I am setting up this blog to address a number of technical and legal issues that, over the long run, can affect the freedom of media newbies like me to speak freely on the Internet and other low-cost media that have developed in the past ten years.
Since the 1990s I have been very involved with fighting the military "don't ask don't tell" policy for gays in the military, and with First Amendment issues. Best contact is 571-334-6107 (legitimate calls; messages can be left; if not picked up retry; I don't answer when driving) Three other url's: doaskdotell.com, billboushka.com johnwboushka.com Links to my URLs are provided for legitimate content and user navigation purposes only.
My legal name is "John William Boushka" or "John W. Boushka"; my parents gave me the nickname of "Bill" based on my middle name, and this is how I am generally greeted. This is also the name for my book authorship. On the Web, you can find me as both "Bill Boushka" and "John W. Boushka"; this has been the case since the late 1990s. Sometimes I can be located as "John Boushka" without the "W." That's the identity my parents dealt me in 1943!
Apple (and Silicon Valley) v. FBI: here's the national security case
The New York Times has an op-ed Tuesday by William J.
Bratton and John J. Miller, “Why Apple should unlock an iPhone”. There is a sub-sidebar, “Companies need to be
accountable for more than just sales.”
Online, the title is more nebulous, “Seeking iPhone data, through thefront door”.
Logically, those who favor the “national security”
view point out that Apple (nor any other similar company like Motorola, Google,
or Microsoft) need put a decrypting tool on the phone. It would sound plausible to put the
decryption tools in some sort of special “Cheyenne Mountain” law enforcement
facility with military or FBI supervision (although hackers have previously
compromised even these). Maybe, to the
horror of fans of Snowden, Greenwald and Poitras (counting me), that securing agency
would be the NSA itself, near Baltimore, or a new facility in Utah.
But I do take seriously the idea that, in the future,
a particular phone could have data, not just about a planned rifle attack, but
maybe about something “particularly dangerous” like a dirty bomb or EMP device
(which, contrary to popular belief, need not necessarily be nuclear). So, as libertarian-leaning Rand Paul once said, “get a warrant.” And in this case, the FBI certainly did.
The other comment, that companies are responsible for
more than just sales and profits (for shareholders), catches my eye. Individuals can be responsible for the
consequences of the easy availability of the tools they use, even when no money
is involved but just pride, when others can so easily misuse them. Update: February 24 In an exclusive update by David Muir of ABC of Apple's Tim Cook, the Apple CEO said that creating even a secluded back door (or "front door") would be creating the "software equivalent of cancer." He also indicated that the FBI did not handle the phone properly right after recovering it.
Update: February 25 Ellen Nakashima and Todd Frankel report that Apple is making the next generation of iPhones even more unhackable, even after the fact by law enforcement.
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