Pocketknife

That's the French for you.

There is fiber to thst building as well. I'm in Cumberland County right now and the towers are down. Wi-Fi calling only.

Also no 911 service, which astounds me until I remember it's the government running it.

Imagine an emergency response system so fragile cutting power to one building fucks it for half a state?

My one man company has better disaster tolerance than the 911 system? Insane.

Management isn't going to question things, even with engineering warning them it's a problem every day.

Management likes hearing things they like, and simply don't hear things they don't like. Then act surprised about it when it becomes public.

You say that as if Silicon Valley is subject to the law in the same way as you or I.

They learned to pay off DC around when Microsoft was taken to the anti-trust woodshed.

Now they are beyond accountability. Especially once it's clear to everyone that they control election results to a wide degree.

It would muffle it slightly. It would still give an attacker perfectly usable sound.

I am amazed at the general level of understanding regarding this sort of thing. People simply don't know enough, on average, to even make an informed decision about this stuff.

They think the FBI is gonna sit and watch or listen to a recording. They have no idea this is gonna sit as text in a database forever to be searched against later.

Not surprised at all. The only surprising thing is there is this much info to go on. I figured they would be tight lipped about their own private NSA style operation.

But in practice, the regulations end up being written by the heavy hitters, who also capture the regulators enforcing it.

They make a token concession or two, heap on the compliance costs and complications, and then enjoy a cosy relationship with the government group in charge of their would-be competitors too.

yeah, but Apple has always been it's own worst enemy. Jobs and it had this co-dependent relationship, and I think they are in long term decline now that he isn't there to rein in their worst excesses and insist on certain things.

Ah, but you forget the age old problem of government regulation:

Regulatory capture

I guarantee if you got such a law passed, Google, Apple, and Microsoft will be the ones actually writing the law, and running whatever organization is supposed to enforce it.

And I guarantee they will make it extremely hard to comply with simply to drive up costs to competitors.

It won't actually do anything useful, or there will be one good aspect left in as a fig leaf. It will, effectively, be a very expensive to comply with pile of empty words.

Considering a majority of millennials support socialism, but also cannot provide a meaningful definition of the term...

I don't think most have a serious position worth considering. I say this as someone lumped in this demographic whipping boy.

There is plenty to be legitimately angry about too. I just don't trust this generation to come up with solutions that aren't literally "let's try real communism. This time it will work!"