The Dangerous All Writs Act Precedent in the Apple Encryption Case
http://www.newyorker.com/news/amy-davidson/a-dangerous-all-w...
"Tim Cook, the C.E.O. of Apple, which has been ordered to help the F.B.I. get into the cell phone of the San Bernardino shooters, wrote in an angry open letter this week that “the U.S. government has asked us for something we simply do not have, and something we consider too dangerous to create.” The second part of that formulation has rightly received a great deal of attention: Should a back door be built into devices that are used for encrypted communications? Would that keep us safe from terrorists, or merely make everyone more vulnerable to hackers, as well as to mass government surveillance? But the first part is also potentially insidious, for reasons that go well beyond privacy rights.
The simple but strange question here is exactly the one that Cook formulates. What happens when the government goes to court to demand that you give it something that you do not have? No one has it, in fact, because it doesn’t exist. What if the government then proceeds to order you to construct, design, invent, or somehow conjure up the thing it wants? Must you?"
The question is, is this act (the whole text follows):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Writs_Act
"(a) The Supreme Court and all courts established by Act of Congress may issue all writs necessary or appropriate in aid of their respective jurisdictions and agreeable to the usages and principles of law.
(b) An alternative writ or rule nisi may be issued by a justice or judge of a court which has jurisdiction."
a reasonable legal ground in this case to demand from a company to change their products, in this case make a special version of the operating system? Is this act good to mean "we can order anything to anybody"? Especially when there is "the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act of 1992" (CALEA).
"All Writs" appears to be too dangerous to be used for precedents like this one, "change your products to help us." What is the next requested change going to be? Give us the change you've made ("obviously not an "unnecessary burden" anymore"). Make more changes, permanently. ("you've agreed already before!").