Enabling the Crime

by Deacon Blues

The standoff between Apple and the FBI over getting access to the IPhones of the San Bernardino mass murderers is a fairly simple issue to me. Apple is cloaking its concern for its cash machine and profits in a bullsh*t cape of privacy. No company, even darling technology companies have an inherent right to endanger society by protecting murderers and terrorists. Sorry, plain and simple.

Apple can control the process used by the FBI to gain access to the phone, and Apple can destroy the program used to search for the passcode right after the FBI is finished, all under specific judicial review and approval. If there are concerns about hacking and penetration by other governments, then Apple needs to deal with its own employees and leverage those business relationships with those governments. And for all my Edward Snowden supporters who scream about the government trampling over your privacy by trying to get into your phone, they aren't trying to get into your phone here.

If you are one of the good progressives who reject the NRA's dubious argument that "guns don't kill people, people kill people", it is because you believe that those who make and sell the tool that enable the crime should bear some of the responsibility, which is a perfectly plausible argument. But didn't a cellphone enable mass murder here? And who else is among us ready to do the same? Does Apple's proprietary profit model trump collective safety? Since when did society agree to give up such safety to this notion of privacy? I must have missed that election or that disclosure on my phone's documentation.