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Comment by monk_e_boy | Hacker News Reader

No the weirdest thing is that Apple is standing up to the government. Isn't that just wrong? You, the people choose the government, so in effect Apple is standing up to the people of America and saying 'no'. If you the people didn't want the FBI to be bullish then choose a different government.

It feels to me (an outsider) that it's the government that is out of control and is not accountable to the people.

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It seems like the country is 50-50 divided on this. But more importantly, individual liberty is more important than majority rule. When the founding fathers created this country, they cared deeply about individual liberty, and worried about a tyranny of the majority. Even if a super-majority wants to deprive an individual or a minority group of its rights, they should not be allowed to.

A free country's first commitment is to personal liberty, and only secondly to democracy.

"A free country's first commitment is to personal liberty"

Excellent.

by definition a democracy is a tyranny of majority.... i think you mean secondary to the republic

No, it's to the Republic to make sure the ideals of true democracy take a secondary place to individual liberty for the very reason that true democracy can be tyrannical. That's why the Republic comes before the democracy.

"50/50 divided" means "nobody knows"

That's the one-testicle, one-breast, average-person fallacy.

There's more than one issue concurrently, and many people are actually dumb and wrong.

Wish I could upvote this twice.

No. That's what a republic is: the government is not above law, and it is possible to push back against it.

Let me quote this piece of an anarchist pamphlet: "Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed" - this means, amongst other things, that the governed do have the option to say "this is not okay anymore, stop."

What you seem to be saying is "you have a right to choose, once, and then just shut up and deal with it, the govt can do anything it wishes in the meantime." You're describing a dictatorship - "the State is always Right, by definition".

"The people" do not have a unified will. There's always a pro-totalitarian faction in any society, and they tend to come to the front at times of percieved instability and threat. Part of the problem is that a significant fraction of voters support violence being used against people with unpopular opinions, minority religions, different skin colours, etc.

Apple is in many countries, with governments who'd all like this kind of access. If you give FBI the tools, you also have to accept Russia, China and the whole gang having access to your phone.

Well that is up to Apple, they don't have to make one phone. They could make a US version and a rest of the world version.

And if the FBI wanted to open a rest of the world version? Or another government wanted to open a US version?

> Or another government wanted to open a US version?

There's a good point. And who knows what limits they'd go to, to force Apple's hand? (Kidnapping, etc.)

Apple is really only safe if they actually can't break their own encryption. Anything less makes them a target.

And then build that fence all along the border so that no world-version phones get in (see how well it worked for other illegal imports). Plus, you haven't solved the problem at all: you just say "okay, let's make only US phones vulnerable to foreign hacking." Should I enumerate why that's a bad thing?

The U.S. government is responsive to the people. But there's a lot of lag--decades in some cases.

The government is empowered to take action on behalf of the public. If it does something that people like, then great--keep doing it. If it does something that the public doesn't like, then there are multiple ways for the public to change how the government works.

What's happening right now is actually how it is supposed to work. Innovation results in new technology, the government tries what it thinks is best, and then there's a huge national public conversation about it.

This is the 2nd time we've had this particular conversation; the first was in the 1990s. And we'll keep on having it, basically forever. That's how government by the people works.

> You, the people choose the government

From among two choices, already bought by special interests, and already so habituated to our intelligence and law enforcement communities that they have zero scepticism about these kinds of travesties.

Its not 'the government' that is doing anything, its the FBI wanting to open one specific phone based on a legal construct that does not apply. Any person has the right to challange a legal order.

The founders and many other people have worked hard to creat a system that protects the people from government action. For this reason they implented and evolved a legal system.

>You, the people choose the government

We do not. Simple as that.

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