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Mike Masnick Explains: Apple Versus The FBI

from the in-case-you-were-wondering dept

Tue, Mar 22nd 2016 9:34am — Mike Masnick

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While the DOJ may be thinking about ways to weasel out of the San Bernardino fight with Apple, the underlying fight about backdooring encryption remains. The DOJ may focus on other cases, such as the one in NY, where the facts line up a bit more in its favor, or elsewhere. Or we may soon see legislation to backdoor encryption.

We've seen so much confusion and misinformation going around, that I thought it might be useful to create a short "explainer video" that shows why this is such a big deal, and why everyone should be supporting Apple, in this case, against the Justice Department (and against any legislation that requires backdoors). Please check it out and share it.

This is the kind of thing we'd like to do a lot more of, but it takes a fair bit of time to get ready. If you like this and would like to see us do more videos like this, please support our crowdfunding campaign that ends this week...

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Filed Under: all writs act, doj, encryption, fbi, going dark, mike masnick explains, techdirt
Companies: apple

19 Comments

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Ninja (profile), 22 Mar 2016 @ 10:13am

Nice summary for late entrants to the discussion. Thanks!
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Anonymous Coward, 22 Mar 2016 @ 10:25am

Visualised
Back-doored encryption
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Anonymous Coward, 22 Mar 2016 @ 10:28am

Practical politics
“If you're explaining, you're losing.”
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Anonymous Coward, 22 Mar 2016 @ 10:35am

Re: Practical politics
“If you're explaining, you're losing.”

Personally I read that more as an indictment of politics than an indictment of explaining.
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Anonymous Coward, 22 Mar 2016 @ 10:38am

Re: Re: Practical politics
… more as an indictment of politics than an indictment of explaining.
Oh, I'm not sure it's even true. It may be more truthy than truthful.

Otoh, it is probably safe to say that Ronald Reagan had better political skills than you or me. He got to be president after all—and you're not Barack Obama.
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Mike Masnick (profile), 22 Mar 2016 @ 10:46am

Re: Re: Re: Practical politics
Oh, I'm not sure it's even true. It may be more truthy than truthful.

Yeah, pretty sure that's not true.

Otoh, it is probably safe to say that Ronald Reagan had better political skills than you or me. He got to be president after all—and you're not Barack Obama.

A few other thoughts on this:

1. Small sample size issue with your survey here...
2. I'm not running for office. Even if this applies, it applies only to running for office. But explaining can actually help a lot in terms of the process itself. For example, see this article that was written for us by a former Congressional staffer on our *last* crowdfunding campaign about how useful our explanations were in the process: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140729/05504028040/if-you-want-to-know-how-supporting-techdirt-c an-help-shift-debate-washington-dc-read-this.shtml
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Anonymous Coward, 22 Mar 2016 @ 10:51am

Re: Practical politics
If you are dictating without explanation, you are an authoritarian.
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Anonymous Coward, 22 Mar 2016 @ 11:04am

Re: Re: Re: Re: Practical politics
A few other thoughts on this
The big one you didn't list is the changed media environment—due to the 'net.

There's a difference between viewing the world through TV in the '80s and YouTube today. A difference that slips in unnoticed a lot of the time. Even more subtle is the impact of YouTube on a habitual TV couch potato, as opposed to the impact of YouTube on someone who spends much of their time with comments and PDFs.

In short, there's no guarantee that Reagan's '80s communication style would be at all effective in today's media environment. His “explaining” maxim might be simply obsolete.

Or not.
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Anonymous Coward, 22 Mar 2016 @ 11:08am

Re: Re: Practical politics
you are an authoritarian.
Buffoon? or popular authoritarian leader?.
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Uriel-238 (profile), 22 Mar 2016 @ 11:44am

If you're explaining, you're losing
The Larry Lessig version is

It's a bumper sticker culture. People have to get it like that, and if they don't, if it takes three seconds to make them understand, you're off their radar screen.

Note that takes more than three seconds to say.

I think if you're explaining, you're losing people. Specifically you're losing the ones who can't think past OMG TERRORISM!.

You're also gaining people. The people who think about things.

My fear is that the people lost from the first group would overwhelm and route the people gained from the second group.
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Mike Masnick (profile), 22 Mar 2016 @ 12:03pm

Re: If you're explaining, you're losing
I think if you're explaining, you're losing people. Specifically you're losing the ones who can't think past OMG TERRORISM!.

