The FBI vs. Apple

The FBI asked Apple to help it “unlock” Farook’s phone, but Apple insisted that the necessary software doesn’t exist. That’s the whole point of the encryption, Apple contends: You buy an iPhone with the assurance that nobody — not your neighbors, not the government, not even Apple itself — can invade your privacy.

Some computer geeks say Apple could create the necessary software if it really wanted to. So last week, at the Justice Department’s request, a federal magistrate judge in California ordered Apple to invent a way to bypass the phone’s security features.

Apple will surely appeal the order. “The same engineers who built strong encryption into the iPhone to protect our users would, ironically, be ordered to weaken those protections and make our users less safe,” whined Apple chief executive Timothy Cook.

Cancer cure

But set those trivial objections aside for the moment and consider the exciting implication here: Just when all of us thought government had exhausted its creative juices, Judge Sheri Pym has conceived a nifty new coercive function for Big Brother: Instead of preventing citizens from doing bad things or incentivizing them to do good things, why not force them to do good things?

Consider the possibilities for federal judges:

• They could order biotechnology researchers to invent a cure for cancer.
• They could order economists to eliminate global poverty.
• They could order scientists to invent a cheap and renewable energy alternative to coal, oil, and gas.
• They could order Jennifer Higdon to write an opera whose melodies, when listened to, would transform Donald Trump and Ted Cruz into kind and gentle people.
• They could order Charles Krauthammer just once to write something nice about President Obama in his column.
• They could order me to write a favorable review of a play by Terrence McNally or Bruce Graham.

(Come to think of it, they could order me to find a cure for cancer and Charles Krauthammer to compose an opera. They could also order Terrence McNally or Bruce Graham to write a play that I won’t find intellectually shallow.)

I used to believe that the courts possess the power to deprive me of my property, my liberty, or even my life, but they can’t force me to think, say, or do anything without my consent. Hoo boy, was I dim.

Bush-Cheney solution

Let’s cut to the chase. What’s really at issue in FBI vs. Apple?

Just this: Law enforcement agencies need evidence to catch and prosecute terrorists. They believe the best way to obtain such evidence is to tap into an alleged terrorist’s iPhone. To achieve that end, the FBI is jumping through all sorts of convoluted and time-consuming legal hoops to force a technology company to invent a process that the company doesn’t want to invent because such an invention would destroy the bond of trust that the company worked so hard to build with its customers.

But I ask you: Is there no simpler and faster way to elicit information about terrorists? Am I the only American who recalls how effectively the Bush-Cheney administration utilized torture for precisely this purpose, barely a decade ago? It worked so well then — why not now?

Obama's problem

Legal sticklers will object that the FBI can’t torture Mr. and Mrs. Farook because they’re dead. But surely the FBI can torture somebody. And you can rest assured that information obtained under torture will prove at least as useful as whatever the FBI is likely to find on Syed Rizwan Farook’s iPhone. And even if information obtained through torture is worthless, the mere act of waterboarding helpless suspects or applying electric cattle prods to their genitals will provide a therapeutic outlet for frustrated public servants while simultaneously demonstrating America’s toughness and resolve to terrorists worldwide.

That’s the great thing about torture. It’s the gift that keeps on giving.

The real issue, then, is the Obama administration’s intellectual bankruptcy, especially when contrasted to the creativity of the Bush-Cheney administration. Yes we can? Obama said it, but Bush’s consigliere John Yoo really meant it.

How soon we forget.