Why would it be horrible for everyone if American companies were weakened?
There are companies outside the US, you know. It's not like we're going go back to the Dark Ages if American corporations all suddenly ceased to exist. Apple users would be unhappy, of course, because they'd have to switch to LG or Samsung phones, but "absolutely horrible"? Are you kidding?
I think the ecosystem isn't a zero sum game (not profits, but generally the advancement of software). Apple doing well helps other people do well.
Do you really think that if Apple completely stopped existing right now that it wouldn't have a massive negative impact on consumers and other businesses?
Massive? No. Assuming their Apple devices didn't also suddenly stop existing, they'd have a little pain with transitioning to alternatives. There are plenty of alternatives out there to Apple products right now, and with Apple corporation suddenly winked out of existence, that'd leave a big gap for other competitors to take over that space. If anyone is completely and utterly dependent on Apple for their livelihood, that's really their own dumb fault. Nothing apple does is all that critical that you can't get something/someone else to do it, though of course there'd be some pain in the transition. (The same goes for anyone willingly locking themselves into any proprietary vendor.)
I guess one drawback is that we'd probably see a significant uptake in Windows Phones, and they might actually get above 5% marketshare....
Anyway, MS bashing aside, my point is: Apple is just a seller of convenience, nothing they make is all that critical that it can't be replaced. Anything you can do with an iPhone, you can do with an Android phone. Anything you can do with a Mac, you can do with a Windows or Linux PC. It'd be annoying to have to get a replacement device and migrate to it and maybe new software, but "massive negative impact"? No.
Now, if everyone's Apple device suddenly winked out of existence too, that would be a bigger problem, but that's because of the data stored on those devices, not because of the devices themselves being so valuable. But as long as they kept backups of anything important (and not on Apple-branded backup devices...), that shouldn't be that hard to work around either.
I'll also add that it's not that much different for MS. If they suddenly winked out of existence, it'd be a pain, but "massive negative impact", not that much. There are alternatives, and it'd force everyone to have to explore those alternatives finally. It'd be a much bigger problem than Apple winking out of existence, however, because of MS's strong position in business software.
Of course, part of this depends on whether MS's software also winks out of existence, or if only the corporation itself gets swallowed up in a space-time continuum rift. If the software stays, it wouldn't be much of a problem at all: people would just continue using MS-ware as they currently do. A lot of people use illegitimate MS software anyway, so no change for them. Corporations would have less hassle with licensing. The main problem would be security updates, but that's been screwed up lately anyway because MS has been using that to force unwanted updates and ad-ware and spyware.
There'd probably be a whole mess of 0-days that would come out of it which would impact a lot of people as Apple might not be able to patch fast enough. Though I meant the horribleness of tanking an American company just because.
> The FBI’s brief dismisses all of this as a marketing ploy, and then blasts Apple as a literal threat to American democracy, writing: “Apple’s rhetoric is not only false, but also corrosive of the very institutions that are best able to safeguard our liberty and our rights: the courts, the Fourth Amendment, longstanding precedent and venerable laws, and the democratically elected branches of government.”
Ironically, Apple giving users encryption doesn't weaken the Fourth Amendment; it makes it stronger because it provides the ability for citizens to be "secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures" in a way that the courts recently have been unable to.
It's coming from the top. Obama has backed this effort from the start. The White House wants the Burr-Feinstein anti-encryption bill [1]. They've been waiting for it for months and the press keeps asking about it. From the White House Daily Briefing on March 11 [2],
> Q: Can I do the weekly check-in on if you guys have anything to say on the Burr-Feinstein legislation on encryption coming out of the Senate?
> MR. EARNEST: I don’t have anything new -- which is to say we continue to be in touch with Congress, and I continue to be personally skeptical -- more broadly, going beyond just this specific legislation, I continue to be a little skeptical of Congress’s ability to handle such a complicated policy area, given Congress’s recent inability to handle even simple things.
The executive branch is home to the Department of Justice. Maybe that is what you were thinking of? If it makes it easier, when you think about the judicial branch think of judges, and for the executive branch think use power.
In the US, judges adjudicate from the facts presented. Unlike many other legal systems, judges do not investigate. Roughly speaking, the judicial branch of the US Federal government is very small, little more than judges and their clerks. The US Constitution grants it little explicit power and its principle source of political power, declaring laws unconstitutional, was established solely by the Federal physician's own precedent: one day the US Supreme Court started declaring laws unconstitutional.
The US Marshal Service is basically the judiciary's law enforcement branch. Yes, the DEA is also part of the DoJ, but the DEA is a lot more akin to the FBI than the Marshal Service.
Marshals do prisoner security and transport, run the witness protection program, and are the legal enforcers of the court's orders. For instance, when the Supreme Court ordered the integration of Southern schools, it was US Marshals who actually enforced the order and were deployed to escort students into their schoools.
The FBI is technically part of an "elected" branch, but it's nonetheless a semi-autonomous agency not directly accountable to the people who voted for the President. Even the President could be investigated by the FBI. We just have to trust that good people were appointed to this agency, and be ready to fight them in court when not-so-good people make bad decisions.
> "no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause"
As a non-legal expert, the way this feels to me is that asking for a backdoor is like preemptively issuing a warrant for everyone on the grounds that they might commit a crime in the future that you'd want to investigate. Thus backdooring iOS is tantamount to issuing an unlimited warrant for everyone, which is exactly what the Fourth Amendment is trying to prevent.
The difficulty is that encryption doesn't work with the warrant system. There's no "encrypted before a warrant is issued, but unlockable after one is" without key escrow or something similar.
