[Crypto-chi] Follow up on the discussion last Sunday...

[joe fuentes]

hi everybody!
We discussed the merits of the Apple vs FBI legal battle at our last meeting.  Here is some relevant information whilst it's not directly applicable to the current case concerning the San Bernadino dead terrorists it does have some implications.  For those of you not aware, a federal judge in NY ruled in Apple's favor stating the government's invocation of the All Writs Act was "absurd".  Here's a synopsis.  Attached is the full ruling.

 The implications of the government's position are so far-reaching -- 
both in terms of what it would allow today and what it implies about 
Congressional intent in 1789 -- as to produce impermissibly absurd 
results....



The government's position also produces a wholly different kind of 
absurdity: the idea that the First Congress might so thoroughly 
undermine fundamental principles of the Constitution that many of its 
members had personally just helped to write or to ratify. Its preferred 
reading of the law -- which allows a court to confer on the executive 
branch any investigative authority Congress has decided to withhold, so 
long as it has not affirmatively outlawed it -- would transform the AWA 
[All Writs Act] from a limited gap-filing statute that ensures the 
smooth functioning of the judiciary itself into a mechanism for upending
 the separation of powers by delegating to the judiciary a legislative 
power bounded only by Congress's superior ability to prohibit or 
preempt. I conclude that the constitutionality of such an interpretation
 is so doubtful as to render it impermissible as a matter of statutory 
construction. ...



It is wholly implausible to suppose that with so many of the newly 
adopted Constitution's drafters and ratifiers in the legislature, the 
first Congress would so thoroughly trample on that document's very first
 substantive mandate: "All legislative Powers herein granted shall be 
vested in a Congress of the United States." 


Here's an interesting take on the matter calling it "quicksand" that Apple is getting into.http://www.computerworld.com/article/3038838/security/the-encryption-quicksand-into-which-apple-is-sinking.html
What are your perspectives on this recent ruling? Share here.
FYI-Joe 
 
 		 	   		  
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