> James Comey, director of the FBI, said on Thursday that the cost was “worth it”, but added that an accommodation needed to be made with Apple and other technology companies in the future, as paying outside technologists to find ways to access highly-encrypted messages on phones used by terrorist suspects was not “scalable.”
That is exactly what we want. If its clearly in the public interest to expended substantial effort as part of a criminal investigation, they absolutely should do so.
The problem is they want scalable access to everything.
Was there something on the phone what made it worth it? I don't know if I understand the hypocrisy of hn. We cry "oh humanity" when Ford pays $50k over sticker for a new Tesla car for reverse engineering but of course if the FBI does something then surely they were judicious with their purse strings.
> Was there something on the phone what made it worth it?
It doesn't matter to me tbh. They want to investigate, they can.
I just don't want them to be able to "scale" their investigations like they seem to want so they can get into all encrypted communications without a serious financial hurdle because they'll abuse it.
> I don't know if I understand the hypocrisy of hn. We cry "oh humanity" when Ford pays $50k over sticker for a new Tesla car for reverse engineering but of course if the FBI does something then surely they were judicious with their purse strings.
I didn't. Generalizing like that is unhealthy because it causes you to make some silly assumptions.
That is exactly what we want. If its clearly in the public interest to expended substantial effort as part of a criminal investigation, they absolutely should do so.
The problem is they want scalable access to everything.