Confidence in the US Congress is near an all time low according to a Gallup poll on “Confidence in Institutions.” People have stopped trusting government. And government has done a lot to deserve it. Politicians have taken huge sums of money from special interests and partisan divides have deadlocked government on important issues. Add to that the secret surveillance of the population by the NSA and other agencies as revealed by Edward Snowden. At the same time income inequality in the US has sky rocketed, the middle class has been eviscerated, the poor and minorities are being abused by police and have basic supplies like water cut off or massively polluted.
Into this volatile situation comes someone like Trump who says things that at least one group of voters finds resonant (of course it helps that his competitors in the Republican Primary are splitting the remaining voters). Trump’s message is one of populism and confidence. Make America great again. His message is also strongly against the existing institutions and for a powerful president. Trust Trump. It doesn’t matter much whether Trump really believes the things he says or it is just a ploy to get the Republican nomination and then try to swing to the center. His rhetoric is unleashing forces that may turn out to be hard to contain for him and for the country.
So what does any of this have to do with Apple? Most people backing Apple in its fight against the FBI and Justice Department wouldn’t be caught dead voting for Trump. And yet Apple’s position has some odd parallels to Trump’s: Government has failed and can’t be trusted. Government has and will abuse its power, so we can’t give it any access. Trust Apple. We will protect you. You need a powerful company that decides what software you can run on your device. A “secure enclave” or some other “trusted chip” is not just how you secure a device but it is also how you are prevented from running another OS or easily downloading third party software without going through the app store. This direction lies a severe limitation on general purpose computing.
I believe that the right answer in both cases is to fix the institutions. The answer cannot and should not be to empower a potential dictator or a massively cash-rich and secretive company. The good news in the case of Apple is that for now at least we still have a judicial process and that will play itself out hopefully all the way to the Supreme Court. Yes, the Supreme Court too is a flawed institution and I have disagreed with some of its decisions (such as Citizens United). And yes, they may get a decision in the case of Apple wrong. But if we simply abandon our institutions then we will get the presidential and corporate powers we deserve.
Democracy can only work when citizens have confidence in government. We need to be able to trust our institutions. That’s why we have to work hard to remove the influence of money in politics (I recommend supporting Represent.us) and fix the primary process. We need to reform agencies such as the NSA and get rid of secret courts and secret evidence. We need massively increased transparency of the executive branch. Those are the battles we should be engaging in. We need to fight for Democracy.
