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Comment by hahainternet | Hacker News Reader

> Should we put in place ubiquitous video and audio surveillance in every square foot of the country just in case the FBI ever wants to review something that happened?

In public areas that are often visited? Absolutely yes, an unbiased source of evidence available to the public? Excellent.

> Law enforcement has apparently lost the ability to do on the ground investigation work in favor of whiz bang-ery

Apple has provided a child porn trading network protected by the very principles of mathematics and their refusal to cooperate with the FBI.

What they're doing is precisely what any law enforcement agency would.

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Please stop taking HN discussions into generic flamewars. A comment like "No, I'm sorry. Kids being raped matters" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11153295) is an internet reductio ad absurdum.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11152327 and marked it off-topic.

Can we not drag this down to the media scare tactic that is child pornography?

For every sicko who's trading child porn there's dozens, if not hundreds, more who're trying to escape an abusive partner, leaving gangs, getting away from sexual slavery, or whistleblowing on government or companies breaching the law.

Additionally, should the millions of us engaged in perfectly legitimate activities have a dossier created on our lives just in case? Imagine what could happen to that information, you could be facing secret blacklists like the UK.

If Apple create this ability its use will extend past the immediate issue and affect people who genuinely need this security. In the digital world, as Apple said, you cannot destroy something or lock it away once it's used.

> Can we not drag this down to the media scare tactic that is child pornography?

You mean can we not use the crime Apple has essentially made impossible to secure a conviction on? No, I'm sorry. Kids being raped matters.

> For every sicko who's trading child porn there's dozens, if not hundreds, more who're trying to escape an abusive partner, leaving gangs, getting away from sexual slavery, or whistleblowing on government or companies breaching the law.

None of which is remotely related to phones being unbreakable by law enforcement.

> If Apple create this ability its use will extend past the immediate issue and affect people who genuinely need this security

A fallacious slippery slope. If you let the Police search my house, they will search everyone's house without a warrant and therefore it's bad to have any searching ever.

"Won't someone think of the children" is a battle cry used almost exclusively to subvert our liberties.

  > No, I'm sorry. Kids being raped matters.

And I'm sorry, no it doesn't matter to this argument. Civil liberties are civil liberties, whether we are talking about investigating the theft of a stick of chewing gum, the theft of millions of dollars, a slap in the face, the breaking of an arm, the rape of a child, or the murder to thousands of civilians by terrorists.

Bringing up the most horrible of crimes to justify a particular argument for increasing the powers of law enforcement is an obvious attempt to appeal to emotion, rather than to experience.

If your argument is any good, it will be just as good when talking about why the police should be able to search your phone for evidence of tax evasion as it is for talking about why the police should be able to search your phone for evidence of child rape and terrorism.

Otherwise, we go to a place where we say, "Well, the shouldn't summarily execute people who steal cigars from convenience stores, but when it comes to terrorists, we shouldn't let laws get in the way of their need to do what's expedient."

> Brining up the most horrible of crimes to justify a particular argument for increasing the powers of law enforcement is an obvious attempt to appeal to emotion, rather than to experience.

No it's actually an appeal to both. The increase in powers here if any exists whatsoever is minimal. I'm advocating Apple comply with them.

> If your argument is any good, it will be just as good when talking about why the police should be able to search your phone for evidence of tax evasion as it is for talking about why the police should be able to search your phone for evidence of child rape and terrorism.

If they can search your home for it, they should be permitted to search your phone for it. Both should have the exact same expectation of privacy and the exact same judicial oversight.

> Otherwise, we go to a place where we say, "Well, the shouldn't summarily execute people who steal cigars from convenience stores, but when it comes to terrorists, we shouldn't let laws get in the way of their need to do what's expedient."

There is no evidence that there is any legal protection for Apple here and strong evidence that indeed the FBI can compel them. Nobody is advocating breaking the law or even going around it.

> There is no evidence that there is any legal protection ...

Even if that were true, it would be irrelevant. We aren't stuck with our laws. If they're abusive or useless they need to be changed.

> If they can search your home for it, they should be permitted to search ...

Sure, I can see that you think that. But making false equivalences isn't a good argument even if it tends to be the usual limit of political discourse. Our servants are "permitted", with the right suspicion and warrants, to search almost anything (in the name of the people). Yes.

But this isn't a case of permission, it's about capability. They're incapable. You're implying that the law not only permits some searches, but necessarily compels unlimited help in making those searches possible?

That's a huge stretch. Especially when that help involves uttering falsehoods.

  > If they can search your home for it, they should be permitted to search
  > your phone for it. Both should have the exact same expectation of
  > privacy and the exact same judicial oversight.

They are permitted to search your phone for it. The problem here is that they are saying:

We wish to search this home, as is our legal right. The home contains a safe that we claim we cannot open, and we wish to compel the manufacturer of the safe to assist us to search the safe. The manufacturer does not wish to do so, but we insist that they be forced to do so by threat of imprisonment.

Furthermore, we wish to do so by compelling the manufacturer of the safe to create technologies that could open all safes, without the knowledge of the safe owners. We claim we only want to open this one safe, but we have this long track record of opening as many safes as we can, using secret courts and hearings to obtain the right to search those safes without the owners of those safes having the opportunity to argue against us, which is a different level of judicial oversight than being applied to searching this one house.

> No, I'm sorry. Kids being raped matters.

I never said it didn't matter, but the problem is bigger than one issue.

I have total distain for people who do this, but lets be clear that an encrypted phone isn't going to stop these people getting caught. They're already aware of how despicable their acts are and use the traditional trust systems to hide it. All the busts are through social engineering - agents who go undercover to infiltrate these networks and find the perpetrators. This must be one of the worst jobs in the world.

> None of which is remotely related to phones being unbreakable by law enforcement.

And as has been said by experts in cryptography, breakable by one third party means breakable by _everybody_. This means the partner who said they'd harm you if you told someone what they did to you. This means the pimp who's holding you against your will. This means the company who's allowing toxic substances to leak in to drinking water.

This is _much bigger_ than one issue. In the digital world once something exists it can escape. Once it escapes you can't stop it, and it will escape.

This is nothing like a normal search warrant. It's a warrant with no address, no reason and no time. It can be used whenever, wherever, and with no oversight on who does it.

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