The real tragedy is that if the government had good intentions about doing so in a responsible manner (setting aside the problems with key escrow in the first place), then the NSA burnt those bridges to the ground between 1990 and 2015.
"We cannot trust you to use this power responsibly and therefore refuse to delegate it to you" might be the most rational basis for public policy there is.
The power to collect evidence to resolve criminal cases is one of the most fundamental powers of the state. You might just as productively suggest that we can't trust the USG to be a responsible state, and therefore it should disband.
The argument has the exact same form as the advice "don't talk to the police without a lawyer", and for the laws that support this protocol (right to silence/counsel). That is,
"I don't trust you to be an impartial seeker of the truth who's 'only' concerned with solving this murder rather than railroading me on random charges, therefore I will not answer even simple questions that you deem necessary to conduct your investigation."
(With that said, I really, really don't like the whole "don't talk to police" circlej---, like how it gets overapplied or dangerously applied ... but within a very narrow interpretation it's correct and well accepted enough to carry the implications over here.)
Edit: Correspondingly, the advice would carry a lot less weight in counties with a much better government that actually could be trusted not to look for petty reasons to arrest people. And so a government that prices itself a better steward of privacy could be trusted with key escrow.
You mean the 4th Amendment (the 5th guarantees due process and prohibits coerced self-testimony).
Put aside for a second that 4A is not in play here, because the phone's real owners consent to the search.
4A delegates to the courts the power to determine what evidence is and isn't in-bounds in an investigation. Nowhere in 4A will you find a prohibition on imaging someone's phone. Assuming the judiciary approves of a warrant, virtually nothing is out of bounds to a warranted search. That's what we're talking about here: a search that a judge has authorized.
It's that power that we're talking about clawing back because of a loss of trust in the government. And what I'm saying is, it's pretty silly to pretend that you can claw back the power to collect evidence without calling the whole state into question.
No, I meant the 5th amendment and coerced self-testimomy.
To me, that's an obvious example of evidence the government would like to have in many cases, but we clearly decided it cannot. A judge cannot grant a warrant compelling an individual to waive their 5A rights. That seems to have direct bearing on the idea of providing individuals a right to strong personal encryption.
Admittedly, there are many edge cases (furnishing information about a third party that one has personally encrypted), but we've bounded what the government can and cannot have before.
Although from another comment I made I generally agree with your position that this is a pretty serious point of balance between the individual and the state due to the nature of encryption.
That's the exception that proves the rule. So concerned were we about torture that we constitutionally prohibited coerced self-testimony. What other form of search does the constitution bar from judges? You can't say "the unreasonable kind!", because the constitutional definition of "reasonable" is "whatever the Supreme Court says it is".
I don't think limiting searches categorically has ever been a problem to this extent before (big statement, but maybe?). Because there's never been a broadly-used impediment to the types of searches the government typically conducts that simultaneously requires a sacrice on the part of individuals if it is not available.
Or to turn it around, what has the government historically desired to legally do after obtaining a warrant that it has been unable to do?
We never made locks or strong doors illegal. The closest would probably be mandating log retention at telecom providers for a certain period of time.
I'm not sure we're talking about the same case. The government is capable of conducting the search it demands in this case. Because of the way Apple designed this particular phone, it can in fact assist the government with the search.
The question of how cryptography might stymie whole classes of search entirely is germane to the question of whether we should pass laws restricting default-on cryptography (obviously, I don't think we should). It is not germane to this case, which is not about "mathematics" or even "security", but instead whether the government has the power to compel a product manufacturer to assist in a search of their products.
The government is not capable of conducting the search on its own in the sense of "access the contents of this particular iPhone at this point in time." Unless you have read some very different material than I have or are using different definitions?
Richard Clark seems to think the NSA would have the capability, and they might, but the FBI apparently (and believably) doesn't.
Apple "assisting in a search" is a little overly summarizing in my opinion. I think there's a difference between "we received your warrant, here's the information we have" and "we received your warrant, we will dedicate engineers employed by our company to actively exploit the security we designed into our products."
Is there precedent for compelling lockmakers to provide technical expertise in defeating their own lock systems? I can't imagine that's never come up historically.
Correct, however we're entering into an entirely different area of argument here. Historically, physical safeguards have been utilized, and any physical safeguard can be overcome give a moderate amount of funding and/or time. I'm not aware of any period where a safeguard would need to be intentionally fundamentally flawed in order to allow the government to proceed with their collection of evidence.
The question becomes whether it is within the power of the government to mandate that flaw, or whether they will need to find some other approach. There is also a question of freedom of speech, as it has historically been held that you can be forced to not express something, however you cannot be forced to express something. In regards to key signing, it could be said that that is an expression of authenticity that you endorse whatever is being signed. Can the government force you to give that endorsement? Does the government's power to collect evidence supercede your right to freedom of speech (or the abdication of speech)?
The physical vs virtual component is the most fascinating part of the issue for me. And the fact that "make a virtual thing that behaves like the previous physical thing" is impossible / extremely ill-advised.
We've seen the popular media analogies gradually become more accurate in their understanding that this is a novel question. And, admittedly, hats off to Tim Cooke and Apple for getting more technically accurate descriptions out in the media.
We do seem to be having a more productive discussion socially this time around.
I think the last major rebalancing of rights due to new technology concerned copyable copywritten digital media and... we decided to make a lot of things that are technically trivial illegal. Not the best message to kids that "these things are illegal, but easy to do and unenforceable."
>The power to collect evidence to resolve criminal cases is one of the most fundamental powers of the state.
I agree. But it is no where stated or implied that this should be an unlimited power. In fact, clear limits are placed upon that authority.
