654 Sanders, Harris & Cook
In his recent podcast Sam Harris - as part of “house-keeping” (before he gets into the title issue of his talk [Meat without Misery: the future of food production]) - touches on a couple of issues that are either in the news right now, or pertinent for anyone who doesn’t want Cruz or Trump to become president of the USA.
Let's start with the issue of Clinton vs. Sanders ... to begin with, I'll say this: I like Bernie Sanders, he's a socialist, I'm a democratic socialist (that's what we are called in Europe), Social Democracy is a big deal in countries like Germany and Denmark. So my sympathies lie with Bernie Sanders in the American election landscape.
But here's the rub: If Sanders becomes the Democrats' candidate for the presidency, the Republicans will tear him apart. So much so that they could very well win the election. Clinton would have a much greater chance of winning. That is the reality supporters of Sanders face. And who would become president if the Republicans get their way? Cruz or Trump. OMG. (Is this of any consequence in Aus? YOU BET.)
The other issue he talks about is the ethics of the encryption of mobile (cell) phones, like the iPhone. This issue was brought to a head this week, when Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, refused to help authorities to get access to the content of a terrorist/murderer's iPhone. Not good, Mr. Cook; mind you, he got lots of support from the techies community. Read more at New York mag.
I found this on hackaday.com:
In plain English, the court order
asks Apple to create a special version of iOS that works on only one iPhone -
the phone recovered from the San Bernardino shooting. This custom version of
iOS would never leave the Apple campus. After all, according to the court
order, the FBI only wants the data on the phone and not a method to extract
data from every iPhone they come across.
This is technically possible. New
firmware can be uploaded to the recovered iPhone via DFU. This new firmware
would require a valid signature from Apple, and the FBI does not have the keys
Apple uses to sign firmware ... (so) it is technically feasible for Apple to comply with all of the FBI’s requests.
This request would not necessarily make every iPhone insecure, and to limit the
risk of abuse, the tools created to assist in this request can be customized to
only work with the iPhone recovered from the San Bernardino shooting.
So, what's going on? Could it be that Apple simply wants to uphold their marketing claim that iPhones are secure, ad infinitum? It is probably not politically correct - for a Leftie - to side with the government and/or the FBI ... but listen to Sam Harris.
Furthermore, Harris makes the point that there are about a hundred or so iPhones law enforcement agencies suspect contain footage of a murder victim filming their murderer ... which they can't get access to. Methinks it is not reasonable that tech companies like Apple do not assist in those cases.
Last not least, the main subject matter of the podcast is worth listening to also ...