The US government is demanding Apple unlock iPhones in about a dozen
cases beside the San Bernardino one.
In a strikingly similar case, Judge James Orenstein
in Brooklyn rejected the government's request for three separate reasons.
In the decision
the judge refers several times to the San Bernardino case, and it
is clear he expects this decision to be an important precedent for that one.
In June 2014 the government arrested Jun Feng in Queens NY on drug charges and
confiscated his iPhone 5S.
Over a year later, in July 2015 got a warrant to search the phone and found that
it was locked. In October they filed a proposed order under the 1789 All Writs
Act (AWA) to have Apple unlock the phone.
It appears that Apple initially cooperated and suggested some of the language in
the proposed order, but if so they changed their minds and opposed it.
The Domain Name System is now over 25 years old.
Since the publication of RFCs 1034 and 1035 in 1987, there have been over 100
RFC documents published that extend and clarify the original DNS specs.
Although the basic design of the DNS hasn't changed, its definition is now
extremely complex, enough so that it's a challenging task to tell whether
a DNS package correctly implements the specs.
At NetHui last week one of the most
interesting sessions was
Is there an app for that?.
The issue was that while apps can be easy to use, they are little walled gardens within an app store
which is another level of walled garden.
Last week I was in Auckland NZ for the Internet Society board meeting
and the impressively successful InterCommunity
2015 online event.
Immediately after that (in the same room, even) was
NetHui 2015, an annual event about the Internet
by and for New Zealanders.
NZ is an unusual place. It has the population of Louisiana spread out
over an area the size of California, with about 1/3 of them in and
near Auckland and the south island still very sparsely settled, with a population
still small enough that it feels like everyone knows everyone else. It is
as developed as any other first world country, but is a long way from
other similarly developed countries. (Australia is 3 1/2 hours away
by air.) It has close connections to many
small Pacific islands, and has a significant number of Maori, who have
gained considerable economic influence in recent decades.
Every year M3AAWG
gives an award for lifetime work in fighting abuse and making the
Internet a better place.
Yesterday at its Dublin meeting they
awarded
it to Rodney Joffe, who has been quietly working for
over 20 years. I can't imagine anyone who deserves it more.
Since he wasn't able to attend in person, they made a video of an
informal interview in which he recounts a lot of what he's done,
with a few comments from his friends.
Also see
Laura
Atkins' story about how Rodney got her into the anti-abuse
world.
