this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2023
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This person wrote an awful lot about the Apple/FBI issue without, apparently, bothering to learn the first thing about it.
The FBI had requested Apple to give them a special version of iOS with weakened security features so they could attempt to brute-force the passcode. If Apple had complied, the FBI (and anyone else who got their grubby hands on it, which you can bet woukld be pretty close to "everybody") could have used it on ANY iPhone.
Apple was absolutely right to deny this request. And yes, secure communication saves lives, all over the world. Why is that surprising?
That was my take too. Their overall point wasn’t bad but the start was a complete non sequitur that made me question if I wanted to finish because it’s a bad foundation for their actual argument. 
I gave up when they randomly jumped topics and I couldn't tell how they were related. And just generally felt like this essay could have been heavily edited to get it's point across.
In general I like the EFF and the ACLU, but I do think that it's not uncommon for them to end up on the "wrong" side because they extrapolate too far or are being dogmatic when most things have and require nuance.
The EFF believes every slope is very, very, very slippery indeed.
Many of them aren't that slippery. Cleaving absolutely to a hard rule is just walking away from the hard work of good governance. I wish they'd focus way more on privacy and competitive goals like adversarial interoperability and a lot less on speech because they often have an approach to speech that makes me a little gag-y.
It's funny, because the first time I heard an academic type seriously talking critically about the idea of free speech being an unfettered and absolute right was on the EFF's own podcast. Pointing out that we as a society have all kinds of very real limits on speech that nearly no one thinks of as at all controversial (e.g., anti-defamation rules, sexual harassment bans, or all kinds of conspiracy/incitement statues). Yet they then come and make statements like they did about the KiwiFarms case where the threat they believe in is just so overstated.
I think it's a lot rarer for the ACLU to have me raising my eyebrows. To me, they feel a lot more steadfast and predictable. The ACLU will defend a LOT of genuine criminals, but they do so because we factually live in a police state propped up by repeated anti-civil rights SCOTUS opinions. They do so because the outcomes of those cases WILL affect innocent people in a straight line -- the police WILL take every opportunity to violate you without a second thought even if it ISN'T allowed, and will do so with gusto when it is. I don't think there is a similar straight line with a Tier 1 ISP killing traffic to a known hate site that regularly threatens and incites violence against specific people.
The ACLU tends to rabidly support anything that labels itself as free speech, even if it actually stifles it. Most importantly, to me, their continued support for Citizens United.
But maybe that's the only real case and it's just loomed so large in my mind for the chilling impact "corporations get free speech, and their dollars count as that" has had on the US political landscape.
I never really thought about them defending that bullshit, but that's worthy of heavy criticism.
Any time you find yourself on the same side of an issue as the Cato Institute, you should think real long and hard about your position.