Apple and the FBI have captured the public’s attention by battling over unlocking the San Bernardino shooter’s phone, but this is about more than one terrorist attack. This is a power struggle over the future of digital communication.
Encryption seems opaque and impossibly complex, and that’s the point. Even though it has only recently entered the popular lexicon, humans have been using encryption to keep secrets hidden since ancient Greece.
Now it’s an essential component to everyone’s electronic communication, and the United States security apparatus is essentially demanding unilateral power over its on/off switch.
A judge ordered Apple to provide “reasonable technical assistance” to help the FBI unlock San Bernardino shooter Syed Farook’s iPhone 5c, which seems like a reasonable request.
After all, it has the word reasonable in it.
But like many vague government directives, its request is far from the definition of the word it uses. What the FBI really wants Apple to do can best be explained by the world’s most notorious hacker.
The technical changes the @FBI demands would make it possible to break into an iPhone (5C or older) in a half hour. pic.twitter.com/v6GeFXXXBC
— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) February 17, 2016
Granted, there are so many layers to the Snowden story that you have to take everything he says with infinite grains of salt, but the man clearly knows his tech.
He’s pretty much stuck where he is for the rest of his life, so it’s hard to see how criticizing the FBI benefits him in any way (unless you believe that he’s a Russian operative, but that’s a discussion for another day).
This isn’t just about hacking into this one phone. The FBI wants Apple to build them a cyber weapon that bypasses encryption on iPhones around the world.
Encryption has been a central debate in the intelligence community for quite some time, and lines have clearly been drawn between civil cabinets and law enforcement, as the Obama administration has offered conflicting messages on this topic.
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Leslie Caldwell, the head of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division alluded to the need to bypass encryption at a technology policy conference earlier this year:
“The Department of Justice is completely committed to seeking and obtaining judicial authorization for electronic evidence collection in all appropriate circumstances. But once that authorization is obtained, we need to be able to act on it if we are to keep our communities safe and our country secure.”
Ironically enough, the very next person to speak at that conference was another top Obama official at the Federal Trade Commission, Terrell McSweeny, and he offered a diametrically opposite opinion:
“As a person charged with thinking about consumer protection, I deeply worry about things like mandatory backdoors. We need to be very mindful of consumer data security, and we should be very, very careful about anything that undermines that data security.”
James Comey, the director of the FBI, is one of the chief architects of the case against encryption, as he laid out in his famous 2014 “going dark” speech:
And if the challenges of real-time interception threaten to leave us in the dark, encryption threatens to lead all of us to a very dark place.
You can see this schism in on the campaign trail too. Here’s the child of the former head of the CIA Jeb Bush’s take:
“If you create encryption, it makes it harder for the American government to do its job — while protecting civil liberties — to make sure that evildoers aren’t in our midst. We need to find a new arrangement with Silicon Valley in this regard because I think this is a very dangerous kind of situation.”
Compare that to former HP CEO/former Presidential candidate/future Fox News analyst Carly Fiorina:
“I certainly support that we need to tear down cyber walls, not on a mass basis, but on a targeted basis. I do not believe that we need to wholesale destroy every American citizen’s privacy in order to go after those that we know are suspect or are already a problem. But yes, there is more collaboration required.”
So why is the private sector so concerned with protecting encryption? Apple’s stance doesn’t seem to be based on firm principle since they have unlocked iPhones for the feds at least 70 times before.
This is a high-profile case, so what Apple does or does not do will be scrutinized infinitely more than those 70 instances combined, and the public has never been more sensitive to the security state than it is right now.
Apple doesn’t want to hurt their brand. Plus, what the FBI is demanding is unprecedented. They’re ordering Apple to build a backdoor into its seminal product.
That’s not something that can only be controlled by one party; once a backdoor exists, anyone with the wherewithal can access it.
The second the FBI uses this new software to bypass encryption, the race will be on to reverse engineer it, and if/when this type of technology falls into the wrong hands, a huge chunk of mankind’s digital infrastructure would be compromised (not to mention the horrors authoritarian regimes around the world would inflict on their people with this weapon).
