An astonishing element to all this:
— Ryan Goodman (@rgoodlaw) June 11, 2021
“The subpoena requested information on the targeted accounts BEGINNING WITH THE INCEPTION of the accounts through the day of the subpoena.”@evanperez @ErinBurnett just flagged the importance of this @OutFrontCNN.https://t.co/WypaeJ3RVM
The nondisclosure order was extended three times, each time for a year, Apple said. When it was not extended for a fourth time, Apple said it informed the affected customers on May 5, 2021.
"In this case, the subpoena, which was issued by a federal grand jury and included a nondisclosure order signed by a federal magistrate judge, provided no information on the nature of the investigation and it would have been virtually impossible for Apple to understand the intent of the desired information without digging through users' accounts," Apple said in the statement. "Consistent with the request, Apple limited the information it provided to account subscriber information and did not provide any content such as emails or pictures."
The subpoena was signed by prosecutor Jocelyn Valentine and authorized by Magistrate Judge Deborah Robinson in DC federal court, the source familiar with the request said.
The company also says it believes similar requests were sent to other technology companies and internet service providers.
What's that line about a grand jury and a ham sandwich? Or about laws not being self-executing? The idea of a grand jury is to put some kind of public involvement into the work of a prosecutor, in hopes of preventing abuses just like this. But prosecutors, like Iago in "Othello," know what to say to whom to get their ends met. If that makes them, like Iago, unscrupulous and untrustworthy and in fact a danger to society (one Iago nearly brings down the government of the Duke of Venice in Cyprus, in the course of just a few days), well....you have to see it coming or, as in the case in "Othello," come in from the outside to see exactly what's going on.
But nobody opens the doors of the grand jury and asks: "What the hell?" Of course, if you did, you wouldn't find the equivalent of Roderigo dead in the gutter and Othello having just strangled his newlywed wife. It simply wouldn't be that obvious something was wrong.
Almost coincidentally, here's another example of what I mean:
It turns out that the “concerned community leader” whose bogus complaint got @BoiseState diversity classes suspended is a state legislator. https://t.co/9vLEN3UiPK
— Adam Steinbaugh (@adamsteinbaugh) June 12, 2021
The university suspended all sections of University Foundations 200, a course with nearly 1,300 students enrolled, after learning of an allegation that a student — or students — was humiliated and degraded in class for being white, according to a report.
The source of that complaint, it turns out, was "a person who is very broadly respected, and whose words we took seriously.” And look where that got 'em. But the problem is, you can't ignore such voices, any more than you should jump when such a voice says "FROG!" This is a minor incident (the classes were reinstated a week later) compared to demanding Apple provide metadata on e-mail accounts going back to the date of inception, but the principle is the same: we expect people in power to behave responsibly. They don't always, of course; and when that happens, there needs to be recourse.
Now let's see what that looks like.
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