Hi everyone, this is my first post for about a year and half since the last election cycle. After spending more time than budgeted supporting Democratic and progressive causes in the last two election cycles, I had to go back to work for a living which on my current project includes monitoring financial markets and investments most of the day, and writing a book and studying new skills at night to keep my mind sharp.
But I have to come back to Daily Kos ahead of schedule after I was just floored a few minutes ago when Representative Darryll E. Issa just appeared a few minutes ago on CNBC’s financial channel to provide support for Tim Cook’s heroic support for individual privacy rights and opposition to the FBI’s attempts to force it to create a backdoor enabling the FBI to unlock and gain access to an IPhone used the the San Bernadino gunman.
But first some background. After receiving fierce criticism from the FBI, law enforcement, and financial press, as well as Donald Trump demanding a boycott of Apple yesterday, Tim Cook sent a letter to Apple employees explaining his concerns.
As reported in this morning’s Los Angeles Times:
"The case is about much more than a single phone or a single investigation. At stake is the data security of hundreds of millions of law-abiding people, and setting a dangerous precedent that threatens everyone’s civil liberties.” “The government suggests this tool could only be used once, on one phone. But that’s simply not true,” Cook wrote. “Once created, the technique could be used over and over again, on any number of devices. In the physical world, it would be the equivalent of a master key, capable of opening hundreds of millions of locks — from restaurants and banks to stores and homes. No reasonable person would find that acceptable.”
"The case is about much more than a single phone or a single investigation. At stake is the data security of hundreds of millions of law-abiding people, and setting a dangerous precedent that threatens everyone’s civil liberties.”
“The government suggests this tool could only be used once, on one phone. But that’s simply not true,” Cook wrote. “Once created, the technique could be used over and over again, on any number of devices. In the physical world, it would be the equivalent of a master key, capable of opening hundreds of millions of locks — from restaurants and banks to stores and homes. No reasonable person would find that acceptable.”
I've been surprised and enormously pleased at Time Cook's courage to stand up to the enormous pressure to bow down before the government's demand to throw out privacy rights when confronted by “the ticking time bomb" scenario. Yesterday, several of CNBC’’s anchors were aghast and indignant confronting the token advocate for constitutional privacy rights about how he could look the families of future victims killed by potential future terrorism in the eye and explain why Apple would not help prevent these needless and hypothetical deaths of innocent Americans in order to protect the rights of a dead terrorist using a phone that was not even his.
In response, FBI Director James Comey downplayed the extent of the FBI’s request and possible consequences in this disputed claim.
Meanwhile FBI Director James Comey said in a statement Sunday that the scale of the San Bernardino attacks, which left 14 people dead and 22 people injured, warranted the pursuit of all leads, including reviewing Syed Rizwan Farook’s iPhone. "I hope folks will take a deep breath and stop saying the world is ending, but instead use that breath to talk to each other," Comey said. “We simply want the chance, with a search warrant, to try to guess the terrorist's passcode without the phone essentially self-destructing and without it taking a decade to guess correctly. That's it,” Comey said. “We don't want to break anyone's encryption or set a master key loose on the land. …reports today’s latest developments. After receiving fierce criticism from law enforcement and the financial press Tim Cook sent a letter to Apple employees explaining:
Meanwhile FBI Director James Comey said in a statement Sunday that the scale of the San Bernardino attacks, which left 14 people dead and 22 people injured, warranted the pursuit of all leads, including reviewing Syed Rizwan Farook’s iPhone.
"I hope folks will take a deep breath and stop saying the world is ending, but instead use that breath to talk to each other," Comey said.
“We simply want the chance, with a search warrant, to try to guess the terrorist's passcode without the phone essentially self-destructing and without it taking a decade to guess correctly. That's it,” Comey said. “We don't want to break anyone's encryption or set a master key loose on the land. …reports today’s latest developments. After receiving fierce criticism from law enforcement and the financial press Tim Cook sent a letter to Apple employees explaining:
I listened to this debate yesterday with despair and dread, feeling guilty as well that I didn't have the time and energy to come back, unwrap such a complicated trade-off, and post here in the hope of preventing any of our candidates, or important constituent groups, from walking themselves out on the wrong limb thinking that supporting the prevention of needless possible deaths of American citizens versus protecting the “civil rights and privacy" of dead terrorists is a no-brainer, “slam-dunk" decision. Only to learn later it was a blunder of great magnitude, like that of the authorizing of force resolution for the the Iran war after unintended side effects and delayed feedback “fixes that backfire" feedback loops are calculated.
I hate it when this happens. LIke when the economist optimize equations that don’t even have the right variables in them yet, or the right time frames.
Just as examples, consider that any back door in our phones, computers, and soon “network of all things” possessed by the FBI, or NSA will soon be owned by the Chinese, Nigerians, organized crime organizations, and special interest groups. If the British or French aristocracy had this technology the American and French revolutions would never have succeeded. Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, and our other founding fathers would have been locked up as terrorists before we ever heard of them.
Special interest groups could have published the names of all women who even considered having abortions back in the 60s to have teachers fired.
Heck your personal enemies, fascist governments or corporations you criticize, or even aspirants for your job could insert illegal pictures of naked children on your cell phone and then anonymously turn you in as a pedophile. Virtually, no one would risk their own careers and freedom to come to your defense when such compelling evidence proves you are guilty.
