support-for-just...

This paints an unfair portrait of the average American. It isn't that they don't care, they just aren't as technologically savvy as this audience.

Take the Edward Snowden leaks. John Oliver did a wonderful segment interviewing people about NSA surveillance.[1] If you ask an average citizen if they are for or against "Section 215" or "X-Keyscore", they'll fall back on vague national security scare quotes. If you ask them if the government should see your dick-pics, then they start to understand what is at stake.

In many people's minds, what the FBI is saying makes sense. What's the big deal? They want to access a single iPhone from a terrorist.

Teach people that it means their nude photos could be accessed by any law enforcement official and I think you'll find that people really do care.

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEVlyP4_11M

>It isn't that they don't care

They don't care. While Oliver was able to ask questions to revoke a current response, you could ask similar questions that preyed upon the 'anything to catch the bad guy' mentality and you would see people handing over their rights. The core of this is that the people have been conditioned to hand over their rights and have been conditioned to not realize they are even doing such. Oliver exposed the latter, but the former still exists.

I wouldn't be surprised if a large number of "founders" would happily comply with such a request if it meant earning a dollar.

what kind of ridiculous ad-hominem to a random "founder" is this? Do you even know under what circumstances the Fourth Amendment was signed into law?

The Founder Fathers would most certainly not be appalled by the DOJ iPhone request. After all, a Congress consisting of many of the actual Founding Fathers passed the Sedition Act (of 1798), which suppressed the right to criticize the government, and the Alien Friends Act, which allowed for the deportation of non-citizens without any due process.

Having lived through a weak government (the Articles of Confederation), the Founding Fathers viewed the Constitution as empowering the Federal Government, not restricting it.

Maybe you should read the Sedition act a little more carefully. . .it is applicable to any attempt of sedition when one criticizes the government while abiding by the constitution"to intimidate or prevent any person holding a place or office in or under the government of the United States, from undertaking, performing, or executing his trust or duty: and if any person or persons. . .by the powers invested to they/them [entity] by the U.S. Constitution. . ."

Look at the people arrested under the Sedition Act and the purpose with which it was passed. It was passed, and used, by the Federalists to suppress the more outspoken Democratic-Republicans, some of whom were arrested for doing nothing more than criticizing the government.

It's interesting that you point that out; Since the Sedition Act was passed by a Federalist dominated party it only further supports my premise of the U.S. Constitution having a purpose not a meaning for interpretation, which is what the Federalists were doing. . .they wanted to expand the Federal Government (Nationalize), Central Banking System and relationships with the British Monarchy (empire) for which was the complete antithesis of the purpose for the constitution. We are getting into the follies of going against the constitution *past and present (as Thomas Jefferson always argued); we are digging deep; and that is good. Now, why is the U.S.A a Democratic Republic and not a Democracy? Why is the power to coin money a job exclusive to the Federal Government? (article 1 section 8) (as opposed to the FIAT system of today? I ask you

I disagree completely. The constitution set very serious boundaries of what the government can do and its role. It may be empowering within that role, but it certainly was a leash.

The constitution sets forth very real protections for the accused, for defendants. I see very little that could be stretched to apply to a third party that chooses not to comply with a lawfully obtained order because they disagree with it.

Frankly I doubt the Founding Fathers would ever have conceived of a third party daring to issue a bare-faced refusal to comply with a lawfully obtained order. They would surely have expected that this would immediately turn that individual (or corporate person, as the case may well be in this age) into another defendant, for a new crime.

I really don't know what Apple is thinking. They should have set a line in the sand when they legitimately could do nothing to gain access to the data, as they're so close to having completed in recent hardware/OS revs. That would force congress to pass legislation outlawing secure crypto, or give up. That would be an interesting thing to see, no doubt.

But this? They're playing a very dangerous game for very low stakes, and the only obvious rationale for doing it is the one that the government can and probably will argue is at work, which is as a PR move.

And a judge's signature outweighs your stock price any damn day of the week. Stupid/reckless is my first impression, or maybe it is just brilliant PR. But as a general rule, don't fight city hall for bragging rights. The real fight will happen once you say "tough luck, nothing anybody can do, you want to break in, go talk to to the quantum cryptographers".

Apple's response addresses almost every point you bring up, so I'm guessing you didn't read it. Which is probably why you're posting with a throwaway account.

The whole purpose of this litigation is to determine whether the order was "lawfully obtained."

As for drawing a line in the sand, it appears that the limit that they will not cross in cooperating with law enforcement is in actively creating new features that make the phone easier to hack.

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