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Previously on SoylentNews: Apple Ordered by Judge to Help Decrypt San Bernadino Shooter's phone

Former NSA Director Claims Many Top Gov't Officials Side With Apple

Non Sequor writes:

Choice quotes from an interview with Gen. Michael Hayden (archive.is) on Wednesday:

"The issue here is end-to-end, unbreakable encryption—should American firms be allowed to create such a thing?" he told the Wall Street Journal editor John Bussey. "You've got [FBI director] Jim Comey on one side saying, I am really going to suffer if I can't read Tony Soprano's email. Or, if I've got to ask Tony for the PIN number before I get to read Tony's emails. Jim Comey makes that complaint, and I get it. That is right. There is an unarguable downside to unbreakable encryption."

"I think Jim Comey is wrong...Jim's logic is based on the belief that he remains the main body. That you should accommodate your movements to him, which is the main body. And I'm telling you, with regard to the cyber domain, he's not. You are."

And by the way? If I were in Jim Comey's job, I'd have Jim Comey's point of view. I understand. But I've never been in Jim Comey's job...my view on encryption is the same as [former Secretary of Homeland Security] Mike Chertoff's, it's the same as [former Deputy Secretary of Defense] Bill Lynn's, and it's the same as [former NSA director] Mike McConnell, who is one of my predecessors."

It's interesting for this opinion to be coming from this source.

[Continues.]

Another Take on FBI vs. Apple

Phoenix666 writes:

There's a plenty of reason to believe that Apple complying with the FBI order is bad policy, it's legally shaky, and at least one of the people who makes the strongest arguments in this direction is now voting on a secret government board? What the heck is going on here?

What's going on is Justice Antonin Scalia is dead.

Had Justice Scalia not died unexpectedly a few days ago (notably before the Apple/FBI dustup) and had the FBI pursued the case with it landing finally in the Supreme Court, well the FBI would have probably won the case 5-4. Maybe not, but probably.

With Justice Scalia dead and any possible replacement locked in a Republican-induced coma, the now eight-member Supreme Court has nominally four liberal and four conservative justices but at least 1.5 of those conservatives (Justice Kennedy and sometimes Chief Justice Roberts) have been known to turn moderate on certain decisions. This smaller court, which will apparently judge all cases for the next couple years, is likely to be more moderate than the Scalia Court ever was.

So if you are a President who is a lawyer and former teacher of constitutional law and you've come over time to see that this idea of secret backdoors into encrypted devices is not really a good idea, but one that's going to come up again and again pushed by nearly everyone from the other political party (and even a few from your own) wouldn't right now be the best of all possible times to kinda-sorta fight this fight all the way to the Supreme Court and lose?

If it doesn't go all the way to the Supremes, there's no chance to set a strong legal precedent and this issue will come back again and again and again. That's what I am pretty sure is happening.

takyon: Apple's deadline to respond to the court's order has been extended from Tuesday to Friday. Twitter, Facebook, and Steve Wozniak have expressed support for Apple's position. Here's a blog post describing how Apple could potentially comply with the FBI's request.

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