> "If we had met five years ago, you wouldn't have found a more staunch defender of the newspaper industry than me ... And then I wrote some stories that made me realize how sadly misplaced my bliss had been. The reason I'd enjoyed such smooth sailing for so long hadn't been, as I'd assumed, because I was careful and diligent and good at my job ... The truth was that, in all those years, I hadn't written anything important enough to suppress."

[..]

> Webb's ex-wife, Susan Bell, told reporters that she believed Webb had died by suicide. "The way he was acting it would be hard for me to believe it was anything but suicide," she said. According to Bell, Webb had been unhappy for some time over his inability to get a job at another major newspaper. He had sold his house the week before his death because he was unable to afford the mortgage.

So he was killed indirectly; not a distinction I personally care about. Unless you are investigating state crimes yourself, I wouldn't throw popcorn from the cheap seats.

In cases like this we have to weigh the likelihood and risk regardless, and proactively protect ourselves.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple%E2%80%93FBI_encryption_d...

If instead of VIN-locking they just notified you a differenr part was swapped out, you could go get some part from a trustworthy third party and replace that potentially back-doored part yourself.

It's way more likely that the NSA would say "hey apple, install this backdoor in your software but don't tell anyone about it"

Protects your integrity of the hardware but gives you the choice to repair.