It has been said before, but it bears repeating: the shredding of the Bill of Rights has nothing at all to do with combatting terror and everything to do with shredding the Bill of Rights. From Adam Dick at The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Propserity via antiwar.com:
It all started so “harmless.” The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) wanted to access the information of a person being investigated for mass murder so, the FBI said, it could try to prevent more terrorist attacks.
A couple months later this has morphed into a situation where the FBI is offering to help police departments across America access secured information of any electronic device connected to criminal investigations and where members of the United States Senate are moving forward with legislation to force technology companies to give the government access to secured, including via encryption, electronic devices information.
First, the FBI’s bumbled handling of an iPhone connected to a mass killing in San Bernardino provided an opening for the FBI to seek a precedent-setting court order to require Apple to assist the government in overcoming the phone’s security. Rather convenient, one might say, for a government agency determined to search and seize with the minimum possible constraint. Then, when Apple resisted the court’s order that was obtained ex parte (without Apple being afforded an opportunity to present its opposing arguments), the FBI dropped the case, claiming it found people who helped it bypass the iPhone’s security. This is after the FBI had told the magistrate judge that the FBI needed Apple’s help to accomplish the task.
Now, a “law enforcement source” has told CBS News that “so far nothing of real significance has been found” on the San Bernardino iPhone. This latest development should come as no surprise. There were plenty of indications early on that the San Bernardino iPhone likely had very little to no information that would be helpful for pursuing the mass murder investigation or for protecting people from any potential terrorist attack.
Jenna McLaughin summed up in a February 26 The Intercept article what seemed to be the FBI’s real motivation in seeking the court order: “It’s becoming increasingly clear that law enforcement doesn’t really think there’s any important data on San Bernardino killer Syed Rizwan Farook’s iPhone and that it has more precedent-setting value than investigative value.” McLaughlin then proceeds in her article to detail several reasons to believe there would be little to no investigative benefit gained from overcoming the iPhone’s security. Among other reasons, McLaughlin notes that the FBI already had “plenty of phone data, none of which indicated any overseas terror connection;” that the local police chief had said there was “a reasonably good chance that there is nothing of any value on the phone;” and that the iPhone was Farook’s employer-owned work phone that — unlike his laptop computer and two personal phones — he had not bothered to demolish.
The FBI’s effort to force Apple to overcome the San Bernardino iPhone’s security was never about one phone of one terrorist. Instead, it was about expanding the ability to overcome privacy protections of electronic devices via the courts after the executive branch had tried and failed in its effort to help bring through Congress legislation that would force companies to provide the government with “backdoor” access to electronic information.
To continue reading: The Terrorist iPhone Snow Job,
