Comment by kelnos
1 day ago
> the (US) doctrine that work cannot be compelled
Is this actually a thing? Telecoms in the US are compelled to provide wiretap facilities to the US and state and local governments.
1 day ago
> the (US) doctrine that work cannot be compelled
Is this actually a thing? Telecoms in the US are compelled to provide wiretap facilities to the US and state and local governments.
>> Apple's defense against backdooring E2E is the (US) doctrine that [government can’t] be compelling work (or speech, if you prefer)
It’s really not "work” but speech. That’s why telecoms can be compelled to wiretap. But code is speech [2], signing that code is also speech, and speech is constitutionally protected (US).
The tension is between the All Writs Act (requiring “third parties’ assistance to execute a prior order of the court”) and the First Amendment. [1]
So Apple may be compelled to produce the iCloud drives the data is stored on. But they can’t be made to write and sign code to run locally in your iPhone to decrypt that E2EE data (even though obviously they technologically could).
[1]: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/10/judge-doj-not-all-writ...
[2]: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/04/remembering-case-estab...
It's weird bending of law. Code, especially closed-source code, is not a speech; it's a mechanism and the government may mandate what features a mechanism must have (for example, a safety belt in a car).