Given that our security state already looks like a Orwellian fever dream, we should heed President Dwight Eisenhower’s prescient warning from his farewell address and support Apple in this fight:
“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist.”
RISE NEWS is a grassroots journalism news organization that is working to change the way young people become informed and engaged in public affairs. Anyone can write for us as long as you are fiercely interested in making the world a better place.
Cover Photo Credit: Sean MacEntee/ Flickr (CC By 2.0)
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Here’s Why Young Hispanics Are The Key To Bernie Sanders’ Campaign In Florida
By Matthew Alvarez
MIAMI, FL- You wouldn’t know at first glance walking throughout Miami Dade College’s Kendall campus that the next potential leaders of the free world were about to arrive.
Other than a seemingly higher presence of police officers and little bit more traffic, the clues were subtle.
Students casually walked to and from their classes, people studied around tables and benches, nothing truly unusual.
It wasn’t until you headed out to the front of the campus – literally all the way into the sidewalk off of 104th St that you were able get a taste of the energy surrounding tonight’s significance.
Florida has been a notorious swing state over the last couple of presidential elections. This has to do with the fact that South Florida (Liberal) has a completely different political culture than North Florida (Conservative) and Central (Moderate).
For Democrats, one of the most important differences in South Florida is the large population of young voters that have an ethic connection to one of the dozens of different Latin and Hispanic ethnicities, something that both Democratic candidates want to capitalize off of.
Photo Credit: Matthew Alvarez/ RISE NEWS
So far, it looks like Hillary is winning that fight.
In a Washington Post poll released on March 9th, Hillary Clinton led Bernie Sanders 68% to 21% among Hispanic Democrats in the Sunshine State. Among all Democratic voters in the state, she leads 64% to 24%.
With all this being said, it’s no coincidence that one of the hottest issues from the Miami debate was immigration policy.
Over half the population of the city of Miami are immigrants or are the literal children of immigrants.
The stakes are high as Sanders and Clinton play tug of war with Florida’s diverse electorate ahead of the March 15th primary election.
For such a large scale event at a college campus, the turnout wasn’t as huge as you would expect, but the lack of participants was made up for in passion.
The size of the rally fluctuated from a few hundred people to a few dozen by the time the debate started at 9:00 PM; at its peak the crowd spanned about two blocks.
Photo Credit: Matthew Alvarez/ RISE NEWS
There wasn’t a single person not chanting, or yelling in many cases, for their respective candidates.
A small group of Clinton supporters had left the area earlier in the evening, leaving it as an nearly exclusive unofficial Sanders rally.
As heavy rush hour traffic slowly drove on by, protesters urged drivers to honk in support, creating a symphony of loud cheers and car horns that could be heard from the other side of the campus.
Spirits were high across the entire crowd.
Jamie Friend, being a mid-aged activist, felt optimistic about the rejuvenating spirit that Sanders has brought to the electorate.
Friend transformed recycled Styrofoam into light up boxes that spelled out “Bernie”, activated by the flashlight of your phone, and let anyone who wanted to borrow them.
Photo Credit: Matthew Alvarez/ RISE NEWS
She plans on driving up to Tampa to continue lending out her light up boxes at the next Sanders rally.
Patrick Mesa came out with his own sign and high hopes, having complete confidence in Sander’s chances after his Michigan win.
“Truthfully speaking, I will not vote,” Mesa said, highlighting a fear of the Sanders campaign.
With the exception of about three Trump protesters (which I couldn’t tell if they were serious or just trying to pull a laugh out of the rally), there was an overwhelming grassroots support for Sanders outside of the debate venue.
People also took the opportunity of the mass exposure to express their own concerns and views, with marijuana legalization and anti-big-money sentiment being the major topics from the gathered activists.
Florida will become a deciding factor for the longevity of Sanders’ candidacy, and for the strength of Clinton’s campaign.
No matter who you support, you should get involved in the campaign. Create a sign, attend a rally, hold a fundraiser, annoy anyone that follows you on social media with political propaganda (actually try not to do that last one), maybe you’ll find a new appreciation for the political state of our country and its future.
