Today’s words are from Stephen L. Hall!
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This morning upon my morning news show an issue was presented where a U.S. Magistrate Sheri Pym has ordered Apple Inc. to produce an application to decipher the encryption of their iPhone. Now in the normal legal parlance, to “produce” means to make available, or accessible something which is in the possession of the one ordered to “produce” it. In this case, the software sought does not actually exist. Therefore, the court is ordering the company to “produce” the software, i.e. the court is ordering a private company to actually manufacture a specific product to the court’s specifications.
In discussion, Brian Kilmeade , openly a Trump friend and supporter, readily condemned the company for refusing to create this software, an alternate iOS or operating system for the iPhone which would create a bypass or backdoor around a security feature on the phone, on the basis that such decryption could, hypothetically, stop a potential bombing from information stored on the iPhone. Hoisting the olde canard that if it saved even one life, then it was worth it. Their guest, Rudy Giuliani, went so far as to call for the company CEO to be thrown in jail for refusing to comply with this uniquely novel order.
The main reason stated by the CEO of Apple for not creating such an operating system with a backdoor to bypass the encryption was that any such backdoor could be exploited by hackers to get access to other people’s data. Anna Kooiman suggested that nerds, being nerds, (not her language) they could surely magically (again not her words) create a backdoor system which could only be used by the good guys but keep out the bad guys. Thus demonstrating that she had no idea how the technology actually works.
All of this made me start looking around the room for Rod Sterling.
The first thing to jump to my mind was that given that such software did not currently exist the court order would have to force them to create it. “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude . . . shall exist within the United States . . . .” 13th Amendment, U.S. Constitution. While the article referenced afore indicated that the court intended to compensate the company for their labour, it did not address the fundamental issue that such labour would not be voluntary. It would be the same as a court ordering someone to design a building against their will, perform a dance of a type and for audience opposed to the dancer, or to bake a cake to celebrate a ceremony against the religious beliefs of the baker. Involuntary servitude has become acceptable and isn’t even questioned by people who are supposedly conservative. This disturbs me.
Bake the cake or you will be fined $135,000. Write the software to our specifications or be thrown in prison indefinitely. Buy health insurance at inflated rates or pay a fine every year for the rest of your life. Land of the free this is not.
The insertion of the foolish mantra that “if it saves even one life, prevents even one” whatever, offends a different part of my mind, the mathematician. It is an expression of zero tolerance stupidity, which one does not typically expect to hear from people on the right, but the truth is that they are just as susceptible to the lure of the illusion of absolute or perfect compliance. Kilmeade would immediately dismiss any gun control advocate’s use of the “if it save even one life” fallacy, but then employs that same fallacious thinking when discussing invading people’s technological privacy under the word “terrorism.” Many people are issue oriented rather than intellectually consistent.
The truth is that to be absolutist in result is virtually impossible. You cannot prevent all bad things possible from happening. In studying environmental economics, the question of eliminating pollution illustrates that the cost of eliminating pollution is an exponential function, increasing increasingly rapidly towards infinity. It also shows that such costs are asymptotic, never, ever reaching zero pollution. The same is true with security, the costs, both to our finances and to our liberties, will increase exponentially and still remain asymptotic, never reaching zero but with nearly infinite cost.
In statistics there is a concept of Type I and Type II errors regarding the testing of a hypothesis, of holding true that which is actually false, and of holding false that which is actually true. A little analysis quickly shows that to decrease the likelihood of a Type I error, you increase the likelihood of a Type II error, and vice versa. This is why the very notion of “zero tolerance” is stupid. To get to zero, is always impossible and prohibitively expensive. Anyone who advocates a “zero tolerance” policy is either dishonest or foolish. “If it saves even one life” is never justification for anything.
You may as well advocate your position on the premise that “if it saves even one doughnut.” The value of the life may be more valuable than the doughnut, though I would not guarantee that, but it is by definition finite. The cost will be infinite, the reward finite, in the extreme of “zero tolerance” the reward to cost ratio approaches the worthless, zero. [ lim (r/c) = (n/∞) => 0 ]
Whether this issue or another, we are left with an abandonment of principled reasoning which would lead us to putting people in prison if they will not perform the work they are commanded, enslaving our own citizens, for the reward which is provably infinitesimal, even negligible.
Are you willing to sell your liberty so cheaply whether it is to the left or the right? In the words of Polonius, in Hamlet, “Tender yourself more dearly.”
