Sunday, April 10, 2016

@potus arguments against suing apple

Some years back, I worked for a multi-national conglomerate.  They bought a Silicon Valley company, while I was working there, in the hopes of bolstering their semi-conductor manufacturing division.  They bought this company hoping to keep it mostly intact and integrate it into their existing division.

Unfortunately, the conglomerate was not able to persuade the employees in the target company to stay.  Everyone left and the conglomerate was left with nothing, basically an empty bag, which was a grave disappointment.

Having watched this fiasco, I am very concerned with what is going on with the US government suing Apple to try to force Apple to unlock phones. 

Apple has already said that their security department may quit if anyone tries to force them to unlock the phones. 

I don’t think that the US government is really taking this possibility seriously enough.  If all of Apple’s experienced security engineers quit, this will handicap them in making future products and in maintaining existing products.  If the government keeps pushing after that, more engineers may quit.  This could actually destroy the company.

People in Washington don’t understand Silicon Valley culture.  They don’t understand how mobile techies out there are.

Apple is a big company that employs lots of people.  The US government should not be attempting to force this situation.  They don’t see how it’s a scorched earth policy.  They don’t see how they might be endangering one of our most important employers.

This whole situation is illustrative of the classic legal principle that equity will generally be reluctant to affirmatively force people to take certain actions.  Injunctions are more favored.

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