If I invent a cypher and store all of my physical written works using that cypher, can the government compel me to decrypt those works upon discovery that they lack the ability to do so? What if I taught that cypher to my family? Can they be compelled? If so, under what authority?
>You might just as productively suggest that we can't trust the USG to be a responsible state
This suggestion is inherent within the Constitution. It is framed upon a mistrust of any Government to not become tyrannical.
>therefore it should disband
uh, what? nice leap.. did you use rocket shoes to get over the gap?
What "clear limits" are you referring to? Remember, this case is about the limits judges have in compelling the production of evidence. What are the limits on that authority?
It's unclear whether you will eventually be compelled into decrypting documents. One circuit says you can't be, because of 5A. But that ruling was situational, and other courts might rule otherwise. Certainly I don't personally agree with the logic that compelled decryption is necessarily testimonial in nature, any more than opening a safe for which only you have the combination is testimony. The primary purpose of the ban on coerced self-testimony is to prevent bogus confessions elicited under torture. That's not at issue here.
I don't understand your "inherent within the Constitution" argument. The Constitution says what it says. I'm citing it.
It is my understanding that the central issue is not the judges authority to compel evidence be turned over to the state. The State is already in possession of the evidence, it is simply in a format that is unintelligible. Apple is not in possession of any evidence.
The issue is whether a third party can be compelled to provide access to that evidence in order to make it intelligible and therefore meaningful. The combination to the lock (which apple claims they would be forced to construct, as it does not yet exist. The government seems to have accepted the veracity of this claim when they agreed to perform the labor if handed the tooling).
What is the purpose of explicitly stating 4A if we can simply trust the government to be a good actor?
It is inherent in the statement of explicit restraint that there is not trust.
Preamble to the Bill of Rights -
"The Conventions of a number of the States, having at the time of their adopting the Constitution, expressed a desire, in order to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its powers, that further declaratory and restrictive clauses should be added: And as extending the ground of public confidence in the Government, will best ensure the beneficent ends of its institution."
I like that they use confidence.. it implies a matter of shades or degrees. Trust seems to imply something much more B&W.
I'm sorry, but this still isn't a coherent argument. The Fourth Amendment delegates to the court the decision over whether a search is or isn't reasonable. It is a court that has ordered this particular search. The court is part of the government.
If you can't trust any part of the government, the Fourth Amendment is immaterial: you can't trust the entity to whom is entrusted the power to adjudicate reasonableness.
The power of the courts is kept in check by the Legislature. They are not above elements of mistrust.
The court is compelling a third party to perform an act that really isn't part of a search and seizure of items.
Search and Seizure as defined by 4A is over and done with. The Prosecution has searched the "places to be searched" and is in possession of the "persons or things to be seized."
Now can it compel Apple to make them useful? (Potentially useful, as even the State has argued there likely isn't really any useful evidence there anyway.. sorta makes this whole thing look like a dog and pony show.)
I don't think the legislature helps you here, because one of the very first things the legislature did, when it was populated with the framers and signers of the Constitution, was to delegate to the courts the power to compel third parties to assist investigations.
And Apple is arguing that the "All Writs Act" to which you refer is not authority to demand whatever you damn well please, from anyone, at any time. They are arguing that there are well established limits to that authority and that the judiciary is overstepping its bounds here and need defer judgement to elected representatives (the legislature).
I don't think this is accurate. To wit: I don't think Apple's argument is that the limits they're seeking are well established (they are not), only that they are important and sound.
Either way, Congress isn't a check on the Supreme Court. It's typically rather the other way around.
Application of the All Writs Act in this manner is unprecedented. The conditions under which it may be applied are well defined and are not met for this application.
The Supreme Court isn't a factor at this stage.
"Typically" you are correct. The formal method for checking the power of the Judiciary is for Congress to remove Judges from the bench.
Apple is arguing that All Writs doesn't grant the authority that is being used. If that authority is to be sought then it will have to come from Congress. At least one Judge agrees.
That's the nature of the AWA; it's a catch-all. Every new technology or social institution that appears is going to create a new "unprecedented" use of the AWA. But the underlying principle of the AWA is so simple that it was one of the first things that came before Congress: the people are entitled to every person's evidence, and if a third party stands in the way of that, the courts have the right to compel their assistance.
And there are limits to the assistance the court may request.
Creation of new works is just such a limit.
If there is not a limit, then what the courts may compel as "assistance" becomes absurd.
This is the argument Apple is making and it is the foundation of the opinion of at least one Judge that has ruled against use of the AWA to compel the unlocking of a phone.
Its an electronic search of a device in the FBI's possession. Clearly this is a modern issue that exceeds the language of the Constitution etc. Its a fair question - how much extra work can a manufacturer be compelled to do for the FBI, to enable them to understand the device/information they have already seized? The word 'search' is being stretched to the breaking point here.
I do not concede the point that "electronics" somehow bring controversies outside the scope of the Constitution. The Constitution didn't foresee electrical power, automobiles, or telephony either. Human air travel was a fantasy when the Constitution was drafted, and we didn't have to amend it to deal with airspace controversies.
What I do think is that people who are intimately involved with new technologies will tend to believe that the complexities of their technologies must somehow swamp the Constitution.
I wish that wasn't true. But govt seems to think that way. Personally I think searching my laptop ought to be covered under freedom of the press, but it isn't. Email should get the same protections as snail mail, but no love there.
No, its not the technologists who don't get it.
Anyway to the point: we need to clarify if searching my house, and searching my person, and searching my laptop, and searching my cloud-based email history are in the same class. Hell, even searching my breath or blood isn't protected like they should be. Its a long way from clear, what Constitutional protections are extended to modern situation and which aren't. Technology has challenged everything we thought we knew.
