Tag Archives: government

Government Arrogance Should Disqualify It

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…in its case trying to force Apple to disable encryption on its iPhones.

Rather than assist the effort to fully investigate a deadly terrorist attack by obeying this Court’s Order of February 16, 2016, Apple has responded by publicly repudiating that Order…Apple has attempted to design and market its products to allow technology, rather than the law, to control access to data which has been found by this Court to be warranted for an important investigation.

Never mind that under free American jurisprudence, Apple is allowed to appeal the lower court’s order to a higher court and to seek relief from complying—irreversibly, mind you—with the lower court’s order until Apple’s appeals are adjudicated. No: Apple disobeyed the high and mighty and must be punished for its impertinence.

Never mind that Apple is rightfully concerned with the sanctity of its customers’ privacy and with the ability of Americans generally to be free of the prying eyes of government. Apple disagrees with the awesome personages of FBI agents, and so it cannot possibly be behaving honestly.

DoJ’s lawyers are projecting their own failings.

Where Apple designed its software and that design interferes with the execution of search warrants, where it manufactured and sold a phone used by an ISIL-inspired terrorist, where it owns and licensed the software used to further the criminal enterprise, where it retains exclusive control over the source code necessary to modify and install the software, and where that very software now must be used to enable the search ordered by the warrant, compulsion of Apple is permissible under New York Telephone Co.

This is plainly, dishonestly specious. Apple designed its software and…manufactured and sold a phone used by…millions of American citizens, where it owns and licensed the software used to further the private affairs of American citizens…. It is plain from the careful construction of the government’s argument that it intends to expand it to pry into all of our private affairs whenever it takes a notion to.

…the Order will facilitate only the FBI’s efforts to search the phone; it does not require Apple to conduct the search or access any content on the phone. Nor is compliance with the Order a threat to other users of Apple products. Apple may maintain custody of the software, destroy it after its purpose under the Order has been served, refuse to disseminate it outside of Apple, and make clear to the world that it does not apply to other devices or users without lawful court orders….

This is deliberately disingenuous. No one is arguing that Apple is being required to conduct the government’s search. Of course, compliance with the order is a threat to other users of Apple products: the encryption, once broken or a way once found to bypass entry controls, is permanently and everywhere defeated. The FBI’s IT personnel know this. So do the government’s NSA personnel. Neither can Apple make clear to the world that it does not apply to other devices or users without those personnel making such statements being guilty of lying. Breaking an encryption algorithm or producing a way past its entry controls permanently and everywhere destroys the security of that algorithm. Without lawful court orders is just as disingenuous, as the second quote above demonstrates.

Apple is not above the law in that regard….

[M]arketing or general policy concerns are not legally cognizable objections to the Order…. This Court should not entertain an argument that fulfilling basic civic responsibilities of any American citizen or company—complying with a lawful court order—could be obviated because that company prefers to market itself as providing privacy protections….

Neither is the government above the law, and these government lawyers know full well that Apple is engaging in purely legal, solely legal, behavior in appealing the court’s order. That this is inconvenient to the government’s lawyers is their problem. Furthermore, here is the government’s lawyers repeating their reprehensible, not to say unethical, claims that because Apple is so impertinent as to dispute with them, Apple cannot possibly be acting entirely honorably and entirely out of valid concerns for Americans’ privacy—especially when that privacy is at risk of so blatantly arrogant and overreaching a government as this one is presenting itself to be.

The government’s case should be dismissed in its entirety and with prejudice over this arrogance.

Security Tradeoffs

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Here’s one.

A federal judge has ordered Apple Inc to provide software to the Justice Department to help it unlock a phone used by one of the suspects in the San Bernardino, CA, terror attack because investigators suspect the device may hold critical details of the plotting behind the mass murder.

The government’s justification is this:

Law-enforcement agencies say companies such as Apple make it harder to solve crimes including terrorist attacks, child abuse and murder by putting security measures on phones that make it difficult or impossible for investigators to open them and examine data inside.