RISE NEWS is a grassroots journalism news organization that is working to change the way young people become informed and engaged in public affairs. You can write for us!
Cover Photo Credit: Matthew Alvarez/ RISE NEWS
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Miami’s Secret Native American Burial Mound
The Tequesta burial mound in El Portal, FL is not well known outside of the small village in which it is located.
But it should be.
Here’s why:
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Why We Shouldn’t Fear A China Hegemony
By Kyle Borland
“China owns us.”
We’ve been hearing it our entire lives. For as long as we’ve been alive, it’s been a constant worry that at some point China will ask us to pay our debt. It’s the Millennial equivalent to Baby Boomer’s hiding under their desks.
Given that comparison, it’s obvious that we should fear the rise of the (once) sleeping dragon. To do so, however, is to ignore one very important factor: history. For much of human history, China has been one of the – if not, the – most powerful countries in the world. Until modern times, China was always the richest and most populous country in the world (some things never change). From 1405 to 1433, the Ming Dynasty under the Yongle Emperor financed a navy for exploration and maritime dominance that the world had never seen.
Almost one-hundred years before Columbus set foot in America, China circled the [known] world to show its muscle. If the next emperor hadn’t burned the fleet to the ground and ceased the expeditions – we might all be speaking Chinese.
But, that’s all history. How should we feel about China now? Should we fear the “rise” of today’s China?
The short answer: no.
If the world still operated as it did before American hegemony, than I would say a hard yes. Before American hegemony, any country that could amass a military to rival your own would be worthy of fear. However, American hegemony is different from other nations that came before it. It has a self-destruct button. Now, I’m not saying that one-day America is going pull a Voltorb and blow itself up. Rather, I am saying that American hegemony has an expiration date built in.
Hear me out.
American hegemony’s ultimate goal is to spread the American way of life around the world. Picture in your mind what the “American way of life” is for a moment. To me, the beauty of America is that everyone reading this pictured something different from everyone else that reads it. No two Americans are exactly the same because our nation was founded on the ideals that no two people are exactly the same – and that’s okay.
Actually, that’s our strength.
American hegemony is unique from all our counterparts throughout history because – though we may not have the noblest of reasons – some of our influence has helped different nations around the world.
America is unparalleled in power. If we had not wanted nations like North Korea, Cuba or Iran (pre-lifting of sanctions) to rise, we would’ve stopped them. We have established a world order where our hands are in everyone’s cookie jar and, for the world to operate, the octopus must function properly.
But just as the American octopus has its tentacles in everything, the Chinese dragon has coiled around all the jars. And, we can either look at the dragon as an adversary or we can say “thank you” for the help. Would Atlas have feared assistance when holding up the world?
Let’s go back to that self-destruct button. Under American hegemony, the seeds from global governance have been laid. In the long run, a global government can never exist when there is a sole hegemon. If that is the case, then the global government is simply a proxy for the bidding of the hegemon (cough UN cough). However, in a multi-polar world (re: a balanced world), a global government can occur. We even created a new form of communication (re: the internet) to facilitate global understanding.
In the next several centuries, nations will watch as our languages, cultures and people merge together. The world will become a melting pot (America’s end game). At some point in the future, all humans will speak the same language because of the Internet and globalization. Don’t believe me? Are you correcting me in Latin from behind your screen?
In 6,000 years of recorded history, the human race has achieved amazing things. But, to achieve the next level of evolution, no one person, city, state or country has ever been able to do it alone. Caesar needed his triumvirate. Zheng-Du needed the Yongle Emperor. America needed the French at Yorktown.
As millennials, we cannot think like our parents and the generations before us. We have grown up with access to technology and knowledge that people could never have dreamt. Because of this, we have a duty to the world to change how it interacts.
I’m sure there was several times throughout this that you laughed to yourself and called me insane. But, isn’t a key component of insanity to do the same thing over and over again and expect the same result?
So, why would you fear China when you already know it doesn’t work? That’s worse than insane – it’s inefficient.
And that’s something to fear.
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