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UK Court Rejects Government Secrecy in Apple's Fight Against Backdoor Request
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ha I sadly went with option number 2!
I'm slowing getting use to doing things the old fashioned way again.
1) In my opinion, the reasons behind US/UK sanctions in this case are partly covered by my parenthetical about the "political bludgeon", as can be illustrated by the topic of the article which spawned this conversation.
2) What I can't believe is that otherwise seemingly intelligent people might attempt to lean into an incongruous notion that tariffs are the only things that can put two economies out of balance with respect to each other. They're obviously not -- but under US law, they do happen to be the easiest and most accessible tools available to the US president in trade negotiations. The US president routinely makes use of them, as do other governments. Trump did during his first term -- and Biden even increased tariffs over what Trump had put in place. Tariffs are really just governments doing business as usual.
As an aside: Personally I find it quite amusing that one of the many US products that the UK government says it may target for their own "reciprocal" tariffs is bourbon whiskey. If you enjoy a good bourbon, I expect that increased prices caused by tariffs is not at all likely to phase you... you're still going to buy that next bottle with hardly a second glance at the price tag. And oddly enough, this one potential tariff, taken as a microcosm of the broader situation, effectively illustrates why tariffs work.
Biden increased tariffs on products, though, didn't he? Adding/decreasing/changing tariffs on products is a normal thing to do. As I said earlier, you're allowed to have tariffs on products and each country tells the WTO what their average external tariff rate is. In 2023, it was 3.3% for the US across all products. That's tiny; as is the 3.8% average for the UK. What Trump has done is apply tariffs to countries, and he's based it on some ridiculous calculation that no economist would ever use.
So yes, whilst Biden maintained or added tariffs to certain products, as is normal, Trump is doing it to every product from every country.
It's economically illiterate.
You underestimate our resolve
But also, if the UK added a tariff to US bourbon, the US doesn't get that tariff money, it goes to the UK government. All it will do is decrease sales (there are at least some people who will stop buying US bourbon, so sales will fall) and give more UK customers' money to the UK government. This is exactly the same as what happens in the US with Trump's tariffs. He adds 54% tariffs to products from China, and a US importer has to pay 54% to the US government, but his sales will fall as people can no longer afford his products. Fewer sales means fewer jobs, means less money to buy products, means fewer sales, means fewer jobs etc. and BOOM! Recession.
You've described adequately the majority of the puzzle pieces... but I believe you've neglected to assemble them to form a complete picture. I don't claim to understand all of the pieces, but here are a few more: As you rightly pointed out, more money from tariffs goes into government coffers... but that is a two way street which applies to the US government as well. And that leads to less money needing to come from US citizens pockets to drive the machinery of that government. In addition to that, Trump is cutting spending left and right further shrinking the overall footprint of the government. So the notion that all of this leads to a recession? I wouldn't say that it is nearly as cut-and-dry as you have speculated.
But as I said before, this is all part of "Trump's Grand Gamble." We could speculate and debate for hours on end, but I imagine we won't really know the outcome of his gamble for several years at best.
Yes, it applies to any country adding tariffs, but... A tariff is a tax on the people of the country imposing the tariff. If the US imposes a tariff on China, US citizens pay the tariff, which means US citizens have less money to spend on stuff. People lose their jobs because there's less money floating around the economy.
What do you think would happen if you added 50% onto income tax rates? The government would pull in some more money, but unemployment would rise. There's a certain point at which rising taxes cause lowering incomes from those taxes.
Cutting the size of the government is usually a good thing, but Trump and his DOGE idiots are doing it in a completely dumb way. The US had Inspector Generals to weed out waste, and they did. Trump fired them. You had the CFPB to protect you from the nefarious practices of banks and other money-handling institutions. DOGE got rid of it.
Take, for example, the widely-publicised events around 150-year-olds receiving Social Security. It's nonsense. The SSA systems are written in COBOL. It has no concept of a date, and it was coded so that records missing a date were generally defaulted to a specific date, which is 150 years ago. The SSA systems - by law - automatically stop payments when someone reaches 115 years old. Either Musk and his 20-something DOGE script kiddies knew this and lied, or they didn't know this because they aren't the geniuses they claim to be. I'm gonna go with the latter, with a splash of once they found out they started lying.
Or how about firing "probationary" employees because they're "new". Most weren't new. They may have been new in that role, but they had been in that organisation for years and had been promoted or moved to another role. Sending out emails saying they're being fired for not being up to scratch is crud when their most recent performance reviews show them as outstanding government employees.
By all means, shrink the size of the government, but do it properly, and so it doesn't adversely affect the people who rely on the systems and institutions that have been built up over decades.
The Republican Congress has yet to pass any tax cuts. This means that the tariffs are piled on top of income taxes, which makes things far worse. Furthermore, doing so would make the tariffs essential for revenue, which means that they must be permanent. That means they aren’t a bullying tactic. Even though the President says they are.
So either he’s lying when he calls them a short term negotiating tactic, or he’s lying when he says that they are permanent. Either way he’s lying, and this makes the USA an unreliable trading partner.
thats actually a good argument, but I didn't assume criminals are smarty enough to code encrypted platforms but maybe they can pay someone else to build it for them.
I’m sure the smart criminals aren’t hosting evidence of crimes on iCloud, even with ADP.
All of this is just to catch the stupid ones.
And for those rich criminals money isn’t really a problem. Heck, they could setup companies that looks legit but works for criminal organisations underneath.
Any attempt to weaken encryption for lawful citizens is to make committing crime easier.
well catching stupid criminals, is still catching criminals. Reminds me of one criminal who used the liquify filter on his image only for the intelligence agency being able to reverse it and reveal his identity.
yup
how is weakening encryption makes crimes easier?
Personally speaking, I’d prefer not to have to give up liberties to make it easier for the government to catch criminals who would almost certainly get caught anyway because they’re stupid.
Understand if you disagree, but in my opinion it’s the start of a very slippery slope.
Anyone bringing up the tired old argument of "If you have nothing to hide..." why do you have curtains on your windows?
There we go.
There we go.
Because then criminals could sniff data easier, as well as breaking into supposedly protected systems. Think about banks, healthcare institutions etc. The goal of encryption is to obscure data stream to a level that decrypting it without proper keys/mechanism is nearly impossible. Weakened encryption make doing so easier.
ah..I was thinking of more "non-virtual" crimes but you are right about "hacking" crimes.
Wonder what's happening on this front, not seen any news for a while.