I don’t understand the drama over the access to the San Bernardino killer’s iPhone. If she were alive, it would make every sense to discuss her right to privacy. But she’s dead, she doesn’t exist. What doesn’t exist can’t have rights or privacy.
In general, I find the insistence of some cultures on the necrophiliac investment of the dead with the same importance as the living to be disturbing.
This has nothing to do with respect for the the dead. Don’t you recognize purely hypocritical commercial posturing by a billion-dollar “politically correct” enterprise like Apple?
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I agree with Dreidel that it has nothing to do with privacy of the dead. I disagree that it has anything to do with corporate posturing.
The basic question is whether there is a right to privacy. This right exists in the EU and in most major Latin American countries, but it is not recognized in the US Constitution. The US wants unlimited access to all phone communications. Apple has encrypted these communications to protect user privacy. The US wants Apple to had over the encryption scheme, not just messages for one or two dead individuals. To me, that’s a problem, just as the original homeland security laws in the US were a violation of individual rights.
The direction of the country since President Shrub has been to sacrifice individual rights for collective, security. We’re already past the point where making a negative comment about an elected individual can get one arrested. Lord knows where this could go next. (Did you know that in Cruz’s home state of Texas, its legal to own a gun and illegal to own a sex toy? Imaging the enforcement actions we could see in the future.)
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“The basic question is whether there is a right to privacy. This right exists in the EU and in most major Latin American countries, but it is not recognized in the US Constitution.”
Really? Seven Supreme Court justices declared that “privacy” was a constitutional right when they made Roe v. Wade the law of the land.
“Did you know that in Cruz’s home state of Texas, its legal to own a gun and illegal to own a sex toy?”
Well, the next time a rapist breaks into your house, defend yourself with a vibrator. 🙂
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I’m not saying this isn’t a good fight to have. But it should be conducted in a worthier field. It’s the same as the Terry Schiavo debacle. Instead of debating euthanasia, everybody was exposed to the tawdry personal life of her so-called husband.
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“everybody was exposed to the tawdry personal life of her so-called husband.”
The Schiavo issue wasn’t about euthanasia. Terry Schiavo’s body was still capable of automated functions (breathing and circulation), but she’d clearly been brain-dead for almost a decade, as autopsy results showed.
Her (real) husband was the good guy in that ridiculous farce, trying to carry out his dead wife’s last wishes for a dignified ending of life, and turning down millions of dollars offered him for book deals, while most of the media trashed him hysterically.
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Seriously, let’s not start the debate about that prick of a fellow again. I have my opinion about this sort of cheap trash and I’m not changing it.
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I found a post on this today: http://blog.simplejustice.us/2016/02/17/the-department-of-homeland-apple/
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I think the big thing here is the potential ramifications for an individual’s right to privacy, living or dead. Though it might be true that Apple doesn’t know how to turn the feature off, once it has been turned off in this one case the government might easily expect this to become a regular thing, which is problematic because it’s really not Apple’s job to make it easy for the government search someone else’s property.
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I am 100% sure the objection has nothing to do with this particular individual’s privacy. Apple is basically saying that it would be impossible to do what the FBI wants without compromising the security of the data on every iPhone in existence.
Here is their official statement.
http://www.apple.com/customer-letter/
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Here’s a link to an article by Jonathan Turley explaining why the magistrate judge lacks authority to order Apple to create a back door to its encrypted phones. It has nothing to do with the privacy of a dead terrorist. It does have a lot to do with the privacy of all users of such devices.
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Pen’s comments (above) are very useful, as is his link to the simplejustice blog post. I would urge your readers to read that post, and the comments that follow it, before forming an opinion.
Further, it’s worth noting that the US government is currently pushing hard for Apple and other device manufacturers to include “back door” technologies in their devices so that the government can break encryption whenever it deems it necessary to do so. Now remember, the minute we lose strong, reliable encryption, someone will hack through those back doors, and we lose any chance of safeguarding our personal data (bank accounts, credit cards, healthcare sites, etc.) as well as the security of all web systems that have been forced to add “secure” back doors.
It’s not just about keeping the government’s nose out of our personal affairs, important though that is. It’s about keeping the hackers out of as much of the world’s data and information systems as possible. That is already a difficult proposition*. With mandatory back doors built in to our devices, it becomes impossible.
*see, for example the recent “ransoming” of Hollywood Presbyterian Hospital’s computer systems http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/18/us/california-hospital-pays-bitcoin-ransom-to-hackers.html?_r=0
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Quote:”The incumbent president of North Korea is Kim Il-Sung. He assumed the office of the Eternal Presidency on July 8, 1994, and he has steadfastly held onto power, even though he’s been dead for 18 years. This makes North Korea the world’s only necrocracy.”
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A conservative literary critic and college professor
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