Editor’s note: This guest post is by “GWB”, a reader and friend of Victory Girls. His post is written by request, because of this comment on the post “Apple vs. the FBI” by VG writer, Deanna Fisher.

Fundamentals of Freedom: The FBI/Apple Kerfuffle by GWB

I was asked to do a guest post based on my comment on the FBI/Apple kerfuffle. I am honored, and will do my best to not knock over any of the knick-knacks or spill punch on the carpet. (Holy cow! What did you ladies put in this punch? *cough* Smoooooooth.)

An awful lot of the writing about this incident centers around two primary (and important) principles: privacy (and trusting the government) and justice (including what might be termed “preventative” measures). This is a vital discussion, part of the mussy to-and-fro of democracy.

Deanna Fisher did an excellent post on the discussion of those two principles. And Kim Quade has previously addressed law enforcement’s anger at being closed out of iPhones by Apple’s privacy software. I won’t rehash any of that.

What struck me is that no one seemed to be complaining about what I consider to be a much more fundamental problem:

Last week, the FBI got a judge to order Apple to create software

Yes, the judge, in response to the FBI’s request, actually ordered Apple to do something that is found nowhere within the law, nowhere within the normal jurisdiction of Apple, and nowhere within common law that I can find.

Let me say that if Apple had broken a law, or there was a law saying they had to help the FBI, the judge would have a much stronger point. (And, yes, any law saying you must help law enforcement or government agents would generally be – at least in better days – considered un-Constitutional.) Such laws have been proposed (requiring “back doors” available to law enforcement, though the populist backlash against them has been tremendous to this point.