Privacy vs. Life and the “Dilemma” of Apple

The news is that the federal government has compelled Apple to break their inscription that ensures the privacy of Iphone users. Apple is refusing.

Which reminds me that civil disobedience isn’t what it used to be.

But I digress.

Who’s right? Apple or the government?

Let me pose a thought experiment: Let’s say that someone has kidnapped your child and hidden her somewhere. And let’s say that the police surrounded the kidnapper who, after a standoff, killed himself. The police break down the door and find only the kidnapper’s dead body and an Iphone that has been secured which the police have reason to believe contains data that reveal the whereabouts of your child. There is no one else that is suspected of having any information that could lead to your daughter. In the meantime, you don’t know if she is hurt, if she is being raped by accomplices, if she is unconscious and bleeding out. You don’t know anything, but the Iphone may have some clues.

Do you believe that Apple should refuse to provide a means to break the encryption?

If your answer “Yes, Apple should refuse,” I question your sanity; I question your humanity; I question your parenting skills and your heart.

What does it say about a person who would sacrifice the life of his or her own child in order to protect Iphone encryption?

I would suggest it says a lot, and none of it very good. In fact, if you believe that, I would keep it to yourself so no one else finds out how calloused you are towards life, particularly of your own family?

Strong words? Yes. So tell me why I am wrong. Explain to me why Iphone encryption is of greater importance than life.

In the current case, the phone belongs to one of the San Bernadino shooters who killed fourteen people and wounded twenty-two more. The phone could provide information as to other plans for mass murder, or provide information as to other people involved in terrorism plots.

Now, in case I have been too subtle, I will go ahead and put my cards right out on the table: I am of the mind that life is more important than privacy of an Iphone using criminal who is endangering the lives of others. I cannot think of a good reason that Apple should refuse provide to the government the means by which to break the encryption. I have seen a lot of handwringing and fearmongering about it. But rational arguments? I haven’t seen any of those yet. And I can’t imagine what rational argument there is.

The government has a long history of being to perform, with legal approval, reasonable searches and seizures. It was written right into the Constitution that all states agreed to to join the union. And it seems entirely reasonably (no pun intended) that such searches fit that category.

Such searches are reasonable, based on the facts as known at the time. They are not guarantees of success. They are not without danger.

Sure, a government might hatch a pretense of an argument that can unreasonably invade the privacy of its citizens. It already happens. It’s not new. It’s not good. But it’s rare.

I believe the use of such encryption breaking ability should be used as it is in any other investigation—with a demonstrable probable cause approved by a dispassionate judge and a limited scope of searching. It’s not a ticket to an open-ended fishing expedition.

Those who say that Apple should refuse may be endangering the lives of others. Notice, I said “may be.”

Let’s pose another thought experiment: Let’s say that, God forbid, there is another terrorist attack which kills a dozen or so people, and wounds another two dozen. In the aftermath, it is discovered that the new terrorists had connections to the San Bernadino shooters, connections that would have have been uncovered with access to the Iphone. Such access would have provided information that could have stopped the shootings.

Does that change your mind?

What if one of those dozen fatalities is your spouse? Or your parent? Or your child? Or your neighbor?

Does that change your mind?

It shouldn’t take a close friend dying to make us think about this.

If we are pro-life, then let’s be pro-life all the way. Let’s not be pro-life after we are pro-privacy. That was the basis of Roe v. Wade—that a right to privacy supercedes whatever life may be extinguished in the meantime. In other words, your privacy with your doctor was more important than your child.

And that’s why the initial thought experiment is not far off from reality. It’s just an Iphone instead of a doctor.

I understand privacy concerns. I am not wild about the government, or anyone else for that matter, rifling through my phone or my computer. I would be mortified for people in authority to find out how boring my life actually is. I would prefer to keep the sad state of my existence to myself.

But frankly, I find the right to life more important.

Ben Franklin is reported to have said that those who give up freedom for security deserve neither. It may be that that those who refuse to give up some freedom for some security shall soon have neither.

