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Comment by nickbauman | Hacker News Reader

To me the issue is simple: If a criminal you weren't suspicious of shreds incriminating documents before he commits a crime, you don't make paper shredder companies redesign their paper shredders so that it's easier for law enforcement to reconstruct what's shredded. It's a paper shredder, after all. The same way a person's phone storage is supposed to be really hard to get at: that's it's job.

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Moreover, it's simpler to blame someone else for the result of your own actions. The perception breaking encryption will solve all their "problems" and allow them to get back to reducing suffering to zero is a fallacy. Our government's historic actions have had just as much part to play in this drama as anything. You reap what you sow.

The real fallacy here is the idea that the government is 100% responsible for "keeping us safe". In reality, it's me that keeps me safe most of the time. I expect them to deal with larger threats, such as North Korea. I expect all of us to deal with smaller threats, and understand shit happens sometimes that we wish hadn't.

And even larger threats than terrorists, like toddlers with guns. [1]

[1] http://www.snopes.com/toddlers-killed-americans-terrorists/

I want to go on record saying I agree with the idea that more control of guns is necessary, and I use this statistic to beat into my father's thick skull that guns are a problem in the USA. But I think a better intro into the problem is Vox. http://www.vox.com/2015/10/3/9444417/gun-violence-united-sta...

There are a LOT of decent arguments people in the US use to keep guns in the hands of their citizens. The most compelling one for me is that if you want to take my guns then lets have a plan in place to severely reduce the number of guns police have. That resonates with me on a personal level but I'm not expecting the police to give up all guns until results are shown on both sides. I can only think of Swatting in the USA. If I can prank call the police and they swat my neighbors house how can we say that citizens are the only problem here. http://time.com/2916554/aclu-police-militarized-report-swat-...

I use swat teams as an example of the paramilitarization of police that bothers me and is another side of the gun problem in the USA. If they broken into houses with battons and stun guns this would be bad but a different story.

I don't have a toddler or own a gun. Clearly, I am invincible.

It's sad when we get people running for office claiming their first priority is "keeping us safe". No it isn't; it's upholding the constitution, it's right there in the oath of office.

Or a code-locked safe. The government can blast in with a warrant, but they cannot force Acme Safe Inc to change their product line to flimsier models, nor force them to work on the extraction-job.

I don't know if that particular analogy holds up. Doesn't the FBI have a warrant for these iPhones? And wouldn't, given the FBI had a warrant for a code-locked safe, be able to solicit Acme Safe Inc for either the blueprints of the safe, or help in cracking it?

> And wouldn't, given the FBI had a warrant for a code-locked safe, be able to solicit Acme Safe Inc for either the blueprints of the safe, or help in cracking it?

Blueprints, maybe, but conscripting company employees would certainly fall under the prohibition that it can't be "unreasonably burdensome".

Suppose you assemble/configure/sell gaming PCs, one of your customers is arrested, and the local police department is understaffed and technologically illiterate... Can the local deputy show up at your front door and force you to teach them how to find the recycle bin?

Also, don't safes purposefully leave soft spots to make it possible to get in without the code (i.e. for when a person forgets the code)? If so, aren't those analogous to the backdoors we're concerned about for phones?

If so, is that a feature they were forced to add by the government?

Yet another aspect of this: people have always used "ephemeral" conversations. It's nobody's responsibility to ensure that the government has access to those conversations:

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/601044/the-feds-are-wrong...

And another one - So this is the 4th amendment, right?

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects,[a] against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

Okay - Where does it say in there that whoever is served the warrant must also ensure that the government makes sense of it? It only says that upon probable cause, it allows the government to search a place and "seize stuff". But that's it.

The government can obtain the iPhones and can even obtain the encrypted data. What they do with them from there on, it's their business.

I believe your comment is a really important dimension to the conversation. It has been proven the government could copy the encrypted filesystem of Farook's phone and use this copy to brute force it if they wanted to. What they are asking Apple to do is just make the brute forcing easier which implies this all comes down to mere expediency. Policing is only supposed to be easy in a Police State.

This is a very good analogy. Thank you. I'm going to use this in the future when explaining the issue to non-technical people.

Of course, if I may play devil's advocate: A criminal using a shredder has to go additional lengths of shredding the paper, but encryption is just always-on.

It's as if you had a shredder which magically shreds all your incriminating evidence you leave on paper.

Forget the shredder: the encrypted brute force resistant file system is just non-archival quality paper - flammable, sensitive to light, oxygen and humidity. The FBI isn't happy with the paper manufacturer, because if a criminal writes something on this paper they won't be able to read it in their fiery, ozone filled, blacklight lit underwater crime lab.

Perhaps that magical shredder would look something like this? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_htzscFkkg

I don't think this is quite an accurate analogy. A shredder removes the ability of anyone (including the owner) to read what was on the documents before shredding. A locked phone retains the ability for the owner to unlock it so it's not quite the same thing.

(Not that its relevant, but I support Apple in this fight.)

It can't be an accurate analogy because the technologies are fundamentally different. But it is a valuable way of thinking in terms of motivations and uses of both technologies. I use a paper shredder for many of the same reasons I expect my phone's persistent storage to be neigh impregnable to anyone but me. I shred paper documents almost daily to keep myself and my family safer. I know of no laws I have broken and I do not believe I am a criminal.

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