Fair point. What are the laws on producing evidence, whereby the evidence constitutes a challenge to review?
E.g. If I was ordered to produce logs that may be evidence in a case, and I only had and only produced a 10GB+ text log with a single line the warrant was interested in. Can a warrant order me to parse the log to find the relevant information?
Furthermore, at what point does a digital space become similar to a physical space? When I can carry 3 hard drives that can contain almost as much information as the Library of Congress print collections, is it reasonable to think of them as "one thing" for legal purposes? In that if you have access to the physical container, you have access to all its contents?
If I remember, Lavabit attempted just such a "Big Sky" tactic with the logs (or a similar set of files) in their case and it was deemed a transparent attempt to obfuscate.
That was the SSL key delivered on 11 pages of printout in 4pt type. A bit less arguable than compelling someone to find the needle in their haystack for you.
I didn't intend to be inflammatory (at least any more so than the parent), merely point out that a logical leap had been taken that was not entirely faithful (imho) on the part of the writer.
It is certainly not "mistrust government" ergo "disband government", especially when the government in question was formed near entirely upon the notion that a government should exist in a perpetual state of mistrust.
A monopoly on violence is the fundamental power of the state, which isn't being challenged here. What is being challenged is the state's methods of evidence collection, which determines an attribute of the state - not its existence. Put more simply: you haven't leapt in your logic, you've presented a false equivalence.
The collection of evidence (more broadly: the investigation of crimes) is one of the core purposes to which the state's monopoly on violence is applied, so the issues are the same.
You are doubling down on a logical fallacy. By your logic a state that has no law enforcement investigations is not a state, regardless of military strength and the sovereignty that enables. Now you may say that you would not want to live in such a place, but you can't with a straight face deny that it is still a state. As far as lumping potential precursor activities (evidence collection) in with the eventual excising of violence (arrest), and a challenge to the former is a challenge to the latter... by that logic the US isn't a state - because there are already plenty of restrictions in place.
tptacek's argument, as I understand it, is that evidence collection is the beginning of the chain that allows enforcing laws.
Not being able to collect evidence precludes legal enforcement, which precludes laws, which precludes the existence of a state in the modern definition. Which is the same line of reasoning that most of the "pro-legally breakable encryption" follow, even if they don't carry it out to conclusion explicitly.
I think it's fair to say a state in which everyone uses strong encryption (that cannot be penetrated by the state in any circumstance) in every digital facet of their lives does look very different from the one we currently have (at least in technologically advanced states).
> ...the beginning of the chain that allows enforcing laws.
Years ago I wrote software for supply chain loss prevention, every so often there would be a crisis (like a hijacking) that put the department into investigation mode - where there was no room for long term strategic thought. But the course was always corrected when the department director would remind everybody that the job was "loss prevention" and not "loss apprehension". So while criminal investigation is currently a big part of law enforcement, it isn't the primary objective. If that concept sounds strange, check out Bruce Schneier's work.
> ...which precludes the existence of a state in the modern definition.
Is that true, have we redefined the state to only include governments with laws? What do we call the entities formerly known as states that no longer fit the new definition? I wonder how long until we redefine law. I'm really hoping that when you say "modern definition" you actually mean "the definition Jay Leno would get while grabbing people off the street who previously gave the matter no thought".
I do agree with your point thought, I think that those who are predicting catastrophe are more concerned with maintaining the status quo - and when they say the world will end, they mean their estimate of the way the world works. The mental crisis is so great for some that they will craft incredibly convoluted justification, and may go so far was to start redefining words :)
A geographic location where there exists a monopoly on violence. For example: the USG gets to decide who is allowed to kill who and under what circumstances, exclusively, for a specific location. That monopoly can be made clear through laws, but it isn't necessary - consider monarchies with no legislative bodies. Also consider the fact that laws cannot be established without a monopoly on violence, which a lot of people seem to get confused about - thinking the authority over violence is somehow derived from law...
> And are we talking philosophical or real world examples?
I'm really tempted to launch into a rant about cognitive dissonance here, but I'll just save time and say that is a distinction without a difference. As far as examples, like I said, pick any monarchy without a legislative body - Native American history has plenty of that.
To me, the difference between philosophical positions and ones which can survive the tests of the real world are pretty important. But I suppose that's my opinion as an engineer. I've studied a lot of philosophy that's logically self-coherent but completely impractical to let anywhere near physical matter.
I would say that "a geographic location where there exists a monopoly on violence (such as a monarchy without legislature)" nonetheless has implicit laws that guide its hand. And by which it is judged! Indeed, transgressing unwritten social contracts has led to the downfall of most monarchies throughout history. Or to put it another way, co-opted power structures are necessary for the governance of any sufficiently large group, above and beyond sheer force. And power-structures require some sort of bargaining and negotiation even if it's rather one-sided.
Laws as instruments to communicate expectations are what makes scalable organization possible past a certain point, whether they're explicit or implicit.
That's why you don't see any long-lived civilizations with true violent anarchy as a form of government.
> ...difference between philosophical positions and...
Philosophy is a pretty huge domain, where one end of the spectrum is navel gazing Platonic forms and the other is the propositional logic that informs compiler design. It sounds like you describing the trap that medieval scholars fell into, where they would recursively construct syllogisms until they found themselves talking about how many angles could dance on the head of a pin. This is what happens when you fail to check your premise, you end up with a logically consistent delusion. So the "self-coherent but completely impractical" philosophy you've condemned is just a condemnation of poor logic - which doesn't do your utilitarian argument much good.