I think many Christians—evangelical, Bible-believing, Jesus-loving Christians—have bought into the God of America. That our constitution is sacrosanct, and that our rights to certain things go hand in hand with the Bible, and may, in fact, go ahead of the Bible.

America isn’t God’s chosen people. And the Constitution didn’t come by divine inspiration.

Yes, the government may one day decide to outlaw Christianity. But if it take a violation of my privacy to find me guilty, I have bigger problems than constitutional ones.

My friends, let me urge us to take life seriously. If we are going to be pro-life, let’s be pro-life even it means giving up something else.

On the Indictment of a Texas Grand Jury

Yesterday, word came that a Texas grand jury had indicted two of the people behind the Planned Parenthood expose from last summer. If you have forgotten, shame on you—forgetting these kinds of things is part of the problem. However, I will recap.

Undercover videos revealed that Planned Parenthood was involved in deeply offensive and almost certainly illegal selling of body parts of aborted babies. They were frequently glib and calloused about it. While the PP defenders claimed creative editing was to blame for the message, the videographers released the whole videos which showed that it was not creative editing that made Planned Parenthood look bad; it was Planned Parenthood that made Planned look bad. Of course, moral thinking people did not need video evidence. We already knew there were problems with the abortion industry.

Back to the point, these two men who posed as undercover buyers of body parts to expose the evil inside PP were indicted by a Texas grand jury while Planned Parenthood of the Gulf Coast was exonerated—for the time being.

This is, in fact, an indictment of the grand jury.

How in the world are there twelve people in Texas who came to the conclusion that these two men who clearly had no intent to buy body parts (given their strong prolife position) were likely guilty for something they never intended to do, namely, buy body parts?

Some have complained about the undercover nature of these videos. 

The use of undercover stings or misleading interviews is well established in many facets of American life. Police frequently mislead suspects in interrogations and are immune from prosecution for it in most cases. Police pose as prostitutes, as drug buyers, and as drug dealers.

In the height of irony, police regularly participate in online undercover stings posing as minor children to catch child sexual predators, but when two men participate in an undercover sting to catch child killers, they are indicted. You can apparently mislead about anything except saving a baby’s life.

Isaiah was surely right: “Woe to those who call good evil” (Isaiah 5:26).

Shame on the Texas grand jury. Shame on the prosecutor. Shame on Planned Parenthood. Shame on their defenders.

Food for Thought

On every university campus I visit, somebody stands up and says that God is an evil God to allow all this evil into our world. This person typically says, ‘A plane crashes: Thirty people die, and twenty people live. What kind of a God would arbitrarily choose some to live and some to die?’

But when we play God and determine whether a child within a mother’s womb should live, we argue for that as a moral right. So when human beings are given the privilege of playing God, it’s called a moral right. When God plays God, we call it an immoral act. Can you justify this for me?”

Zacharias, Ravi. “Reaching the ‘Happy-Thinking Pagan.’” Growing Your Church through Evangelism and Outreach. Ed. Marshall Shelley. 1st ed. Nashville, TN: Moorings, 1996. 18.

Around the Horn – 1/15/16

At first, Denny Burk has a helpful response to people who doubt or deny the Bible because they think the Bible supports slavery. A lot of Bible believers struggle with this issue because instinctively they know it doesn’t sound right, but they don’t know how to answer it. Sometimes they just give up and concede the point, against their better judgment, As with other issues, like the Bible’s treatment of women for instance, people who doubt the Bible based on slavery likely haven’t read the Bible very closely, if at all. Burk’s response should be helpful and clarifying.

At second is an interesting article on the often forgotten victims of sex crimes and sexual abuse. Much attention is given to the physical victims of sexual violence and abuse, and much attention is given to the perpetrators. But as this article reminds us, there is often family—spouses, children, parents, and others—who suffer. This is a sad story that should provoke some thought about how we minister to everyone connected to these crimes.

