Tech Civil Disobedience – Will Apple Engineers Refuse to Follow Unethical Government Orders?

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Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator?  Why has every man a conscience then?  I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward.  It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right.

– Henry David Thoreau in Civil Disobedience (1849)

Yesterday, the New York Times published an extremely important article examining whether Apple engineers are prepared to potentially refuse government orders they deem unethical. If so, it would represent a historical and courageous moment of civil disobedience in the spirt of Edward Snowden, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr., Henry David Thoreau and countless others forgotten by the fog of history. Indeed, if we are to regain any semblance of freedom and liberty, we must rediscover our proud heritage of civil disobedience.

In the modern world, with so much government surveillance being done behind the scenes and via technology, we’ve become increasingly dependent on individuals within the tech sector to stand up and do the right thing. This puts us in a precarious situation, which is why we must be prepared to stand by and support any and all Apple employees who defend our civil liberties against the unconstitutional surveillance leviathan.

We learn from the New York Times:

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As the Apple vs. FBI Debate Rages, Congress Plots to Mandate Encryption Backdoors

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The more I read about the very public fight between Apple and the FBI, the more I become convinced the case merely represents the Lexington and Concord moment in a massive new crypto war. The surveillance state panopticon is extremely concerned that strong end to end encryption is increasingly being used in everyday consumer devices and applications, and has been scheming for a long time to figure out the best way to manipulate the public into accepting backdoor vulnerabilities.

To prove this point, I want to turn your attention to a few excerpts from an important Bloomberg article titled, Secret Memo Details U.S.’s Broader Strategy to Crack Phones:

Silicon Valley celebrated last fall when the White House revealed it would not seek legislation forcing technology makers to install “backdoors” in their software — secret listening posts where investigators could pierce the veil of secrecy on users’ encrypted data, from text messages to video chats. But while the companies may have thought that was the final word, in fact the government was working on a Plan B.

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Apple Vows to Defend Its Customers as the FBI Launches a War on Privacy and Security

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Some would argue that building a backdoor for just one iPhone is a simple, clean-cut solution. But it ignores both the basics of digital security and the significance of what the government is demanding in this case.

In today’s digital world, the “key” to an encrypted system is a piece of information that unlocks the data, and it is only as secure as the protections around it. Once the information is known, or a way to bypass the code is revealed, the encryption can be defeated by anyone with that knowledge.

The government suggests this tool could only be used once, on one phone. But that’s simply not true. Once created, the technique could be used over and over again, on any number of devices. In the physical world, it would be the equivalent of a master key, capable of opening hundreds of millions of locks — from restaurants and banks to stores and homes. No reasonable person would find that acceptable.

The government is asking Apple to hack our own users and undermine decades of security advancements that protect our customers — including tens of millions of American citizens — from sophisticated hackers and cybercriminals. The same engineers who built strong encryption into the iPhone to protect our users would, ironically, be ordered to weaken those protections and make our users less safe.

We can find no precedent for an American company being forced to expose its customers to a greater risk of attack. For years, cryptologists and national security experts have been warning against weakening encryption. Doing so would hurt only the well-meaning and law-abiding citizens who rely on companies like Apple to protect their data. Criminals and bad actors will still encrypt, using tools that are readily available to them.

– From Apple CEO Tim Cook’s letter: A Message to Our Customers

I’ve spend most of the morning reading as much as possible about the explosive battle between the FBI and Apple over consumer rights to digital privacy and security. I came away with a refined sense of just how monumental this case is, as well as a tremendous amount of respect for Apple CEO Tim Cook for his public stance against the feds.

Before I get into the issue at hand, some background is necessary. The feds, and the FBI in particular, have been very vocal for a long time now about the desire to destroy strong encryption, i.e., the ability of citizens to communicate privately. A year ago, I wrote the following in the post, By Demanding Backdoors to Encryption, U.S. Government is Undermining Global Freedom and Security:

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