This is not a political post. I want that absolutely clear from the onset. This is about the impact iOS 8 (and others in the future) on our privacy and our individual rights and those of society.
This post is only to demonstrate how the corporate avoidance of compliance with the law (FISA Subpoenas) has set up a situation where law enforcement and Court orders can result in contempt citations and imprisonment when a person refuses to comply based on his/her 5th Amendment right to refuse to incriminate him/herself.
The new privacy policy of Apple places the responsibility for one’s data in his own domain. Apple will have no way to access any data stored on its servers. The individual user encodes his data and the password is known only to him. It prevents access by anyone on the outside.
FBI Director James Comey said,
""I am a huge believer in the rule of law, but I also believe that no one in this country is beyond the law," Comey told reporters at FBI headquarters in Washington. "What concerns me about this is companies marketing something expressly to allow people to place themselves beyond the law…
The notion that we would market devices that would allow someone to place themselves beyond the law, troubles me a lot," Comey said. "As a country, I don’t know why we would want to put people beyond the law. That is, sell cars with trunks that couldn’t ever be opened by law enforcement with a court order, or sell an apartment that could never be entered even by law enforcement," he continued. "Would you want to live in that neighborhood? This is a similar concern.
"The notion that people have devices, again, that with court orders — based on a showing of probable cause in a case involving kidnapping or child exploitation or terrorism — we could never open that phone?" Comey asked. "My sense is that we’ve gone too far when we've gone there." – Huffpost
He then went on to use the ‘ticking bomb’ scenario, or a kidnapped child. True, those are possible scenarios. How often? Well, we’ve been told of terrorist plots disrupted by the NSA, but we’ve also become the audience to Wikileaks, Snowden and the ‘data acquisition’ by the NSA (all over the world). Jurisdiction, along with common sense and civility don’t seem to exist when it comes to the internet.
This whole situation is the anticipated pendulum swing caused by the ever increasing demands for data by law enforcement and the NSA and other Federal Agencies. This is the result of accusations and denials of the FISA court’s ‘rubber stamping’ surveillance requests. In fact, it (as of 6/7/13) hadn’t denied such a request for almost four years). I also remember James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, added that “all information that is acquired under this program is subject to strict, court-imposed restrictions on review and handling.” Then we found out that the metadata was stored (in direct violation), and how much could be learned from that metadata.
I’m not a lawyer, but it seems to me that by Apple’s new technology putting all personal data in the user’s hands, a classic battle is gearing up to happen.
The results? If you want your data, you can keep your data as well as the consequences. I have no doubts that people will be imprisoned for refusing to allow their data to be breached (think freedom of the press, 5th Amendment) on principle as well as criminals hiding evidence. How will they be differentiated?
I think SCOTUS is going to have to resolve this one.
Please keep the discussion apolitical.
Source:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/25/james-comey-apple-encryption_n_5882874.html
http://www.salon.com/2013/06/07/despite_obamas_claim_fisa_court_rarely_much_of_a_check/