I disagree. That's an easy excuse and it's insulting. It reminds me of the "but... piracy!" excuse that we always heard on the copyright debate. But the people who explained things and why it's not just about piracy tended to win out in the end. And that's happening here as well.
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Anonymous Coward, 22 Mar 2016 @ 1:35pm

Re: Re: Re: Practical politics
Ronald Reagan
Speaking of Ronald Reagan, I just ran across this, via NPR, “From Reagan's Cyber Plan To Apple Vs. FBI: ‘Everything Is Up For Grabs’ ” (Mar 22, 2016)…

Excerpt: Dark Territory (Book by Fred Kaplan)
Dark Territory
CHAPTER 1
“COULD SOMETHING LIKE THIS REALLY HAPPEN?”

IT was Saturday, June 4, 1983, and President Ronald Reagan spent the day at Camp David, relaxing, reading some papers, then, after dinner, settling in, as he often did, to watch a movie. That night’s feature was WarGames, starring Matthew Broderick as a tech-whiz teenager who unwittingly hacks into the main computer at NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, and, thinking that he’s playing a new computer game, nearly triggers World War III. . . .
To bring this item back around a little bit and focus on the present topic, what you're looking at here is someone who's not so much explaining—as he's telling his audience some stories. Interesting stories.
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Uriel-238 (profile), 22 Mar 2016 @ 1:48pm

Re: Re: If you're explaining, you're losing
I commend the benefit of doubt you give to us ordinary shlubs, and I hope you're right that an explanation simple enough or funny enough or clear enough will get through.

My experiences have been different, but are anecdotal.

I guess so long as we don't have statistics telling us the people are idiots with short attention spans, I'll retain the hope that they aren't.
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Jigsy, 22 Mar 2016 @ 3:19pm

America, where they can land a man on the Moon, but they can't break into an iPhone.
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Steve R. (profile), 22 Mar 2016 @ 6:07pm

FBI Needs to Get Back to Old Fashioned Footwork
Two points on this issue that seem to be overlooked.

1. Do we have any reason to suspect that there would be any useful information on that phone? Obviously, that can't be determined now, but there may be indirect evidence to imply an answer.

2. Next, all communications between the phone and the outside world would have been expected to go through the phone company. That would imply that the FBI can follow-up on those leads by getting information from the phone company. In turn, that would imply that breaking into the phone would really not be necessary as the FBI could do old fashioned footwork to interview those sending/receiving phone calls and text messages from that phone.
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Anonymous Coward, 22 Mar 2016 @ 6:26pm

Re: FBI Needs to Get Back to Old Fashioned Footwork
FBI can follow-up on those leads by getting information from the phone company.
I really don't want to stray too far away from talking about Mike's Explainer video here.

But there's some info that people who haven't been following the story super closely may have missed earlier. So I'll repeat it—

“NSA chief: ‘Paris would not have happened’ without encrypted apps”, by Michael Isikoff, Yahoo, Feb 17, 2016
In an exclusive interview with Yahoo News . . . [National Security Agency Director Adm. Michael Rogers] confirmed for the first time that the law was used successfully by the NSA after the San Bernardino terror attack to retrieve the phone records of the two perpetrators, and the agency “didn’t find any direct overseas connections.”
(Emphasis added.)

Awhile ago, Marcy Wheeler was banging on this factoid a little bit. (“Amid an Inconclusive Answer on Encryption, Hillary Reveals She Doesn’t Understand How Metadata Works”, Emptywheel, Mar 7, 2016.)
Right in the middle, however, Hillary reveals not understanding a key part of this controversy. To the extent Syed Rizwan Farook used the Apple software on his work phone to communicate with accomplices, we know who he communicated with, because we have that metadata (as Admiral Mike Rogers recently confirmed). We just don’t know what he said.
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vilain (profile), 22 Mar 2016 @ 7:33pm

video needs to be more than reading slides
If you're going to continue with "Mike Masnec 'Splains", you should change the format to take advantage of video vs. just reading the slides.

Or be more effective at doing the lecture with slide thing. Contact Larry Lessig for some ideas. His content/slide ration is perfect, IMO.
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G Thompson (profile), 22 Mar 2016 @ 10:54pm

Well done first video Mike (and all the people who helped put it together).

Just two slight critical suggestions:

1. You don't need to have every single word displayed as a single slide, it's slightly annoying and distracts from the commentary.

2. slow down when speaking by about 5bpm or more. People might get confused that your an Aussie ;)
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jupiterkansas (profile), 23 Mar 2016 @ 9:29am

Re:
Making a computer they can't break into is a pretty cool accomplishment.
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