| > Why do people here persistently insist, even after being corrected, that the government's 228 year old authority to conduct warranted search and seizure is some kind of shadowy and scary "new power"? I'm not talking about the 228 year old law. I'm talking about the government's ability to collect information about conversations you had 10 years ago after a suspected crime which occurred, say, last week. This massive collection of data creates an imbalance between safety and potential data breaches and abuses. > Nothing about this is in any way new, and it's grossly dishonest to continue to claim that it is. Please read my comments carefully. You misunderstand my meaning > But the more I read these doomsday scenarios from people who are mystified by the one-sentence, 64-word text of the 4th amendment, the less I'm able to believe them. You can educate yourself and make up your own mind. You shouldn't believe or disbelieve a certain position based on the attitude of the person from whom you get your information. It's as unfortunate to miss the truth because of a terrible presenter (think of your worst science teacher) as it is to gulp down misinformation because it is presented in simple terms (think Trump). I've written tons of comments on HN about this issue with many citations. Here are detailed responses to Sam Harris [1] and President Obama [2] To date, I feel the most compelling argument comes from Senator Lindsey Graham's position. He was initially very supportive of the DOJ's position, and publicly called for Apple to comply. Later, after researching the topic and questioning Attorney General Loretta Lynch, he found his view changed [3] I also have a summary of recent events here [4] [1] https://pastelink.net/151k [2] https://pastelink.net/1555 [3] https://youtu.be/uk4hYAwCdhU?t=1m44s [4] https://np.reddit.com/r/SandersForPresident/comments/49otvu/... |
You know that people used to put a lot of their conversations onto paper, right?
If you kept your ten year old letters, and the government had cause to believe you'd committed a bunch of crimes (maybe you hadn't? you seem like an all right guy, the government probably just goofed, these things happen), it could go and search your ten year old conversations and see if they contained proof of you committing a bunch of crimes.
The fact that we uses electrons and binary math instead of paper and ink doesn't change anything at all.
>Here are detailed responses to Sam Harris [1] and President Obama [2]
I appreciate the effort but these read like the same doomsday scenarios where it's just treated as an inevitable given that providing a method of government access is directly equivalent to providing access to any and every hacker.
>there will be data breaches, people will be upset, they won't buy iPhones, and this industry will disappear from the US overnight
This is the kind of doomsaying I'm talking about. Most people don't buy iPhones for their disk encryption, they buy iPhones because they're shiny and have the apple logoand you can do facebook with them. The PSN breach didn't stop Sony from selling 35 million playstation 4s; an iPhone breach would inconvenience some people, be embarrassing for apple, and then everyone would continue on buying iPhones because the alternative is to not buy an iPhone, which most iPhone owners would consider about as acceptable as cutting off one of their own hands.