Discussion: John Oliver Takes on Encryption And Apple Vs. FBI Fight (VIDEO)

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Discussion for article #247343

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This guy is so fricking brilliant, and he has a great show. He did a great job of explaining this huge dilemma. In addition, how really dumb we are for trusting our lives to our IPhones. It makes me feel better every day that I only use my phone as a phone and nothing else.

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Instead of the Dad analogy, try this. Suppose Apple owned half the buildings and houses in the country. Then they would be really busy responding to properly issued–court orders-- search warrants for these buildings and houses. Does it make sense that they should be exempt from court ordered searches just because they are so big and it would keep them busy doing so?

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Once again, a comedian explains a complicated issue more calmly and completely than just about any “news” outfit out there.

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I love him. The man is brilliant and he did a great job of explaining it

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Except, using your analogy, Apple doesn’t own those homes. They are the builder of those homes and part of their business model of why consumers purchase those homes is the security those homes provide to their owners. The FBI has the capability of getting into those homes already, they don’t need Apple’s assistance in this regard. The Feds can just send their SWAT team in and break in by brute force if need be.

But James Comey is exploiting the San Bernandino tragedy by using this as a test case to expand the surveillance capabilities of the FBI. If they can convince the court that Apple must help them make their secure home blueprint easily accessible to them by a backdoor, they can insure this happens for all future homes made as well. This ends up weakening everyone’s security since those backdoors are exploitable by criminals that want access to those homes too.

The future of smartphones demands the utmost security of the consumer being able to hold financial, banking, and medical records on their phone where, for instance, instead of using an ATM card, your phone can be used to pay for transactions. It’s a disservice to everyone to have your phone more exploitable by criminal elements. Because if your phone is backdoored, it will get exploited.

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They aren’t asking to be exempt from court ordered searches. They will and have complied with searches. What they are protesting is the creation of a key that gets you past encryption. That’s not a ‘search’. The government is asking for the ‘key’ to all the properties that Apple doesn’t own also. They won’t stop with Apple providing encryption based programs, they’ll ask Android and so on. Then China, etc, is going to want a key to all the properties.

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Basic reporting is not a ‘mammoth task.’ That’s why we hire Brits to do it for us.

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I’m so glad that he made the most important point so clearly. The terrorists can still use other encryption. Its not one thing, but hundreds of variations easily accessible.

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This whole discussion brings to the fore an idea I’ve had brewing around in the back of my head for a while now: The main flaw of the modern technology revolution.

If you bought a car in the 1950s, you could learn a lot about how cars work and fix the engine yourself, or you could take it to one of many repair shops. But a car is a very limited-use product. In fact, it is designed to do one thing, just like your refrigerator or your toaster or whatever are all designed to do one thing. And yes, you might acquire, over time, a working knowledge of brake pads and carburetors and refrigerator coils, but really you don’t need such knowledge to use the product on a day-to-day basis.

However, to put a powerful computer into the hands of an average person, especially a person who did not grow up with such technology and has no desire to sit in front of it for hours and play with it (i.e., learn by trial-and-error all the things it can do), is another thing entirely. I regularly encounter people who don’t know that they can ask their smartphone a question in plain, conversational language, or that if they turn it to the side they can see the video they’re squinting at in the much larger landscape mode. The average phone today has pages and pages of settings, and each app within that phone can do dozens of things, and the average person does not ever take the time to adjust the settings or ever learn everything their phone (let alone their desktop or laptop computer) can do.

And this is dangerous. Because it isn’t just that they’re missing features and conveniences for themselves, they are in fact making computers less safe for all of us. One has to get a license to drive a car, but anyone with a couple hundred bucks can go online and start spreading viruses and malware without even knowing they’re doing it. And that affects me and you and all of us, and makes computing more dangerous. Yes, there are plenty of bad drivers out there on the roads, but if you’re lucky you can avoid them by keeping an eye on them. You cannot keep an eye on someone else’s email password, and when their email gets hacked, and your name and email address are in their address book, that affects you.

And so I hear people, who don’t know much about their own phone or computer to begin with, talking about this issue. “Why would anyone want to protect a terrorist’s phone?” is a question I’ve heard asked in my own house. Putting aside the obvious, ‘why would anyone want to protect a murderer’s right to an attorney?’ sort of response, this gets to the heart of modern technological ignorance.

It’s fortunate in this case that no one needs to protect the rights of a dead terrorist. We all agree that law enforcement has a legal and moral right to look into this person’s phone. But this case is also peculiar, and the FBI has already made one mistake (whether it was intentional or not is a matter of conspiracy theory) in getting access to this phone, a mistake that has created the situation we now find ourselves in. Because it is a terrorism investigation, it’s very tempting to say that we need to access this one phone. What people need to be educated about is, if we did this the way the FBI wants it to be done, it would ultimately be ineffective against every other terrorist and criminal out there and would, in the meantime, weaken security for the rest of us, including within our own government and ultimately the entire internet, which relies heavily upon encryption.

The good news is, if Lindsey Graham can be convinced, there may be some hope on this issue. Weakening security is a bad idea, and I sincerely hope enough people like Senator Graham can be educated on this issue to make a difference. The reality - and my main point - is, of course, if more people knew more about how computers (the things they carry around in their pockets) work in general, this wouldn’t even be up for discussion.

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