Today marks the 80th anniversary of the first flight of the Spitfire fighter prototype.
See also my post from last year: the Battle of Britain + 75
Tech
Who is giving Apple legal advice?
The government is asking Apple to give it the password to Syed Rizwan Farook’s iPhone and iCloud account. Apple is refusing to do so based on its First Amendment rights. This seems to me to be a very weak argument. Just ask Judith Miller. And there really is very little difference. Apple will have to spend $100,000 to comply and all Judith Miller needed to do was name a source. But Apple’s case involves a national security threat to each and every American whereas Judith Miller’s involved only an implausible threat to Valerie Plame who chose to garner all kinds of media attention thereafter. If there were a safe deposit box the government wanted opened, it would go to a court and get an order for the bank to drill the locks out so that the box could be removed. The bank would comply. Apple will lose.
And if Apple does not lose, the matter will go, as its pleading requests and as it may, even if it loses, now that Apple has made such a ruckus, from the fairly rational precincts of the judiciary to the fully irrational floor of the Congress. Let’s suppose that before legislation is completed there is another domestic terror incident in the US and the terrorist used an Apple iPhone. What kind of legislation would Apple get after that? While not yet widely known, Apple has likely put a back door into every Chinese iPhone via a Chinese designed chip added to the iPhone at China’s insistence for phones sold in the PRC. If this is confirmed, Congress would go even more non-linear.
And what other things might the government do if Apple were to prevail? Well, in the extreme it could ask GCHQ or some other foreign service to crack the iPhone in general. No device is uncrackable. It could also signal the Chinese that it would not be aggressive in pursuing IP violations by China in the case of Apple products. Apple is refusing to cooperate with its government in the first responsibility of that government, to protect its citizens. There would be consequences. Is it really good legal advice to let your client take such risks?
Apple should have quietly cut a deal with the government that would offer its customers the maximum security and quietly complied with court orders until a truly offensive order was received. Barring that, Apple would have a far better argument saying that ordering it to break its phones would lower their value to customers, lowering Apple’s revenues, and lowering Apple’s market cap. This would constitute an uncompensated taking by the Federal government of enormous monetary value from every Apple shareholder for which Apple should be compensated.
With existing technology, you have no privacy. Products are in development that will allow retailers to know how long you look at an item on a shelf, if you pick it up, if you return it to the shelf, how long you look at it and if you buy it. And if you wear an iWatch or other wearable, it will know how much your pulse and bp increased at each step of engagement. If you use gmail, as almost everyone seems to, Google knows the content of every email you send and receive. Who is more likely to release or resell your email, Google or the FBI? The Silicon Valley forces lining up against the government are the most probable threat to what you think is your privacy. It’s been almost 20 years since Scott McNealy said “You’ve got no privacy. Get over it.”
Apple will be made out to be protecting the ability of terrorists to communicate in secret. We are at war with these terrorists. They will kill any of us where ever they can. Article III, section 3 of the Constitution states,”Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort.” That sounds a lot like what Apple is seeking to do under protection of the first amendment’s emanations and penumbras.
Tim Cook is engaging in the same kind of magical thinking that has dominated the boomer elite and led to so many tragedies for the last 24 years. Losing wars has consequences.
Could iPhones be built robotically in the USA?
What if someone were to apply the computer-controlled logistics system of an Amazon.com type business with robotic manufacturing? At Amazon, parts are stocked and retrieved robotically, inventories are updated, parts ordered, payments made, payments received, all with a minimum of human intervention. Humans manage the system, the system does the grunt work. Everything that can be automated is.
Combine that with robotic assembly, robotic inspection, robotic test, robotic packaging and shipping, and it seems one could easily compete with China for manufacturing a product like an iPhone. If something seems obvious yet does not occur, then one has not accounted for some key thing.
From my perspective, the key engine of economic growth is manufacturing; taking raw or less valuable material, applying know-how and capability, and creating something with greater net worth than the sum of its raw material worth. It is the foundation of wealth creation. And wealth creation is the foundation of a healthy economy, a high standard of living, social stability and opportunity.
Are we so tangled up in taxes and EPA and OSHA regulations we simply cannot manufacture anything competitively in the United States any longer, even with robots? If so, what is the solution, realistically? Is it possible to reform the regulatory state or does it need to be discarded, starting fresh? Can the tax system be fixed or should it burned and rebuilt? What is required to get manufacturing back on track in the United States?
Disruption – Part Three – Retail
I have been considering “disruption”, including what is hype and what is real. Here is one on the cab industry where it occurred and in the electric and gas utility industry which has proven resilient in its current business model.
While “retail” is a nebulous category, it is one that touches virtually everyone in the USA. Let’s start with the definition of retail:
the sale of goods to the public in relatively small quantities for use or consumption rather than for resale.
My experience with retail has been that of a consumer, although I live in an area near Michigan Avenue which features a huge variety of stores of all types, from mass market to high end “showcase” stores. I also have a long history with e-commerce, having been involved in a variety of businesses helping them to go “online” and “digital” from the earliest days of the web. Since the primary threat to modern retail today is from e-commerce, this experience is relevant.
This chart above is from a recent Business Insider article on retail. The graph clearly shows how shopping is moving from the physical retailer to the online retailer, and it is being accelerated by the adoption of mobile technologies (which enable you to shop and research while on the move, not just when you are in front of your computer at a desk).
“Breaking the iPhone: Once again, conservative establishment is urgently, insistently wrong”
But I don’t have any confidence that the Fox panel would have been smarter if its members understood the issue better. The real problem was that they didn’t come down in principle on the side of privacy. They could have at least expressed regret, or been reluctant about siding with the FBI.
But they were slavering urgently for whatever measure the FBI demanded to get into Syed Farook’s iPhone as if all our lives depended on giving law enforcement any privacy-busting capability it sees a need for.
Technology doesn’t change the fact that this perspective is the opposite of the perspective of the Fourth Amendment. If our highest priority should be opening the people’s lives up to law enforcement, in case there are terror links lurking in our coupon drawers, then we should throw the Fourth Amendment out and require the people to all give the police keys to our homes, so it will be less of a hassle for them to get in whenever they declare a need to.
Conservatives are supposed to be smarter than this. Let’s walk through it briefly to clarify why there is no need to bust the built-in security feature of the iPhone for the FBI’s general convenience.
Worth reading in full.