8 years ago
3
No, The FBI Does Not 'Need' The Info On Farook's iPhone; This Is Entirely About The Precedent
Over and over again as people keep talking about the Apple / FBI encryption stuff, I keep seeing the same line pop up. It's something along the lines of "but the FBI needs to know what's on that phone, so if Apple can help, why shouldn't it." Let's debunk that myth. The FBI absolutely does not need to know what's on that phone. It might not even care very much about what's on that phone. As the Grugq ably explained last week, there's almost certainly nothing of interest on the phone.
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THEY GET IT. God, I have been surrounded by so many reactionary protests saying that they should totally unlock the phones, but really, if they can't unlock the phone they have no way of knowing whether or not the information they find is relevant.
All this is is a ploy for the government to have precedent to view personal information of citizens, whether or not the cases will actually need it.
I don't like it, I don't like it one bit.
I recently read where the FBI told anybody that would listen this is not about setting a precedent, it's about Homeland Security. Then in the next few pages of the article it went on to talk about upwards of 12 attorney generals in various states and the Department of Justice have been looking for a precedent for years because they have tons of backlogged iPhones that can't be hacked into.
Something like 51% of Americans are siding with the FBI right now according to that same article. I just wonder how these same people would feel if they needed to give a key to every door lock so that just in case it could be used. Why give up digital privacy and defend physical privacy so vehemently, what's the deal here?
Apple themselves probably know that they will get literally all the positive PR for 'protecting privacy,' but if you ask me, deals are probably being made behind closed doors. And thats beside the fact, that if they do get the phone unlocked by apple, they will then have the legal precedent that they so desperately want - unlock one phone, all the phones get unlocked.