No, the enforcement arms of the government should obey the law and leave making laws to Congress and the constituency. CALEA specifically prohibits government agents from ordering private companies to adopt "any specific design of equipment, facilities, services, features, or system configuration". Congress considered this authority and decided not to grant it to the police.
Precisely and this is what is beginning to happen. The congress is now taking up the issue as it should[1]. Mr Cook on the other hand engages in speculation to bolster his case --which is fine but he should also be called out on it.
I think it's pretty obvious that Cook's statement is speculation. Why "call him out" on it? I think his speculation is actually fairly plausible, but even if I didn't, it's certainly not out of place there.
Because it's not all that different from people who speculate that data valuable to the terrorism investigation is on that and other phones. Maybe there is maybe there isn't, but we should not make policy based on speculation.
We should leave policy to policymakers and courts as well of course as constituents' input into the congress.
The question for people, congress and the courts is, should phones be different from other mediums of communications as well as data repositories where warrants cannot be executed to reveal or discover data in the course of a criminal investigation. Will people, the congress and courts decide that data should remain dark or can be revealed by court order. It's rather a basic question.
"If a court can ask us to write this software, think about what else they could ask us to write. Maybe it’s an operating system for surveillance, maybe the ability for law enforcement to turn on the camera."
I don't find it speculative to point out that setting a legal precedent here could have far reaching consequences well beyond what is being asked of Apple specifically in this case.
