Ethics Assignment #4

The FBI vs. Apple Corp

            “Governments have been frothing at the mouth hoping for an opportunity to pressure companies like Apple into building backdoors into their products in an effort to enable more sweeping surveillance” says Evan Greer, Fight for the Future Internet rights activist group. I couldn’t agree more and truly believe James Rachels would also agree whole-heartedly as well.

In his 1975 essay “Why Privacy is Important”, James outlines the importance of having a sense of privacy as he explains that in order to be able to control the relationships that we have with other people, we must have control over who has access to us. James goes on to mention the moral issues of revealing one’s deepest feelings to strangers. He states that our aspirations, our problems, our frustrations and disappointments are things that we may confide only to our wives and husbands and dearest friends, but it is absolutely out of the question to speak of such matters to people we don’t even know. Privacy, as James states, is all about respecting and promoting individualism.

In respect to the tech world, Apple’s Tim Cook states in his press release to customers the fact that smartphones have become an essential part of our daily lives. People use them to store an incredible amount of personal information, from our private conversations to our photos, our music, our notes, our calendars and contacts, our financial information and health data, even where we have been and where we are going.” Personally, I do not want pictures of myself naked to be seen by anyone, except maybe a girlfriend. That’s why agreeing with James Rachels and Tim Cook to me is essential, I just don't want anyone collecting information about me, without my consent to do so. I believe James Rachels would absolutely agree with this argument. He goes on to state in his essay: If a person has a reasonable desire to keep something private, it is disrespectful to ignore that person’s wishes without a compelling reason to do so.

It seems to me in this case is yet another damn attempt for the government trying to over-reach the boundaries of citizen privacy, yet again. The government will have you believe that creating a backdoor would be limited to cases such as the San Bernardino shooting and realistically that’s so far from the truth. There have been dozens of cases in the past couple decades in which government employees, in particular the NSA, have been caught utilizing the intelligence gathering system to snoop on their love interest. In a 2004 case, a civilian employee told the NSA security that she had spied on a foreign phone number because she found it on her husband’s cell phone and she suspected he was being unfaithful and she collected his phone calls. The employee’s infraction was deferred to the Justice Department, but she resigned before she could be fired. Which is the issue with many other similar cases in which government employees who intentionally abuse the available technology for their own agenda and simply either resign before they could be punished or were demoted in rank.

Let’s face the truth, the more someone knows about us, the more power they can have over us. Personal data is used to make very important decisions in our lives. It can affect our reputations and it can influence our decisions that shape our behavior. It can be used as a tool to exercise control over us. And in the wrong hands, personal data can be used to cause us great harm.

I agree with Reverend Cyan about this whole Apple vs. FBI being a sham. Snowden released information back in 2014 pertaining iPhone/Android Smurf kits that were being used by government agencies. They’re just simply upset that Apple closed the door on them after spending a billion dollars on the program. This is just another sorry ass attempt by those uptight government officials to know more about us so that they can impose more power over us. Honestly, what they should do is simply hire better staff as proposed by John McAfee, you know, the crazy looking hackers with earrings and facial tattoos that demand half a million and the freedom to smoke pot while on the job, you know the really talented ones…lol.

The sad thing is that we were told way back in the 70’s and 80’s that the USSR was terrible because the KGB had spies everywhere and that they would listen to everyone’s conversations and so no one could truly ever be free. Sound familiar? Because it’s happening as we speak here in America!

As Eddy Snowden puts it – “Arguing that you don’t care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don’t care about free speech because you have nothing to say”.

http://www.businessinsider.com/john-mcafee-apple-fbi-13th-amendment-2016-2

http://ethicalhackingbhcc.blogspot.com/2016/02/for-this-weeks-assignment-applicable.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WARRIOR_PRIDE

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Rachels

https://www.fightforthefuture.org/news/2016-02-17-rallies-planned-at-apple-stores-nationwide-to/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/02/22/fbi-director-urges-apple-to-help-unlock-killers-iphone-in-passionate-statement-its-about-the-victims-and-justice/

http://www.apple.com/customer-letter/