THE JUSTICE ● fORUM ● TUESDAY, mARCH 22, 2016
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Support Apple’s resistance to FBI’s demands to unlock phone By nia lyn JUSTICE Contributing WRITER
Today’s society has become so dependent on technology that our phones store everything from our credit card information to our home address and several other pieces of incriminating information. With this in mind, personal technology could also be used as a powerful tool in law enforcement. In the case of the San Bernardino shooting on Dec. 3, 2015, Apple has refused to release the iPhone data of suspect Syed Rizwan Farook. According to a Feb. 17 Washington Post article discussing the battle between the tech giant and the government, Apple CEO Tim Cook said, “The U.S. government has asked us for something we simply do not have, and something we consider too dangerous to create. They have asked us to build a backdoor to the iPhone.” Apple has been justified in its resistance to the FBI’s requests, but that does not mean that Farook’s phone should be left untouched. According to a March 21 New York Times article, the FBI might have found a way to unlock the phone without Apple’s help, and if that ends up being ineffective, the better — and less risky — option than Apple creating a backdoor is for the National Security Agency to get involved. This way, Apple is not putting its customers at risk, and the FBI still gets their desired information. The FBI is looking for access to Farook’s phone “in the hopes of gaining crucial evidence,” as stated by the Justice Department or in hopes of finding “relevant, critical communications and data,” according to a Feb. 16 Washington Post article. Alas, the only way for the average person to access his phone would be to manually enter the password. With newer iPhones, the password is encrypted into the phone, and without the password, it is nearly impossible to manually access the phone. Due to this updated technology, the user has ultimate control of the phone and its ease of access. According to a Feb. 17 Washington Post article, U.S. Magistrate Sheri Pym requested that Apple generate a software that can be used only to access the phone at the center of the case, but this is something that Apple views as unethical. In a March 17 interview with TIME, Cook agreed that this case is similar to one that had previously occurred in which Apple was able to extract data from a man’s phone. The case involved a Brooklyn drug dealer, and when the court reached out to Apple to retrieve data from
the man’s phone, they agreed to do so. The difference now, however, is that Apple feels that this case is not in concordance with the All Writs Act, which essentially grants the government the right to use all resources needed to make a judiciary decision. In U.S. v. New York Telephone Company in 1977, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the implementation of a “tap and track” service to catch wanted gamblers. Apple is using this ruling as justification for their refusal to comply with the FBI’s requests: As Cook said, “we’ve never been asked to do what we’ve been asked to do now … we don’t think the government has the authority to do this.” Now, this does not mean that Apple did not attempt to aid the FBI in any way; some of Apple’s engineers had been sent over to see if there was any way to access the phone’s information without creating a backdoor — but to no avail. The issue arose when a court order demanded that Apple create a “Government OS” that lacks security features. In the same TIME interview, Cook said, “From a customer point of view it wasn’t good, because it would wind up putting millions of customers at risk, making them more vulnerable. In addition, we felt like it trampled on civil liberties.” This is where the real conflict arises. Should Apple release a security-free operating system that can be used for cases like this, or should they withhold such information to protect the civil rights of their customers? If Apple were to generate such a software, it could be used with malicious intent by people other than the U.S. government and lead to massive breaches. Beyond that, there needs to be some sort of confidentiality between the company and their customers. If all user information is released, who is to say that our every move cannot be tracked by Apple or that they will not automatically access iPhone cameras at any moment they feel it is necessary? With conspiracy theories galore, some may argue that Apple might already do this, but even if they do, the threat will become even more viable if they publicly breach the trust built with customers. If the line is not drawn somewhere, the possibilities are limitless. According to Tim Cook, “No one should have a key that turns a billion locks.” However, even if the FBI cannot access this phone, the government already has the power to access this phone and many others. According to a March 17 Forbes Article, the NSA could supply their “zero-day” exploit services to the
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FBI, but they do not deem it necessary. In this same article, a former NSA computer scientist is quoted as saying, “The NSA might not want to burn its exploits on that iPhone.” The zeroday exploit service essentially entails the NSA manipulating any weaknesses within Apple’s programing as soon as it was discovered — hence the name zero day. They would search for any weakness in the initial code which ran when the iPhone was first turned on. If a weakness was found there, the code could be altered, thus granting access to the phone. Sadly, the NSA believes that their limited resources should not be used on an operation to hack into an iPhone. Since there actually is a means of accessing the content of Farook’s phone, there is no prob-
lem with doing so. There is no way of knowing whether he was in contact with anyone else or if the intent behind his attack would be revealed. If the FBI cannot open the phone without outside help, seeking aid from the NSA seems like a far better option than Apple compromising the security of its company and all of its customers through generating a security-free operating system. Apple standing by its convictions is worthwhile because if they just succumbed to the government, the outcome could be far worse than the situation at hand. Millions of iPhone users could be at risk through the creation of a security-free operating system. Granted, this will not be the one issued to the public, but anyone could get access to it and misuse it.
