“The San Bernardino killers and their ilk are enemies of the US....they are bent on destroying our freedoms and everything we stand for.”
You cannot give the US government the ability to spy on Americans. They cannot be trusted with it. The price we pay is to also deny them the ability to spy on terrorists.
These folks were already on the radar of the US government, yet they did nothing.
THAT is how you stop terrorists - by acting BEFORE they kill people, not by hacking their phones AFTER they kill people.
Our intelligence, and our law enforcement has become lazy. They rely on being able to track, hack and spy on people from the comfort of their chair. They do not wish to do actual work that requires getting out of a chair.
That is the biggest danger to the US, not unbreakable encryption.
Further, the ability to hack encryption means that the US bureaucracy will use that ability to influence decision makers though blackmail and other illegal means. I worry more about that than any terrorist.
So the lack of encryption is a bigger threat to the republic than terrorism, in my opinion.
Bingo. In the case of the SB terrorists, the FBI could have used the already open social media platform Twitter to find these terrorists *before* they struck. The government is more obsessed with knowing every private thought of every person than they are with actually catching terrorists.
One might also wonder about the competency of the FBI in the SB terrorist case as this agency didn't bother to secure the apartment of the terrorists, which was latter compromised evidence-wise by reporters.
My understanding is that a Federal Judge has issued an Order to Apple to unlock that phone. My understanding of the constitutional requirements is that a search order signed by a Judge is a constitutionally valid order.
We accept this methodology when it comes to our homes and our property, and I do not see any compelling reason why the same methodology should not also apply to data storage systems such as a Phone.
This current flap is not about the government having easy access to all devices. It is about getting court-ordered access by this device used by Terrorists who are also dead, and so no longer have any right to privacy anyway.
I'm sure Apple is trying to present it as being about everyone else, because when people do not wish to comply with something, they try to throw up roadblocks in any manner they are able. In this case, they are trying to stir up political opposition by scaring everyone else.
It is a dodge, and nothing else.