Our personal freedoms depend on our ability to have private conversations and property such as the private notes on our own phones, computers, and dozens of camera and microphones that now exist in our houses. The Constitution requires warrants issued by a judge for search and seizures of our homes and private property. By forcing Apple to create a back door any number of third parties could have access to everything you do. Issa just pointed out most senators and congresspeople have Iphones.
Second point, the classic “ticking time bomb” scenario used to justify torture, and violations of privacy rights to save the hypothetical future Twin Towers from devastation are often put forward to undercut constitutional privacy arguments by people who are doing absolutely nothing to prevent less dramatic but real, day to day deaths of vastly greater numbers of people. For example, millions of people die each year from Malaria and other tropical infectious diseases, heart disease, lack of medical care, drunken driving, of potable water that could often be prevented from relatively small investments in public health or education.
I believe the number of children dying from diarehea that could be prevented by chlorine and salt tablets costing pennies per child, is measured in millions, but certainly at least hundreds or thousands.
But the same people who did not blink for a second to spend trillions of dollars on two wars, and billions on vast expansions of our domestic intelligence, as well as suspend important sections of our constitution and bill of rights after we tragically lost 3,500 lives in the Twin Towers attacks, consistently slash budgets for public health, research, and education that rationale are likely to have vastly greater benefit-cost ratios.
The difference seems to be the immediate salience of the idea of a lone wolf criminal, or perhaps even “terrorist,” versus the abstract, delayed, or probabilistic consequences of “loss of privacy rights or constitutional freedoms." It is difficult, however, to even discuss many of these downstream hypothetical side effects without sounding like a conspiracy theorist with a tinge of paranoia. ... Excuse me while I adjust my tin foil hat. Are there any other DKOS old-timers still around who remember the good “ole" days when one could publish a picture of the three stooges having a pie fight while wearing tin foil hats and get 400 recs in 10 minutes.
I've run out of time to list my other points such as if the U.S. government forces U.S. companies to damage the trust worthiness of their products customers will buy from companies in other nations, or our companies will accelerate their departure from the U.S.A.
So yesterday I felt compelled to give folks a heads up and pause for a moment to consider some of the bigger picture and longer term issues before any of our candidates succumbed to political pressures to support the FBI in efforts to protect innocent Americans from “liberal assaults on common-sense" and join Trump's boycott of Apple. But then thought “no, it's a hopeless case, too complicated, and potentially divisive, especially not knowing what our candidates have already said so far. I”ll get a higher return on investment returning to KOS with an upbeat “Here comes the sun" post on breakthroughs in solar and wind power.” But I felt badly about making the wrong choice.
So imagine my surprise when Rep Darrell Issa, perhaps the worst congressperson we have, and someone I've castigated for being on the wrong side of goodness on every single issue, interrupts his ongoing demands that Hillary Clinton be indicted, to articulate one of the most passionate defenses of constitutional rights of privacy and freedom for a long time.
Companies should comply with warrants to the fullest extent they are able, but mandating that companies completely reengineer their own software to create hacking tools against their will would set a dangerous precedent for our future,” Issa, a member of the House Judiciary Committee, said. Americans need to acknowledge, Issa said, that the implications of the case go beyond unlocking one cell phone. “It’s about whether or not government should have the ability to access the devices we all use every day to store personal and private information,” Issa said. “No company should be forced to intentionally weaken their own products at the bidding of a government agent. Apple has cooperated with requests from law enforcement using the information that they have access to. Going any further would do real harm to Americans’ right to privacy and would almost certainly undermine the freedoms that our government should be working to protect.”
Companies should comply with warrants to the fullest extent they are able, but mandating that companies completely reengineer their own software to create hacking tools against their will would set a dangerous precedent for our future,” Issa, a member of the House Judiciary Committee, said.
Americans need to acknowledge, Issa said, that the implications of the case go beyond unlocking one cell phone.
“It’s about whether or not government should have the ability to access the devices we all use every day to store personal and private information,” Issa said. “No company should be forced to intentionally weaken their own products at the bidding of a government agent. Apple has cooperated with requests from law enforcement using the information that they have access to. Going any further would do real harm to Americans’ right to privacy and would almost certainly undermine the freedoms that our government should be working to protect.”
What the heck? Maybe its some kind of trick, but his full quote on CNBC today was even more explicit, detailed, and subtle. I am quite sure that I will turn out to be the first and only person ever to use the word “subtle” to describe anything to do with Rep. Issa.
Will wonders never cease.
Achieving a successful balance between our needs for security, privacy, and freedoms is an impossibly complicated challenge for which I don't know the right solution. My hope is that we all pause to think about the bigger picture and longer term probable consequences before jumping on the bandwagon with a demagogue like Trump, who demands we boycott Apple and give our government and law enforcement system even more tools than they already have or need to protect our “security.”
After all. If our guiding principle will be “let no stone be left unturned to protect innocent American" from hypothetical threats, then we should install sensor chips in all children when they are born to transmit every sound and sight they perceive directly to the NSA.
How else can we be sure they do not engage in dangerous unrecorded conversations that might lead to the deaths of innocents? Can you look in the eyes of the families of the potential victims?
What will we say to all of those families of the soldiers and others who fought and died for our freedoms from the revolutionary war and all others to gain and protect our democracy, constitution, and Bill of Rights without blinking or thinking?
Without the right of privacy no other constitutional or other human right will be possible against the might of systems of organized power.
With the overwhelming power of today's technology, democracy and freedoms lost may never be regained.