Comment by awinter-py | Hacker News Reader

Comment by awinter-py | Hacker News Reader

Ok but in the eyes of the law at the time, george washington was a terrorist (in addition to being 6 feet tall and made of radiation). Of course a guy like Paul Revere would have been pro-privacy. He needed privacy to deliver intelligence on british troop movements.

Some legal scholars view the declaration of independence as part of the constitution (and the primary part). But clearly any 'right to rebel' wasn't recognized during the civil war. So we can conclude that the climate has changed.

Notice that tim cook isn't out there fighting against apple's ability to push code or fighting for me to install debian on my ipad. He's fighting for his own institution's right to resist the orders of a larger institution. This is like the magna carta -- it was about the rights of the british aristocracy, not the lower gentry or the feudal labor force.

Now that they've crossed the IRS and DOJ off the list of federal agencies they give a crap about, next on the list might be the DMV. Apple car anyone?

There's never a right to rebel, that's sort of the definition of the word. It's a reaction that comes about when all the legal avenues have been exhausted or hit brick walls.

You've missed GP's point.

If the DoI is a reflection of understood common law, and it asserts a right to rebel (which, of course, it does), then there is a right to rebel.

Well, it asserts it as a right "when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism"

Which is not that different than "all legal avenues exhausted" but you're correct, it does claim it as a literal right. Thanks for inspiring me to re-read it.

Not that international law is the same as contract law, but if you view the federal system as a treaty between each state and the white house, violation of the treaty terms could void the agreement.

The federal system does guarantee rights to the states, but treaty enforcement goes more to balance of power than the text of the agreement. Early on when the local militias were our primary fighting force and we had to hire pirates to be our navy, state rights were secure.

These days not so much. For example, I wouldn't bet on stop and frisk to stop the Army Rangers if NYC voted to return to dutch rule (or Lenape).

Also, not to be a textualist, 'right of the people to alter or abolish'.

Many historical figures and philosophers would disagree: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_of_revolution

It's not just John Locke and Thomas Paine making up theories; the page goes on to list several constitutions that explicitly grant this right.

You cannot have a right to rebel against that which grants the rights. If the government is what grants rights, then there is no problem with any rights violation as long as they declare you don't have that right.

But we tend to agree that rights are not granted by the government, and while we may not agree what does grant it, the right to rebel against that which does not grant rights does still exist.

The key point of the 10th amendment of the US constitution [0] is that the people already _have_ the rights, and do not need to have them "granted" - rather, the rights of the national state are limited. The constitution grants powers to the government and individual states, and the remaining powers and rights are already the people's.

> The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

This is in contrast to many prior systems of government, where the privileges available to a populace were whatever the monarch decided they could do, or which they had extracted as concessions from the monarchs via agreements like the Magna Carta.

0: http://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/amend...

> fighting for me to install debian on my ipad

Why should they? Freedom is not about giving @awinter-py the product that @awinter-py approves of.

Shouldn't we be happy when a corporation has interests that ACTUALLY fucking align with ours?

When that happens, sure, let's be happy. Until then, forgive us for not having an aligned interest in giant corporations being above the law.

"This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember it or overthrow it."

-Abraham Lincoln

Steve did the DMV with his fleet of non-registered cars

http://thenextweb.com/apple/2011/10/27/mystery-solved-why-st...

Ok but the Magna Carta in the long run had benefits for those not in the aristocracy, did it not?

If yes (and it's a big if) that's just one data point. You can just as easily argue that the industrial revolution changed the labor landscape and personal rights would have entered british common law either way.

Another law that defended the rights of feudal landowners was the fugitive slave act so if there's a pattern here I'm not seeing it.

Well, of course not all things that benefit one group benefit everyone overall, and not everything which benefits Apple benefits us.

That doesn't mean that our interests don't somewhat align with those of Apple in this case.

Iirc, the Magna Carta was one of the first to establish the limitation of the powers of kings, though the direct benefeciaries were not the common persons.

Analogously, I think this conflict , if it ends in Apple's favor, helps reinforce limits on the powers of the government.

Is that not true?

An individual, or a group of a few common people could not win against the government in a situation like this, just as the common people could not have gotten something like the Magna Carta.

It seems analogous?

Absolutist divine-right monarchy was an invention; maybe the magna carta was an early legal precedent defeating that concept in europe. But this is coming 2000 years * after * athenian democracy. What became the roman empire under legendary nut-jobs like caligula began as a republic formed from small city-states. So you can change in both directions.

This is a really interesting question (and I'm not a historian so don't take my 'legal advice' here).

I think it's important to distinguish between causes. Maybe industrial laborers never would have thought of forming a middle class in 18th century europe without the magna carta. Or maybe rights to life, property & due process are things anyone would choose any time the question is raised, but ordinary europeans couldn't get them until they could earn a living without negotiating with a feudal landowner. My vote is for economics.

I'm not likely to ever be in the situation apple is in. I'm more concerned about the courts compelling me to give my password than compelling me to write a backdoor to a device that I sold to the DOT.

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