That’s an entirely valid concern.

The problem, though, is that forcing a back door into citizens’ communications encryption utterly destroys citizens’ privacy and security. There’s nothing to prevent Government from abusing that back door to engage in snooping on general principles and then actively and maliciously snooping in order to preserve the power of the men then in Government. The lawlessness of the present administration demonstrates that progression.

Of immediate effect, though, is that a backdoor for Government is a backdoor for hackers, whether these be script kiddies, terrorist hackers, financial or identity theft hackers, or any other sort.

The privacy and the security of our private identities, of our finances, of our health records, of any aspect of our lives we find useful to protect from prying eyes are critical to our ability to engage with our neighbors and our businesses and our government free from threats or attack.

The privacy of our communications, the security of our speech, must absolutely be preserved. There is no security at all without our individual liberties, of which speech is one, held secure.

“Law-enforcement agencies” and this Federal judge know this full well. And they know full well the truth of Apple CEO Tim Cook’s statement in his letter posted to Apple’s Web site:

We can find no precedent for an American company being forced to expose its customers to a greater risk of attack.

Iran’s Enriched Uranium

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A State Department official told lawmakers Thursday he was unsure of the precise location of tons of low-enriched uranium shipped out of Iran on a Russian vessel as part of last summer’s nuclear agreement.

Ambassador Stephen Mull, the lead US official overseeing the deal’s implementation, said during testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee that the stockpile is a Russian custody issue.

Russia is every bit as trustworthy as Iran, though. Isn’t it?

Don’t know means don’t know. On what basis, now, do we conclude the enriched uranium has even left Iran? Or isn’t back in Iran, if we can believe the carefully unnamed “senior administration official” who, leaking speaking without authorization assured the AP that the stuff had made it to Russia.

Gross Incompetence?

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As if we didn’t need another reason to disband the Department of Education (see its Dear Colleague letter for an example of its gross dishonesty), here’s another, of utter failure to perform. DoE isn’t taking care of its digital data.

The Education Department doesn’t hold nuclear launch codes. But its vast data trove on student-loan borrowers and their parents—and the nearly $100 billion it disburses in new loans every year—are reason enough to want the bureaucrats to prevent digital intrusions. ….
The stakes go well beyond personal privacy. Federal student loans outstanding exceed $1 trillion, and Team Obama is trying to forgive those debts. It would add injury to injury if cyber-fraudsters were able to pile on for a taxpayer plundering.

It isn’t a matter of an isolated error, even a serious one, which can happen in any large enterprise, either.

Department of Education Inspector General Kathleen Tighe reported in November that her team has been “finding the same deficiencies over and over again” regarding information security. Since 2009 independent auditors “have found persistent IT control deficiencies in key financial systems,” she said.

For six years, auditors have found persistent DoE IT failure. This is not an inability to achieve perfection in personal digital data handling; this is a conscious and deliberate refusal to bother.

We don’t need a Federal government Department of this sort. Not at all.

Respect for Borders

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In addition to what it is showing with its sea grab, the PRC is demonstrating it has no respect for land borders, either. The PRC is actively sending its government forces—non-military, so far—into other nations to kidnap persons there that the PRC wants and bringing them back within the PRC’s borders.

Among those who have disappeared or been repatriated amid President Xi Jinping’s growing crackdown on dissent, rights groups say, are five Hong Kong publishers of Chinese political gossip, including one who was in the territory and one in Thailand at the time. Others in Thailand include a journalist seeking refuge, two activists who were recognized as refugees by the United Nations, and dozens of Turkic Uighur minority members. Two in the group are European citizens.

Ultimately, the victim nations are going to have to start defending themselves against what is little distinguishable from PRC invasions, capture the invading forces, and either jail them for espionage or imprison them as POWs in the quiet war the PRC is inflicting on them.

This is another response to the vacuum President Barack Obama’s (D) retreat from the world has created.