The CEO of Apple declared that he has joined the ranks of the nation's oncologists, and is working to prevent the government from forcing Apple to create a new form of cancer and "expose hundreds of millions of people to issues."
The CEO of Apple is anxious to prevent future "issues."
Let's look at the case of Brittney Mills,
This is an example of an "issue" that took place in April of 2015 in Baton Rouge, LA, long before the Apple CEO got worried about cancer. Here's the "issue" that Ms. Mills experienced:
Investigators still haven't been able to find who killed her and her unborn child. They've tried hard.
They went to Apple for help. Apple refused to help the police get the evidence that might lead them to the person who killed Brittney Mills and her unborn child. The local district attorney wrote to the US Senate Judiciary committee about the case:
His pleas and those of Brittney Mills' family were ignored. The case of Brittney Mills isn't the only one:
Law enforcement getting information from a dead person's cell phone is similar to getting information from their wallet: not something anyone would normally do -- but when the person is dead, the only way to proceed.
Apple's refusal to help Baton Rouge law enforcement catch the person who murdered Brittany Mills is taking place in thousands of cases all over the US:
Apple's response? An escalating war of words. A half hour's worth in ABC's "exclusive" interview with the CEO.
While declaring how important safety is, "doing this," i.e., helping get information from the cell phones of murdered pregnant women, "could expose people to incredible vulnerabilities." Does this mean the Apple CEO is concerned about future "incredible vulnerabilities" that are worse than being murdered?
And then we have the old slippery slope argument:
OOOhhhh: law enforcement might turn on the camera!! I guess the Apple CEO thinks that's worse than being a pregnant woman living alone, opening your door at night for someone you know, getting shot and dying. And not being able to find out who did it.
Now we get to what Apple is being asked by the courts to do, which is the equivalent of creating cancer:
I demonstrated in my prior post that Apple has cooperated with law enforcement in the past, and given out private information on literally tens of thousands of cases, including at least a thousand cases a year involving national security. Apple was able to provide this information because they had written for earlier releases of iOS a much stronger version of what is needed for iOS 8. Apple has written it. It wasn't cancerous before. How would it be cancerous now?
Similarly, when he claims that helping the court would "expose hundreds of millions of people to issues," he assumes this software would somehow escape from Apple's control, when the prior versions did not.
Apple does know a way to avoid the problem. And it's had years of experience over tens of thousands of cases that the method is safe and effective.
The issue is simple. Apple refused to provide the help needed to identify the murderer of Brittany Mills and her unborn child. Apple says providing that help is like unleashing a plague of cancer. I say to Apple: please unleash that cancer.
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