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Richard Clarke, former White House cybersecurity czar, says the government has always put limits on what it would do to fight terrorism, and the FBI's demands of Apple overstep them. (credit: Aude)

Another former national security official has spoken out forcefully against the FBI's quest to get Apple to write code to unlock the iPhone 5c used by San Bernardino mass shooter Syed Farook. Richard Clarke served as the National Security Council's chief counter-terrorism advisor to three presidents (George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush) before becoming George W. Bush's special advisor on cybersecurity. He told National Public Radio's David Greene today that "encryption and privacy are larger issues than fighting terrorism," taking issue with the FBI's attempts to compel Apple's assistance.

Clarke added that if he was still at the White House, he would have told FBI Director James Comey to "call Ft. Meade, and the NSA would have solved this problem…Every expert I know believes that NSA can crack this phone." But the FBI wasn't seeking that help, he said, because "they just want the precedent."

Clarke explained that the FBI was trying to get the courts to essentially compel speech from Apple with the All Writs Act. "This is a case where the federal government using a 1789 law trying to compel speech. What the FBI is trying to do is make code-writers at Apple, to make them write code that they do not want to write that will make their systems less secure," he said. "Compelling them to write code. And the courts have ruled in the past that computer code is speech."

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The FBI's legal showdown with Apple over iPhone security has spilled into just about every facet of popular culture, from endless news coverage to Congressional hearings and even to comments from President Obama. On Sunday, it got treatment from comedian John Oliver, whose weekly HBO series Last Week Tonight does a better job than most news shows covering the important news stories of the day.

In an 18-minute segment, Oliver brought the stakes of the fight front and center and explained in some of the most concrete terms yet why—contrary to the repeated claims of the Obama administration—the outcome concerns the security of mobile data everywhere. Not only that, but Oliver kept the whole thing highly entertaining while steering clear of lionizing Apple.

Think of the government as your dad

Putting to rest the FBI's highly flawed analysis that the debate is about the security of a single iPhone belonging to slain San Bernardino shooter Syed Rizwan Farook, Oliver reminded his audience that law enforcement officers have a whole battery of other seized iPhones they also want unlocked. Compelling Apple engineers to develop a special version of iOS that bypasses safety features built in to Farook's phone, then, is only the beginning. Or as Oliver put it:

An Image used by ISIS supporters combines the Twitter logo with the ISIS flag. (credit: Federal Court documents)

Twitter says US law forbids it from being legally liable for what others write on the micro-blogging service, so it is citing the Communications Decency Act in a bid to stamp out a lawsuit accusing the platform of being a "tool for spreading extremist propaganda" that allegedly led to the murder of a US citizen working in Jordan last year. Twitter said:

In enacting Section 230, Congress unequivocally resolved (PDF) the question whether computer service providers may be held liable for harms arising from content created by third parties. Announcing the policy of the United States to preserve the “free market that presently exists for the Internet... unfettered by Federal or State regulation,” 47 U.S.C. § 230(b)(2), Congress broadly immunized entities like Twitter against lawsuits that seek to hold them liable for harmful or unlawful third-party content, including suits alleging that such entities failed to block, remove, or alter such content, id. § 230(c)(1).

The suit concerns a Louisiana woman whose husband, Lloyd "Carl" Fields Jr., was murdered in Jordan last year where he was working as a private contractor. Tamara Fields claims Twitter's platform was a vehicle for terrorists to spew their hatred and plot jihad.

AUSTIN, Texas—In October, the South By Southwest festival canceled plans to host a pair of 2016 SXSW Interactive panels amid worries about threats of violence and disruption. Public outcry soon followed, with critics pointing out the irony of a panel about online threats and abuse being canceled for that very reason. SXSW responded by not only reinstating the panels but by attaching them to an even larger, full-day Online Harassment Summit.

While the resulting event on Saturday proved notable for its variety of speakers and their diverse thoughts on how to both moderate and protect various kinds of online speech, it was nearly overshadowed by a frosty pall. SXSW's Online Harassment Summit is the only event in the festival's 22-year run to include a security checkpoint—which visitors had to pass through every time they re-entered its building—and its panels were introduced with reminders that unattended bags would be "confiscated and destroyed" by guards on site, no questions asked.

Between those issues, an overstuffed panel schedule, and the summit venue's long walk from the SXSW downtown-Austin core, the resulting event was dampened by small and thinly spread crowds. There was nothing meek about the content, however. What the Online Harassment Summit lacked in headline-grabbing conflict, it made up for with compelling voices that saw tech, policy, and academic experts finding common ground on the subject of antagonistic and threatening online speech. At its best, the results included informed analysis, mountains of data, and calls to specific action—all while trying to balance both free and responsible speech with paradigms that looked beyond the United States' model.