As far as the the rest, you've now changed the topic from "what defines a state" to "what defines a well judged, scalable, long-lived civilization".
> ...anarchy as a form of government...
One of those words doesn't mean what you think it means :)
"We got burned giving these people too much power" is absolutely a rational basis for public policy. The biggest threat to your life and liberty comes from the government, not some shady group out of the Middle East.
That bit's definitely in there and it's definitely important for physical goods.
But digital goods are a different ball game. Even if the government is able to mandate back doors be put into phones, criminals will simply change to use other software.
We're going to need to face the fact that terrorists will still be able to hide their communications using encryption whether the US government attempts to rewrite all encryption communications software in the US or not. There are too many moles to whack.
I'd prefer that our law enforcement officers figure this out sooner or later so they can get back to figuring out how to keep us safe given the circumstances. They have a very difficult job which we need to support through whatever means we can. It's our job to help them learn how encryption works.
> Even if the government is able to mandate back doors be put into phones, criminals will simply change to use other software.
People say this a lot. But I'm not so sure. I'm sure they will some of the time, but I bet there are a lot of unsophisticated criminals out there who will use whatever consumer software I use to message my wife about who's picking up milk on the way home today. It's just easier.
We've actually seen evidence to support this position as well. The Paris attackers coordinated over unencrypted SMS when, even now, there are far more secure solutions that one can easily install.
> I bet there are a lot of unsophisticated criminals out there who will use whatever consumer software I use to message my wife about who's picking up milk on the way home today. It's just easier.
For sure there are. Is that a good reason to pass laws mandating back doors in phones? I don't think so. The economic and security impact will be too large.
The FBI is focusing on terrorist cases as a means to win the public on their side. And, many sophisticated criminals have already figured out how to use encryption. The FBI is saying that criminals use Twitter as a means of connect, and then encourage followers to continue conversation via encrypted methods. I guess this is how they get metadata about who is talking to who but not the actual conversation content.
(disclaimer; not a lawyer) How do you see there being probable cause for the issuance of a warrant? My reading of the FBI-Apple-CDCal-Govt-Reply document (page 2 / line) was that there was not forthcoming or ongoing attack, but evidence of the attack that Farook had executed.
Probable cause? The phone's user shot 22 people. The phone itself belongs to the county, so legally, they don't even need a warrant, but if there isn't cause to issue a warrant in this case, there's never been such cause in any case.
But the phone has no (additional) prosecutorial value against Farook and Apple itself is not in possession of any evidence or information that has to do with the attack, which seems to be the reason why the FBI is using the All Writs Act.
What i am trying to figure out is if the FBI is saying that there is evidence on the phone of future attacks, or information about co-conspirators, or some other material that would lead to additional action. From what I have read, there is no indication that is the case.
What is it the FBI is gaining by unlocking the phone? Other than a legal precedent.
Not knowing what is on the phone is my point. The FBI is asking for a method to access information on a specific device that impacts all devices of the same type. If there is not a stated reason for positive action, this seems to be unreconcilable with the FBI dismissing concerns about this being a violation of the fourth amendment.
However, I don't know enough about the law to know if probable cause means to take action regardless of the outcome of that action. That seems to be slippery slope toward justified constant mass surveillance.
The whole point of a warrant is to allow investigators to resolve the question of whether evidence is or isn't located somewhere. By your logic, any time a judge issues a warrant, they might as well issue a conviction at the same time, because the question of what the evidence says needs (in your view) to be settled before the warrant issues!
That isn't the intent of my question about the warrant. As I understand it a judge would issue a warrant if there was probable cause that execution of the warrant would prove or disprove the procecution's case against a defendant.
From what I've read, the FBI hasn't made such a claim. Only that it needs to be accessed because Farook committed a crime. The determination of his guilt does not rest on some data stored in the phone.
Going back to my original question, what does the FBI gain in the matter of this case by accessing one device in a way that compromises all existing and future devices? And is the, what I interpret to be a, massive imbalance between cost and gain of the action so great that it represents a threat to the 4th amendment.
The disclaimer that I'm not a lawyer was not intended to be cheeky, but an honest show of ignorance of how these kinds of questions are treated in the judiciary.
They literally have no idea what's on the phone; they're speculating that there might be something useful. A search warrant for searching the possessions of someone who committed a terror act is not out of the ordinary. But I agree with your conclusion.
Right, that makes sense. I don't have the link handy but the aclu post from a few days ago about a method to brute force the phone by backing up and restoring disk images after a wipe seemed reasonable to me. I also think that the fact that the phone wasn't farook's property but San bernardino government's is a strong argument that there is no expectation of privacy on that particular phone.
It's probable cause for the warrant against (??) Apple that I haven't wrapped my head around. Since apple has no known or suspected connection with the crime itself.
I was hired as a Data Engineer for my skills in Scala, AWS, and other data technologies. I ended up falling into Backend Engineer (also Scala) as our core services needed significant support. From there, I drifted into Operations as our infra and deployment processes were negatively impacting QOS and the time from code-to-prod.
In my spare time I:
- made a shitty personal website[0] for kicks
- maintain an npm package[1]
- contribute to SecureDrop[2]
- run the not-yet-live BerlinLeaks[3]
Why does that happen? I'd think they were equivalent. I don't do time-series or anything to be clear. I would just expect the a + b = b + a principle to apply for the m/d value.
Sure (assuming that's how a "month" is defined in this context -- I haven't actually read the whole article, so I'm not sure); but why do you find the Java syntax less confusing? They look pretty equivalent, except for one is shorter than the other.
By splitting the addition up into two discrete calls, the ordering is made much more explicit, there's no room for ambiguity.