Reject propagation of “politics of resentment” by Sanders and Trump By andrew jacobson JUSTICE STAFF WRITER
Ridicule and immaturity have been the defining characteristics of this year’s presidential race. Candidates’ tweets, debate speeches and campaign ads — they’ve all been rife with shameless “politics of resentment.” Two striking figures, in particular, have dominated the political and media landscape. They have won the hearts and minds of millions across a multitude of demographics. Age, gender, education and ethnicity all seem to be blind to these two candidates. They ostensibly come from opposite sides of the aisle, and yet, they are remarkably similar. They are Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. First of all, neither has been a member of the political party whose nomination they hope to receive for long. For most of his life, Trump was a Democrat. Yuval Levin, the founding editor of National Affairs, has dubbed him the “least conservative Republican presidential aspirant in living memory.” Sanders, a self-proclaimed Democratic Socialist, is an Independent — the longest serving one in U.S. Congressional history. Though only one calls for “political revolution,” both exploit people’s indignation with the political establishment by pandering to their crass emotions. Rather than attracting voters solely with their principles or ideas, Trump and Sanders predominantly allure voters with their supposed non-politically correct authenticity. This has been enabled in part by the nature of their campaign financing; more than 66 percent of Trump’s has been self-funded, according to PolitiFact, and over three-fourths of Sanders’ donations have been amounts under $200, according to a March 17 BBC article. In comparison, only about 17 percent of Hillary Clinton’s funding has been of that type. Both
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candidates, in their presumed independence from crony politicians and wealthy bankers, have earned the trust of many. According to a Feb. 17 Quinnipiac University poll, 87 percent of American Democrats regard Sanders as “honest and trustworthy,” and 60 percent of American Republicans believe those same qualities describe Trump. Trump’s rhetoric is spontaneous, candid and unfiltered whereas the enduring Sanders machine, unchanging throughout his political career, is refined and consistent. Trump is reactionary; Sanders repeats simple points. Sanders is predictable where Trump isn’t, but both use their unique style to portray themselves as genuine, disruptive and anti-establishment candidates who understand the socalled common cause and claim to speak for the “silenced majority.” Even the way they assign blame is comparable, though the object of such blame differs. Trump, the insolent demagogue, is most known for his xenophobic insults and disposition to blame fringe groups. According to an Aug. 25, 2015 Huffington Post article, he condemns Mexicans for “export[ing] crime and poverty,” as well as raising the cost of healthcare and education. While these claims may have some legitimacy, the causation Trump posits is dubious at best. He scapegoats these groups and vilifies them accordingly. Trump’s professed concern with America’s security has driven him to call for the building of a “great, great wall on [the United States’] southern border” and a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States,” according to a Dec. 7 Washington Post article. His hyperbolic policy prescriptions are impractical, and yet as entertainment, they have earned him a disproportionate amount of media coverage. Regardless of how praiseful or critical, most
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of this attention has served only to strengthen his campaign and augment his appeal. Sanders also generalizes heavily in his claims. In speeches and campaign material, he maintains that America’s most affluent population is responsible for the sizable disparity in wealth and income inequality pervading the United States. Regarding employment, Sanders calls for increased Wall Street tax reform and an enormous redistribution of wealth through the public programs he intends to establish, such as universal singlepayer health care and “free” education. Both characters play on the intrinsic human desire to evade personal responsibility by pinning the blame for issues — mostly those related to the economy — on largely unseen groups. Blaming certain groups is well-received by Americans because it relinquishes them of individual accountability and offers them the possibility that their given issue is the fault of someone else. While some people may at first embrace this freedom from accountability, in the end, this is insulting, belittling and antithetical to the idea of the “American Dream” our country has embraced since its founding. For Trump, the object of blame is the more than 200 “people, places, and things” — counted by a Jan. 28 New York Times article — he has insulted during his campaign, most notably Mexicans and Muslims. For Sanders, it is Wall Street and the one percent. This phenomenon is not new. For the Populist Party of the late 19th and early 20th century, it was the Jews. Huey Long, an early 20th-century politician from Louisiana, was perhaps one of the most well-known politicians of the Populist Party. He was also strikingly similar to Trump and Sanders. As a populist, Long appealed to the — often crass — base emotions of his constituency. Emerging as a significant contender to Frank-
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lin D. Roosevelt in 1936, Long played on the fears and exasperation of the people to garner an inordinate amount of media attention. He accepted only cash donations and was, thus, like Trump and Sanders, unbound by any traditional benefactors. Long’s “Share Our Wealth” program was his most famous, which he first announced in 1934 as then-governor of Louisiana. Predicated on wealth distribution, Long’s program sought to dignify each American family household by providing them with a $5,000 grant accumulated from taxes on the rich. What Trump, Sanders and Long all have in common is that they are or were visionaries whose one-size-fits-all philosophy beguiled the American people. Their means may be different, but their goals are very similar. The American people have grown to expect Trump to actually “Make America Great Again,” as if this slogan entails some thoughtful policy that’s actually proven its efficacy in practice. Sanders’ vows to tax the “millionaires and billionaires” have all but brought other Americans to fall head-over-heels for his policies. I am not entirely equating Trump and Sanders, merely drawing attention to their striking similarities. Ultimately, America needs a president who champions more than “politics of resentment,” which, as Marco Rubio said in his March 15 concession speech, would “leave us a fractured nation.” America needs a president who embodies “intellectual depth and philosophical consistency, respect for ideas and elevated rhetoric, [and] civility and person grace,” as Peter Wehner put in a March 21 TIME magazine article. Our presidential candidates must renounce “politics of resentment” and behave like the sensible, polished statesman they are campaigning to become.
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