Interesting parallel with Lavabit pointed out at the end of the article. Would the DOJ be willing to risk shutting down the biggest and most profitable corporation on earth over this?
Way less likely, but Apple could move HQ to another country. And take their secret source code and keys with them.
I'm not sure whether a company should be 'too big to govern', but it is on occasion hilarious.
Lots of arbitrary stuff is banned in a lot of countries. Singapore just thought the littering cons of gum outweighed the pros.
Note that stuff like nicotine gum and other "therapeutic" chewing gum is still allowed, they just don't allow the candy that leads to littering.
And honestly looking around in a lot of cities where the entirety of downtown is slowly growing into a white blob composed of little individual pieces of squashed chewing gum I don't blame them.
Gum wall in Seattle, case in point.
And there's only a handful of companies large enough to do this: http://www.businessinsider.com/25-corporations-bigger-tan-co...
We're getting into "kill the company to make a point" territory, which is probably not realistic however we might imagine they do it.
Whatever leverage Apple has over the federal government will come from the millions of citizens who are customers, shareholders, developers, fans, employees, etc. They can activate those people just as well from Cupertino as they can from their own island.
Yahoo would have owed the US gov. a sum equivalent to the GDP by the end of a month.
Security engineer: "Meep?"
HR: "That's right. Oh, and here, since you were such a great employee (up until we noticed your hair, anyway), have this extremely generous dollar amount severance package. Maybe if your hair is a different color someday we'll hire you back."
:
Apple to FBI: "We have no one with the expertise to work on this. Golly, sorry about that."
Is the FBI then going to make a grab for source code, signing keys, and conscript people to do the work?
I think it's become clear that they'd at least try.
What kind of dystopia are we living in again?
The U.S. military draft required passage of the Selective Service Act [1] Something similar would be required before Apple's coders could be forced to carry out court orders directed at Apple, the corporation. Even in these times (so far!) I think this wouldn't happen.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_Service_Act_of_1917
My point is, the individuals won't suffer.
That said, Apple security engineers probably would land on their feet.
Apple doesn't have the ability to compel an individual's conduct. The court's order applies to Apple, not to named individuals. Given that, I don't see a legal basis for fines, executive criminal charges, etc.
I think there's a lot of power in the hands of a few employees (and potential replacements) here. It'll be interesting to see what they decide to do.
A court order doesn't extend to Apple being required to be a dick to its ex-employees.
(And yeah, if any of you folks want a job, there are a zillion people on HN happy to talk, I'm sure)
No, they're going to grab for source code, signing keys, and _pay_ people to do the work. There are lots of competent engineers out there, and not all of them share your politics (and some that do might be willing to reconsider it for a sufficiently large dollar amount).
Hell there are probably engineers working at the NSA right now who would easily do it as part of their day to day job if you just handed them the keys and source code.
Who knows if the FBI's request carries as much as the NSA's. Probably not. Former NSA Director Michael Hayden confirms it was easier for him to get things done than the FBI [2]
[1] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/11/yahoo-nsa-lawsu...
(If Apple can't resist the government request, neither can anyone else, only the crankiest of people will punish them for being the test case.)