In C#, the largest part of a TimeSpan is a day, you can't have a TimeSpan of "one month and one day", because adding that to a DateTime would add a different amount of absolute time depending on the DateTime. You can have a TimeSpan of "32 days", and adding that to any DateTime yields a consistent result.
Ih ok. Sounds like we can keep first style just make order of operations clear and with rules to catch this. Second syntax woukd appear to require same checks. Again, equivalent intent and problems with more verbosity in 2.
IMHO, working on timestamps in code like this is just asking for edge case to bite you in the ass.
The only sane way I've found to work with time is to convert any timestamp into a seconds-since-the-epoch value when doing any internal work and then covert back to the timestamp format for display. As an added bonus your code won't get super messy when you start getting timestamps from different sources that are formatted differently. Everything gets normalized to the internal representation before you do work on it.
You can't perform the operations "add one month" or "add one year" if you're working with seconds since the epoch.
For storing a timestamp, absolutely, you should use an integer-based format, counting discrete somethings since somewhen.
For working with timestamps, you need all the nuance, you need something that can manipulate the different parts of it independent of each other.
And finally, for displaying or reading timestamps, you need all the localization and parsing crap to figure out what "020304" means. Fourth of March 2002? Third of February 2004?
Yes you will need to have the localization logic when you convert the timestamps, but when you store them internally as timestamps you need that localization crap every single place you use them.
Adding 1 month or 1 year to the current date is usually a mistake. Quick question, what do you expect to happen when you code "Jan 31 + 1m"? What do you expect to happen when you code "Feb 29 2016 + 1y"? If you are thinking about doing this, ask yourself if it wouldn't make more sense to define your time by days instead. Jan 31 + 30 days, or Feb 29 + 365.25 days. Of course days are easy to implement on epoch time as well ( time + 30 * SECONDS_PER_DAY ).
> when you store them internally as timestamps you need that localization crap every single place you use them
Which is why you shouldn't do it, which is just what I said. :-)
> Adding 1 month or 1 year to the current date is usually a mistake.
No, I can think of many use-cases where this is useful. For example, what should Siri do if you tell it to "move today's 1 o'clock to the next month" ?
Jan 31 + 1m = Feb 28/29
Feb 29 + 1y = Feb 28
SECONDS_PER_DAY is not a constant, because of leap seconds. (Or it is, and shifting between UTC and UT1 causes them to appear. I forgot. It's messy no matter how you slice it.)
That's one reasonable interpretation, except that it causes problems where Jan 30 + 1m == Jan 31 + 1m and also Feb 28 - 1m != Jan 30 or 31.
Luckily most people can ignore leap seconds, just like pretty much every system time library. Because they don't happen on regular intervals it is impossible to code a fixed rule for dealing with leap seconds so very few things even attempt it.
Time is hard enough to deal with already and few human scale things care about 1 second differences that happen once every 3-5 years or so.
> what should Siri do if you tell it to "move today's 1 o'clock to the next month" ?
This is an interesting question, because there are at least two valid options. If it is the 31st of the month, then maybe you want it to happen on the first of next month. Something a human secretary might intuit. On the other hand, you might mean moving the appointment back a whole month, unless it's the 31st and then you mean to have it a day earlier on the next month...
Like I said, this kind of logic gets you in ambiguous edge case hell in a hurry. FWIW, I don't think Siri even attempts to deal with a request like that.
A better solution is probably to require the person to be a bit more explicit in their request "Siri, move my 1 o'clock to next Tuesday".
Besides, these kinds of interactions aren't impossible with epoch time, they just require more work. One can argue that it would be good to make this sort of thing a little tougher as it will encourage the programmer to think harder about what they are doing and reconsider if it is a good idea.
SECONDS_PER_DAY is constant for human scale activities. People who fret over leap seconds are either overly pedantic about time or are working at high enough precision that they aren't going to be making crude adjustments like "plus 1 month from now".
Besides, I can practically guarantee that the libraries discussed here don't deal with leap seconds. They're going to get it just as wrong.
By my count it's over 30 characters less "clean". The Java syntax obscures some meaning and requires a lot more boilerplate in favor of less magical (and thus complex) syntax.
I agree that this sort of first-class datetime-type representation may not be appropriate for every language, but myself, I find it refreshing and brilliant, and I'd love to see more languages support this sort of syntax instead of overloading strings or using complicated objects or APIs.
It's like comparing the power and ease of using regular expressions in Perl or Ruby versus in Java or Python. In Perl and Ruby, regexes are built-in to the syntax of the language itself. They're a truly first-class type, like strings and integers are in all four languages, and like lists and dicts/hashes/associative arrays are in Perl, Ruby, and Python.
I'd love to see datetime objects promoted to similar first-class native syntax support in this way in more languages. It won't be appropriate everywhere, but in the right language it'd be amazing.
The Java is clean because it's perfectly understandable. I don't have to think about "+ 1m" meaning month, minute, or milli-. Verbose, yes, but the meaning is 100% unambiguous which I think makes it a better API.
> overloading strings
I'm pretty sure writing "+ 1m" is more of an overloading of a string than ".plusMinutes(1)".
How is plusMonths(1).plusDays(1) obscure in any way? You could show that to my grandparents and they would be able to guess what it does. "+1m1d" on the other hand they wouldn't have a clue.
Length, in either direction, does not correlate to "clean". Clarity and intent does. Clean Coder (http://www.amazon.ca/Clean-Code-Handbook-Software-Craftsmans...) does a fantastic job talking about this, it's worth picking up if you haven't read it in the past.
"Length, in either direction, does not correlate to "clean". Clarity and intent does."
