Thread by @normative

Everything about this is confused and wrong, but it’s especially shocking they’re still willing to trot out San Bernardino, a case where the FBI deceived the public & courts for the sake of a media-friendly test case, and gained no useful evidence at enormous cost.

Here’s the Inspector General report finding FBI didn’t seriously explore alternative ways to access the phone (which they ultimately used) because they were so psyched to have a real terrorist shooting to exploit as a legal test case. oig.justice.gov/reports/2018/o…

And here’s FBI seeking to retroactively justify the whole immensely expensive debacle by claiming they DID TOO get useful info from the phone... by confirming the shooter DIDN’T use it to contact any co-conspirators. cnn.com/2016/04/19/pol…

Also, like entirely too many of these facile pieces, the NYDN editorial completely misrepresents WHY Apple resisted (not, obviously, the “privacy” of the dead shooter, as they claim). Which suggests they don’t even understand what the debate is about.

It’s not just San Bernardino, by the way. The government is awfully fond of playing fast & loose with facts in hopes of scaring the public into weakening encryption security. zdnet.com/article/fbi-in…