At third is an excellent article about the pastor as an iceberg. At its root, it is an encouragement to do more than study for this week. In fact, it encourages to read and study things far and wide because those things have a way of building a foundation of thought that cannot be seen, but will inform us in so many ways we have never thought of. It’s okay to read something that’s not relevant to anything on the preaching schedule in the foreseeable future. In fact, it’s not only okay. It’s preferable.

Last this week, Scott Clark provides an online “Curriculum For Those Wrestling Through Covenant Theology and Infant Baptism.” For those interested in this topic, Clark provides fourteen links to various articles. He also reveals the position’s weakness when he says, “one’s understanding of baptism is really the product of a number of other assumptions and conclusions that one has already drawn about the nature of the history of redemption and about how the Bible is to be read and interpreted.” In reality, we don’t need a number of assumptions and conclusions about these things. We can go to the Bible and study baptism and see what it entails. In every case where the particulars are mentioned, it entails believers and lots of water. There are no instances of baptism in the Bible that involve non-believers (including infants) or little bits of water. Having seen that from the Bible itself, we can then draw some conclusions from that. Should we really believe that with all this infant baptism going on that the Holy Spirit did not inspire even one apostle to make even one reference to it? That is a bridge too far for me. Although if you are of Clark’s persuasion, you don’t need a bridge to get across that baptismal font.

On the Championship Game

Last night, Alabama defeated Clemson 45-40 to win the NCAA Football National Championship. It was a good game. It was probably the best championship game since Texas-USC. Two good teams came to play hard.

I still marvel at those who claimed Alabama was going to win big or win going away. I never thought that. If there was a blowout or a big margin, I thought it would be in Clemson’s favor because of their explosive offense. But I thought it would be a close game. And it was.

They say defense wins championships. Well, there was a lot of offense last night. Over a combined one thousand yards. Clemson’s DeShaun Watson passed for 405 and ran for 73 more. Alabama’s Jake Coker passed for 335 and Derrick Henry ran for 158.

But the big problem for Clemson was big play. Clemson simply gave up too many.

Here’s the stat of the night: For Alabama, just six plays accounted for 280 yards. When you add in the return touchdown of 95 yards, that means that 375 of Alabama’s 473 yards came on just seven plays. That’s right: 80% of the offensive production came on seven plays.

Some of those receivers were so wide open in Arizona that I could have completed a pass from my living room couch in Michigan.

It is hard to win when you give that up.

There was a clear officiating blunder that may have made a difference. At the end of the first half, the clock failed to stop on Clemson’s first down, which made them waste a time out and cost them at least one play. A 44-yard field goal attempt was blocked. Give them the extra play they should have had and that field goal may have been shorter and easier. And that means a five point deficit is now two points. But the officials were bailed out of that by the final score. Of course, if the game is three points closer, both teams are playing differently.

The onsides kick was a gutsy call and Swinney threw a fit about it. He may have a good case. His argument was that in the Clemson-USC game in 2014, Clemson had recovered an onside kick only to have it overturned because they did not allow the receiver an unimpeded chance to recover the ball.

Here is the play starting at the 28:00 mark:

What was the right call? I am not sure.

The NCAA rule book Rule 6 Article 3 (p. FR-64) specifies that “No Team A [kicking tean] player may touch a free-kicked ball until after: 1. It touches a Team B player (Exception: Rules 6-1-4 and 6-5-1-b); 2. It breaks the plane of and remains beyond Team B’s restraining line (Exception: Rule 6-4-1) (A.R. 2-12-5-I); or 3. It touches any player, the ground, an official or anything beyond Team B’s restraining line.”

However, it also specifies “A player of the receiving team within the boundary lines attempting to catch a kick, and so located that he could have caught a free kick or a scrimmage kick that is beyond the neutral zone, must be given an unimpeded opportunity to catch the kick.”

The play last night did not appear to have a receiving team player attempting to make the catch or in a position to make the catch, although it is possible he could have made a diving catch. It’s hard to tell how far away he was.

In the end, it’s hard to say the better team won. But it would have been equally hard to say that if Clemson had won. Clemson won in almost every statiscal category except time of possession where Bama edged them by less than a minute. But Bama won in the only place that matters—the scoreboard.