That doesn't mean your due process rights disappear. You can challenge the warrant and the applicability of the All Writs Act all the way to SCOTUS. You can even still file a writ of Habeas Corpus.
You can even say that you forgot how to make the modifications. The onus is on the DOJ to prove you haven't. Awfully hard to prove what's in a man's head.
You could even argue that there's potential criminal liability (e.g. state wiretap laws) in your assistance, and invoke the Fifth Amendment. It's also awfully hard to prove that a man has definitively not committed a crime.
Best and most commonly, you can convince the judge that as a matter of conscience there is no amount of time in jail that will convince you to comply with the court's order. Thus holding you in custody serves no judicial purpose, and you are free to go.
This may be one where going to jail out of protest is necessary. I say that as someone who faced felony charges that were wholly fabricated, and was offered deal after deal, but I told them I would never take any deal because it wasn't right. I've never forgotten the look I got in response on the prosecutor's face.
I've got a feeling, however, that the FBI has made a grave PR mistake here. People have such a personal connection to Apple. A huge portion of the powerful population holds considers their iPhones their most significant inanimate posession.
Holding the makers of these devices indefinitely in a jail cell, without trial, might finally connect the American populace to the fact that they have just witnessed the largest scandal since... probably post-Vietnam.
This is a moment that where history turns on the decisions of a few. And people have been known to sacrifice far more than time in U.S. prison for ideals far less worthy.
If the warrant is upheld, it will be a very individual decision whether to comply.
Resistance has power, even under far more hostile governments than ours.
I'd like to think I wouldn't. But truly I don't think anyone can really know that until it's real.
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If anybody from Apple happens to read this:
You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart. - Jobs
You only have power over people as long as you don't take everything away from them. But when you've robbed a man of everything, he's no longer in your power - he's free again.
An equally likely outcome is that we lose, they end up known in the future in the same light as Guido Fawkes - you know, that guy who fought for freedom of religious association and an end to oppression based on your flavour of christianity some three hundred years ago, who we still get children to burn in effigy every year.
Or more likely they're completely forgotten and ignored, and our grandchildren can't even imagine a world in which your boss doesn't know your most intimate personal details, for the word "private" no longer exists.
In fact, I'd say the Nov. 5 plot immortalized his ideas and spread them far wider than their original audience and circumstance.
I'd say the gunpowder treason is far from being forgot.
Everything is viewed through the lens of relativism, of course, but history has repeatedly shown that great men are viewed as villains, villains as great men, and very little of what you "know" is in any way actual. This reality is as fabricated as a film.
We live in a society which is governed on the idea of the Rule of Law.
Big difference.
North Korea is "governed on the idea of the Rule of Law".
Germany and Italy were "governed on the idea of the Rule of Law" in the 30's.
Franco's Spain was "governed on the idea of the Rule of Law".
Shall I go on?
Comparing the US today with Soviet Russia under Stalin or NK under Kim is so ill-informed its impossible to process.
To completely disregard any comparison because "they're bad and we're good" is so dogmatic and jingoistic it's impossible to process.
Edit: And I see in a parallel comment you say re: the US justice system "They (the courts and prosecutors) Do What They Want"
Would you really quantify that as the rule of law, or as arbitrary rule?
It's somewhat arbitrary within a pretty solid framework, if you want my opinion.
My OP and this thread was about macro-level rule of law, my other comment was micro-level obviously.
No one is talking about "bad and good" here, I'm just saying you cannot compare them as you have attempted to do, as the fundamental differences defy equivalence.
>of or relating to a system of government that is centralized and dictatorial and requires complete subservience to the state.
When the rule of law says obey or else, then it is totalitarian. You can't just point at some other government and say "But they are worse."