Exactly. So, the first example starts with a date in a way of representing dates that will register immediately for even a lay person. The developer intends to add time to that date. The example does this with an addition operator then a value with letters representing recognizable units of time. Matter of fact, this was so obvious that I knew what the author was doing before I read the explanation. I'd probably do "min," "sec," "hr," etc to aid intuition, though. Esp avoid confusion on months vs minutes for m.
Then, there's the other example. It appears to create an object. It then calls a method on that clearly adds one month. It also calls a method of that method, that object... idk that language so I don't really know the semantics of what it's doing... to add 1 day.
One is definitely more clear and intuitive than the other. It also has the rare property of being easier to type. Epic win over whatever the other thing is. Not to say the other one was bad: still pretty clear. Just not as much as a straight-forward expression.
In the former, typing '2012.01.01' implicitly creates a date object (probably), and '1m1d' implicitly creates some sort of duration object (probably) and uses an operator to combine them.
The Java was isn't really that different. Just more verbose, but again, I don't mind trading a few key strokes for clarity.
What clarity? That's what I mean. The first example starts with a date then adds values to it. Second does same thing. I use neither language nor do tjme series but still knew tge intent. So all you're getting is extra keystrokes with same clarity.
Length itself does not; but there is an obvious benefit to a syntax that is both short and clear -- when reviewing the code, it takes much less time to figure out what's happening.
Take matrix algebra for example: what takes less time to process (e.g. when debugging code) --
`a = b.inverse().times(c).add(d)`? What if there are hundreds of operations like that?
Now, there _might_ be people for whom syntax (3) is the clearest -- for example, these could be people who know some programming, but are not familiar with matrix data or operations. However, their convenience, or that of your grandparents, doesn't really matter: if it's a one-off job for them, figuring it out would take a very small fraction of their time and is not worth optimizing for, and if it's not, extra time to learn the syntax would more than pay for itself when they have to regularly work with it. We don't use words to describe such expressions in print for exactly the same reason! :)
> By my count it's over 30 characters less "clean".
If character count were really the ultimate measure of cleanliness, then we'd all be programming pointlessly (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacit_programming) and using single-character names for any variables that slipped through. (That's not to say that shorter is never better, but rather that, when it is better, its brevity is not the only reason.)
The IDE provides context-sensitive cues as one types so that you don't have the cognitive paper-cut from having to think for even a second if "1m" means "one minute" or "one month".
At a deeper level, chaining method calls to build-up an object is perfectly understandable way to modify something like a date.
They are both about equally clear, but the former syntax will always take less time to process (unless perhaps you are a Java programmer who is familiar with the latter syntax but unfamiliar with the former, in which case it's not a valid comparison anyway). If it's an analysis-oriented package with most of the work done at a REPL, less time to type, too.
How is "1m" more obvious that "plusMonths(1)"? I mean really, the latter is basically and English phrase. I know it's cool to shit all over OOP and Java these days, but if Haskell/Clojure/Whatever had a function (plusMonths dt 1) or something that, you wouldn't call it a pile of FP.
I said elsewhere id add a letter to distinguish months, minutes, etc. Otherwise, you missing larger picture: it's a time series analysis language with an expression adding a value to a date. So the value's letters are a datatype or unit of time. That simple.
This is not uncommon behavior from groups like this or even the old Italian mob in the U.S. Doing humanitarian things like this with the locals helps buy you support and protection. Hamas has done this for years (including schools and healthcare), which helped buy it good will and even win elections.
A lot of times these groups are doing more for local populations in terms of making sure they have food and basic necessities than the government. Usually when this is happening, it's a pretty strong indictment of the official government.
The line between organized crime and government can be surprisingly thin. I actually don't intend this as a criticism of government; I intend it as an interesting question to muse over. I believe it has good answers, but the question is richer than you might initially think.
(For instance, you might be inclined to try drawing a simple line between the two based on "the consent of the governed". Which is all fine and dandy at a social scale, but what does that mean to you as an individual? Have you tried removing your consent from your local government? The question is not as easy as it may look at first. Even as, again, I want to emphasize that I think it can be answered reasonably; just not easily.)
This largely comes down to the state being primarily defined as a monopoly of force. When non-state actors end up wielding the most threat of force, then collective decision-making is effectively deferred to those most capable of enforcing its will.
This is why I cannot give much credibility to anarcho-capitalist states. Simply removing a visible state does not preclude shadow governments from forming.
> This is why I cannot give much credibility to anarcho-capitalist states. Simply removing a visible state does not preclude shadow governments from forming.
If a government is formed, shadow or not, wouldn't that necessitate removal of the "anarcho" qualifier?
In a similar vein, it seems to me that the term "anarcho-anything state" is logically inconsistent, unless one exclusively uses the "chaos; disorder" definition for "anarcho-" instead of the "without rulers" definition.
I've mused over the same thing. A conclusion I have is that the only real difference is their perceived legitimacy. If we call one a state and another gang, we are really attaching legitimacy values to them.
While I wasn't thinking of a particular case, ISIS is certainly an instance of trying to cross the line.
(Which I suppose also further underlines the point I want to emphasize about how I'm trying to promote a food-for-thought question, not a value judgment. Personally I find ISIS contemptible as an organized crime mob, and I find them contemptible as a government. I have no plans to change my opinions based on which side of the line they fall on. Which one are they on, though? Honestly the answer probably varies by region at this point. You can make a case that Westphalian-style countries are dead in the Middle East, and a stronger case that they are at least trending down. Whether that trend will be permanent is anyone's guess.)
