This feels like missing the forest from the trees — Steve Jobs said many times to the effect ‘it doesn’t matter how any of this stuff happens, GigaHertz, Ram, Speeds, it only matters that the user gets what they want.’
Right now Apple’s biggest unhappy user is the DOJ. As it stands with the legislation coming down the pipe and both previous administrations building on a keenness to ‘get something done’ about big tech, Apple will do as they’ve done in China and ‘obey the laws in each jurisdiction.’
Right now there are a lot of unwritten laws that say Apple better play right or lose quite a bit more —
So, how it’s getting done is a side show.
That said, it wasn’t long ago that they stood toe to toe with the FBI —- but there also weren’t wonderfully strong ‘sanctions’ on the horizon.
Why do elected officials act as fake representatives to the people that elected them in the first place? Has it always been this way? It doesn’t matter left or right. The governing bodies should obey the people not the other way around.
If the people had their way, those suspected of child sex crimes wouldn’t even get trials. Things like privacy and due process only exist to the extent that a ruling class has the power to impose their own values, contrary to popular will.
These cases of people actually claiming to want people locked up without due process are pushed by a vocal minority (same with us - even hacker news posts with maybe a million views mean than 1% of U.S. adults read it) - almost everyone wants due process since we want the truth to come out in the most verifiable way, and the court system provides that, even if it involves humans that can be bribed, persuaded, and manipulated by rich & powerful people.
This made me come up with a thought experiment. If you sampled a thousand parents and asked them if they think sex offenders deserve a fair and just trial, what do you think the result would be?
That question is framed wrong. What you should be asking is "Should people accused of such crimes get a fair and just trial?". This makes it clear that it takes me one sentence to put you in that very position. And that's exactly the problem. Your formulation erases any question of guilt, which makes the discussion nearly impossible to win for the privacy side.
No, what they’re saying is that most people already presume guilt, even if it’s just an accusation. Further, most would be willing to engage in mob justice. I feel like you’re doing a lot of work to miss that point.
> If the people had their way, those suspected of child sex crimes wouldn’t even get trials.
Emphasis on suspected.
I agree that the question, as phrased, would be interesting and you'd probably be right that a lot of people would condone or even engage in mob justice. Given this thread, however, it seems that the actual question posed is the one I formulated.
As a side note, my formulation would also be the one to find out how likely people are to presume guilt, as the original formulation confirms guilt directly in the prompt.
I can't say this for certain, but I suspect most people are actually happy about this sort of thing; their elected representatives are doing exactly what they want.
That is interesting. I haven't met anyone who thinks privacy erosion is a good thing. We don't need to frame it as digital vs physical anymore. There is no distinction as it relates to personal privacy.
You may underestimate how much popular democratic support there is for stopping child rapists, at the cost of theoretical or even actual but low probabity privacy risks.
Right now Apple’s biggest unhappy user is the DOJ. As it stands with the legislation coming down the pipe and both previous administrations building on a keenness to ‘get something done’ about big tech, Apple will do as they’ve done in China and ‘obey the laws in each jurisdiction.’
Right now there are a lot of unwritten laws that say Apple better play right or lose quite a bit more —
So, how it’s getting done is a side show.
That said, it wasn’t long ago that they stood toe to toe with the FBI —- but there also weren’t wonderfully strong ‘sanctions’ on the horizon.