> Remember this would only apply to phones the government has physical control over and in cases where Apple is compelled by a court.
I'm curious how we can be certain of that. Granted, this is the 'slippery slope' argument.
A lot of people, myself included, don't think the government is interested in ONLY decrypting phones in this class. They want to decrypt ALL of them, en masse, at will.
The hell of it is, as I typed the above, I think of how I would have felt reading those words typed by someone else, 15 years ago. I'd assume they were some kind of conspiracy nut.
Agree, as stated, 15 years ago someone would have thought "nut job" - funny (read crazy) thing is now that the general public switched from believing this was crazy to it making sense.
> As long as the government has the legal right to search the phone, isn't it good that they can now search it?
The President has the legal right to order an assassination, so all assassinations ordered are good, and even more are better? I don't follow your reasoning at all.
You are subtly changing "legal searches of suspects with prerequisite probable cause" to "legal assassination" of a bunch of unstated people. That should change the reasoning involved. So I believe you are using a faulty analogy.
First, there is a huge difference in consequences. If you search a phone and nothing is there then the person isn't significantly harmed. Killing someone is a huge consequence and it's irreparable.
Second, the court proceedings insure we are only searching people who deserve it. You leave that out in your assassination hypo. The standards for deserving a search are lower than deserving to get killed, at least they should be. So you can't compare the two. But assuming the president ordered the assassinations of people we knew deserved it--known terrorists, spies, genociders, etc--I'd still say "what's the problem"
Finally, you are substituting in something that most people consider inherently immoral. I think it's pretty clear a search of a phone to recover evidence is not inherently immoral. But many would say that there is never a reason to assassinate someone.
>legal searches of suspects with prerequisite probable cause
We've seen the court abuse that whole 'probably cause' to the point of being meaningless.
>First, there is a huge difference in consequences. If you search a phone and nothing is there then the person isn't significantly harmed. Killing someone is a huge consequence and it's irreparable.
So because the harm isn't as immediate, certain human rights don't matter as much?
>Second, the court proceedings insure we are only searching people who deserve it.
Because the court says so... which is as good as the President saying the target deserved the assassination. The court is still part of the government that can't be trusted.
>So you can't compare the two.
You can always compare different things. In fact, any comparison of real life topics is being made of two different things.
>But assuming the president ordered the assassinations of people we knew deserved it
Who deserved it according to the President, who we don't trust because they are a member of a government which we are talking about not having trust in.
>I'd still say "what's the problem"
Those pesky human rights...
>Finally, you are substituting in something that most people consider inherently immoral.
I'm only using an example that is an easier violation of human rights to understand. It is far easier to explain to people why violating the right to life is wrong than it is why violating the right to be secure against searches and seizures.
>I think it's pretty clear a search of a phone to recover evidence is not inherently immoral.
If your morality is one that allows an abusive government to violate human rights then that isn't a morality we share.
Why is this a problem? As long as the government has the legal right to search the phone, isn't it good that they can now search it?
Remember this would only apply to phones the government has physical control over and in cases where Apple is compelled by a court.