The ABC interview with Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook on Feb. 24, 2016, unintentionally revealed a CEO under siege, a CEO behind the eight ball, and a CEO who felt he had been betrayed by Obama. He had been double-crossed by a politician he had helped elect. Cook earnestly and effectively stated Apple’s quandary, nevertheless, he could not help but look like the deer in the head lights. He plaintively stated that he felt he should have received a heads-up from Obama.
Has Cook not been paying attention for eight years to the endless fabrications that flowed from the Oval Office teleprompter? He’s surprised that Obama threw him under the bus? Not terribly insightful for one of the highest paid employees in the world.
Many seem to have misunderstood the nature of this imposition on Apple by the Administration. The Obama crowd is not simply asking Apple to develop a one time key for a phone previously owned by a terrorist. The Admin., the FBI, and the DOJ, succeeded in getting an “order compelling Apple Inc. to assist agents in search,” in The United States District Court For The Central District of California.
Much of the media is pretending that the FBI is asking for “help”. THAT is insane. If this Administration wins against Apple, there will be nowhere to hide from the already invasive government bureaucracy, an invasion so ardently yearned-for by the left. Some portions of this order have been cut and pasted in numerous publications, and yet the most troubling clause, and the most ignored is Clause #3.
It states:
- 3. Apple’s reasonable technical assistance may include, but is not limited to: providing the FBI with a signed iPhone Software file, recovery bundle, or other Software Image File (“SIF”) that can be loaded onto the SUBJECT DEVICE. The SIF will load and run from Random Access Memory (“RAM”) and will not modify the iOS on the actual phone, the user data partition or system partition on the device’s flash memory. The SIF will be coded by Apple with a unique identifier of the phone so that the SIF would only load and execute on the SUBJECT DEVICE. The SIF will be loaded via Device Firmware upgrade (“DFU”) mode, recovery mode, or other applicable mode available to the FBI.
The wide open hole that is used in #3, is one often used in one-sided legal documents, “. . . include, but is not limited to: . . .“ If the FBI demands it, whatever “it” is, Apple would have to comply — no limits. The sycophantish media uses milquetoast phrases like “Apple is to provide technological assistance.” Lies. This Admin wants much more than that.
For now, this order intends to mean a new operating system that the FBI can use to waltz into all phones and computers at will, whenever a politician or bureaucrat needs to know what you’re up to — usually for revenge purposes. Pretending that such a new operating system could be maintained in an Apple “vault” is an absurd pretence by an Administration bent on creating and maintaining an absolute and all-seeing eye on the populace. Have we forgotten the IRS retribution against Republicans fiasco?
The government wants more than a back-door into your technological devices, it wants undiluted control on state-of-the-art Encryption, plus, now it wants a new Operating System — the heart of all computers. Operating Systems are massively complex, multi-million lines of code and algorithms which amongst other functions, ‘translate’ instructions from the ‘applications’ so that the hardware can execute. Whether it might take months or years for Apple to develop a new OS, matters little. It just shouldn’t. Remember, the government does not own your phone or computer and neither does Apple, . . . you do. OK, so you’re only ‘licensing’ the software, but you are not licensing it from the government, and certainly not from Obama et al. What else might this Administration, this government, force a company, or an individual to do on its behalf?
Once upon a time, the government seeking the best encryption algorithms and engines meant protecting its secrets. Today, this means invading your privacy and your freedom. This Administration, the FBI and the DOJ, want to be able to USE the operating system in your device to reach in and control your computer, or grab whatever they are in the mood to take from it.
What would seemingly give the government such power? The very broad, but very short, All Writs Act (1789) signed by George Washington, which states,
- (a) The Supreme Court and all courts established by Act of Congress may issue all writs necessary or appropriate in aid of their respective jurisdictions and agreeable to the usages and principles of law.
- (b) An alternative writ or rule nisi may be issued by a justice or judge of a court which has jurisdiction.
The Administration has nefarious ulterior motives in seeking to use this simple act as a sledge hammer against the world’s biggest corporation AND against you. The government demands to have access to and control over, your devices, which means that its ingress will be pervasive. It will be given the capacity to watch and listen to not only what you transmit, transfer or say, but also to what sits or is saved on your device. YOU won’t own your device anymore, Obama will.
There is little doubt that this order would place an unreasonable burden on Apple, exposing data and transmissions of millions of customers, violating the privacy and trust of its clients, and opening the door for other governments such as the Chinese Communist Party to take similar invasive and oppressive actions.
The level of confusion related to this particular intended invasion of privacy and freedom is widespread. Confusing opinions are bouncing all over the infinitely distributed internet walls. Just look at this bit of confused mind, owned by one of the richest guys on the planet, Bill Gates. He’s not only confused, he’s confusing, but he gets a pass for lacking acuity, given his massive financial support of all things far left. Remember, he made his $75 billion fortune by vehemently protecting his MS DOS.
If the Administration wants to invade and control your phones and computers, it should draft and present a LAW to Congress. Such extreme invasion should be thoroughly deciphered, debated and understood by the population whose freedom will be collapsed if such power is handed to politicians and bureaucrats.
The Administration winning this fight against Apple would not be the beginning of a “slippery slope”, this would the end game at the bottom of the slimy, treacherous downhill movement toward totalitarianism. This is not a questions of government access, as many pundits have claimed. It is a question of invasion.
If this Administration wins against Apple, Tyranny will have been achieved and the final spike will have been driven into the heart of a once free Nation by a resentful leadership seeking to change it.
A constituent of the vast baby boomer generation with a career which has been fortunate to know the ponderous corporate worlds, as well as the intimately pressurized, and invigorating entrepreneurial domains of high tech and venture capital, I have harvested my share of mistakes meandering through corridors of enterprise from Silicon Valley, to London and endless, colourful, sometimes praetorian points in between. The voyage has provided an abundance of fodder for a pen yielding to an inquisitive keyboard, a foraging mind, and a passionate spirit.
Whether political or business or social or economic or personal, is it not all political? It is a privilege to write, and an even greater privilege to be read by anyone, and sometimes with the wind at my back the writing may occasionally be legible. I do not write to invite scorn, nor to invite respect, but if I get really lucky the writing can stimulate thinking. I also write for the very selfish purpose of animating my own processes, and engaging the best of what life offers. Above all, whether biting fire or swatting shadows, I am grateful to be gifted the freedom to write and publish whatever flows down to the keyboard. To all those who enabled this freedom, and to all those standing guard to preserve it, I am indebted.