They don’t need to incur a benefit. If the government contacta their legal department with an order saying we need to talk to your developers in charge of iOS as part of a court order, they are required to do it and can face jail and fines if they don’t comply.

If the government says “don’t say there’z an exploit” it’s not going to be disclosed in their policy and they will be protected for lying by omission if a court is requiring that.

What is their motive? Avoiding contempt.

Are you this naive about closed source code or the power of jails and fines to persuade people to lie? How would this threaten their business model? How would anyone know about the exploit given their code is closed source and law enforcement regularly use parallel construction? No one can audit the code. Do you know what closed aource code is or how a gag order works?

This view is incredibly naive. If a backdoor exploit was added by one group of developers who did the code for the cellular modem and network parts of the operating system, there would only be certain people aware on a need to know basis. You could have other ignorant law enforcement officers unaware of the exploit making demands in court as well as Apple’s legal department fighting requests and the exploit is still there. It is incredibly naive and frankly stupid to be believe that a lack of a leak about closed source code means probably an exploit like that doesn’t exist. Demanding proof with closed source code, gag orders, and large development teams, only some of whom could know about an exploit and gag order, is just not really being realistic.

This is naive and inaccurate because unique screens have unique canvas fingerprinting. Youre giving people bad info.

It’s hard being intelligent enough to see the problems but lack the political will power and opportunity to change them.

I believe you. I think Trump has a very good chance of winning and the result could be conflict among different states or groups within them. Unless the conspiracy theorists are right and the Gavin/Kamala ticket is already selected for the ballot and the win. But it seems likely Trump will win. The upper classes have engaged in price gouging because a Democrat was in office, Biden never called them out on it in aggressive way because he lacked the aggressive nature and rage and gall to do it, and an incredible number of people are feeling stressed out by price changes. There are also many swing voters unhappy with immigration policies and think they are too mild. Between the two issues, Biden would lose even if he did seem energetic and lucid.

Do you think it’s bad enough that it makes sense to flee the US? And to where would one even flee? There are wars in Eastern Europe, it’s not even clear Western Europe is safe. I have always though Trump was likely in the pocket of Russia or an actual Russian Spy, so when Trump wins he will unequivocally support Putin, which will be a disaster because Western Europe can’t stand up to the evil of Putin and Trump alone… especially not when there are Chinese and Saudi alliances that Putin has been working on.

It’s terrible but the best option is probably for Biden to escalate the war now, which he is unlikely to do since he’s sort of become a bit of a hippy. Putin sees Biden’s hippy weakness as well. If Trump is a Russian spy, the US intel agencies likely know and have to decide whether to do something to protect the country, even something that some might seem nefarious.

It’s a terrible situation and mostly a distraction from the environmental catastrophy on the horizon.

Do you think it makes sense to leave the US now? I am not that attached to anything and could go anywhere. I am white but don’t like bigots, which may impact my options.

The conspiracy theorists all say Joe is supposed to step down and Gavin Newsom somehow is added to the ticket which then will win. These conspiracy theorists also say that candidates are selected in advance by the powers that be and it’s all pagentry to deceive the gullible masses. Was this debate really an unepected plot twist, or was it planned?