Absolutely. There are only benefits in acquiring the support from the local population, specially when people feel "neglected" by their current official government. This happens a lot in Brazilian poorest locations, where drug dealing gangs mix violence with "community support", creating a combination of fear and "acceptance" in the locals, getting them not only to not help the police, but also to "accept" their relatives getting into crime, as if it wasn't "completely wrong". There is also special behavior targeted at children, in order to drag them to crime later (or as soon as possible).
It clearly shows the group's violent rhetoric and uncompromising ideology, but also illustrates that ISIS is far more than a war machine. They are trying to create a nation, and that includes civic law enforcement and social services. For many people in the conquered regions, it represents more stability than whatever was there before. Of course, there are many others who are terrorized by ISIS (typically because they do not adhere to the correct brand of religion in the correct way) but it's important to remember that there is a fair-sized contingent of civilians on the ground who welcome ISIS.
I heard an interview the other day from one of those civilians. Before ISIS, they had a dozen competing militias screwing around, and they never knew who was on top or which one they'd have to deal with at any particular moment or what they might want. With ISIS there's exactly one group in charge and they know exactly what that group wants. I don't know that this person welcomed ISIS, per se, but they saw it as a substantial improvement over what was before.
I think a lot of these people would prefer a strong, sane national government that isn't at war with everybody and lets people live their lives. But that doesn't seem to be an option, and ISIS is the best they've had recently.
Muslims (Sunni) will always welcome groups like ISIS because it offers what they want: Sharia laws, kuffr sex-slaves and etc.
Arab sunni muslims in Sinjar raped, sold and murdered their own non-muslim neighbours as soon as ISIS strolled into town. They weren't forced, they were greeting them with open arms evident by photos.
I don't like to entertain the notion about whitewashing ISIS as some sort of a sensible "muslim alternative", not that I'm accusing you to suggest that. I'm just noticing that pattern here more and more, some serious high level of naivety of people who've never experienced living in those areas and conditions.
Both Lee Kuan Yew and Pim Fortuyn are gone. Not much hope left.
I don't think I've seen any of this whitewashing you describe. The farthest I've seen anyone go is along the lines of what I've said, that people welcome ISIS not because they're in any way good, but merely because ISIS's order is less bad than the chaos that existed before.
I think this is important to understand, because without that chaos ISIS wouldn't have had this fertile ground in which to grow. If Iraq and Syria hadn't been left to disintegrate, ISIS wouldn't have gone anywhere. Looking at the future, if and when ISIS is destroyed, it's essential to ensure that some form of order is established in these areas, or else we'll just be back at it again in a few more years.
From mainstream outlets I've seen everything from legitimizing ISIS as a(nother) Sunni state (the idea is a Sunni Iraq split is good though) to outright calling them freedom fighters.
GP was saying that stability was probably welcomed.
Even the Syrian Government Army could be welcomed after one spends some time with a different militia taking over a place and collecting taxes and enforcing new rules EVERYDAY.
Even if some of those militias were better than the new stable regime.
The generalization about what Sunni Muslims want is quite gross.
I don't think "doesn't want innocent people to starve to death" and "wants to cut off someone's head because of their religion" are mutually exclusive.
"Doesn't want innocent people to starve to death" and "Doesn't want people to go hungry and start rising up against you" look pretty similar from the outside...
BTW, the word "state" in "Islamic State..." makes it pretty clear: they're offering state functions. Guess how modern nation-states started: killing rivals, providing security and services to populations inside their boders, establishing central cultures...
Of course ISIS needs to be smashed. But note how many nations still celebrate depraved monsters like Christopher Columbus. (Consider that when wondering why people fall for ISIS propaganda. Falling for that kind of propaganda is extremely common; we all do.)
I don't want an open marketplace. I want somewhere I can conveniently find most things I need from my laptop for a reasonable price.
If Amazon came alone with insane, draconian policies and made it a very closed market, I'd be ok with that as a consumer so long as I can find what I need.
They don't have the range of products you can find on Amazon. If Amazon is supposed to replace Wal-Mart then they need to sell the same range of stuff - and with a certain minimum quality standard.
Anecdotally, 4 or 5 years ago I used to go to Amazon to shop with only a "general idea" of what I wanted to purchase. There were many times when I ended up buying more than I wanted, or something more expensive than I originally intended, because I was influenced by reviews and how the items were presented to me on that site (like "People also bought..." listings).
But after getting burned a few times with products that did not live up to the standards presented in bogus reviews or product rankings, now I only use Amazon for the fast shipping. Instead of spending the majority of my time on Amazon doing the research there, I'm spending it on blog posts, reddit, or YouTube looking at real testimonials and going to Amazon only when my shopping is already done. Those extraneous checkout-line addons are no more.
In this way, Amazon definitely does itself a disservice by (seemingly) shifting their priorities away from what they used to excel at to more "big picture" ideas.
If they can control ever growing swathes of the world's economy, they are not doing themselves a disservice. Maybe they are giving you less service than before, but they are simply doing what big companies do.
Again I said it was anecdotal, meaning that it was just a story that illustrates a point that the parent comments were making. But for fun I decided to look at my order history and found that from 2013 to 2014 the money I spent on Amazon dropped 55%, and from 2014 to 2015 it dropped 86%.
I'm only one customer, but clearly I'm not the only one with a growing frustration, and this case (since that's the only one I can attest to) they're losing real money, and I would cause that a disservice.
Unless either 2014 or 2015 had a negative total, you did the math badly wrong on that "dropped 622%" line (most likely by using the end year rather than the start year as the base.)
But if they are making more money overall being a crappier online store, they are only doing you a disservice, whereas their shareholders would be happy.
