The problem is that Obama (and some past presidents to a lesser degree) are willingly not enforcing border security. For known illegal immigrants already in their custody.

Which raises serious suspicions about any claims they make about their intentions for a highly invasive monitoring system.

As long as the citizenry tolerates and sometimes even roots for the government's violation of civil rights, everything including the technology is just details.

The existence of a decent open-source router can't do much against a U.S. National Security Letter.

Maybe we can combine our ideas. Give convicted robocallers Bush's and Cheney's private phone numbers.

Death penalty for people who set them up.

Seriously, if a person is willing to violate a just law, the punishment clearly is insufficient.

I'm no Obama hater but anyone who thinks that would ever be an effective way to influence policy is probably still sitting on the edge of their seat waiting for Firefly to come back on television.

If you recognize that, then why aren't you an Obama hater? This is emblematic of Obama: make a great public show about being a man of the people, and then surreptitiously ignore them.

I.e., he's playing us all for saps.

You could happily sit in the company of many of history's great men. The too were willing to sacrifice countless lives for some lofty goal.

Is there any benefit too small, in your mind, for my kids to die supporting it?

I care more about my children's survival than Thomas Jefferson cared about my kids' survival.

America no longer has distributed agriculture or fuel production. A revolution, however warranted, would lead to an unimaginable amount of freezing and starvation within the first two winters, I'd wager.

"Any excuse will serve a tyrant." -Aesop.

I just binge-played Plague, Inc. on my phone.

Now when I hear a story like this, my first thought is, "Will I get bonus DNA points because of this?"

Provide money and guidance to the local school systems then let them buy the approved technology they need rather than what is dictated to them

I've got a different take on the matter. As far as I know, the federal government exerts control over public education by taking money away from the states via taxation, and then only returning it if the states will teach in the manner seen fit by the Dept. of Education.

I.e., they use the ability of the federal government to tax anything and everything to circumvent the limitations on the powers of the federal government.

So in contrast to your solution, I'd suggest the federal government just taxes the states' citizens less, and let the states figure it out if they want to. Problem solved.

Actually, anything with practically opaque internals is a potential security hole, including processors, compiled software, network equipment. Also anything involving telecommunications.

If China is picking on only Apple, I'd wager it's to drum up business for some company that's owned by a state or an official.

China is right: the iPhone is a gaping security hole.

I also have little doubt that their "solution" will also be a gaping security hole, except that it will be designed so only China's intelligence services can exploit it.

that nothing can be kept secret anymore?

It's hard to say, because in general we don't know about the things that have remained secret. We know the numerator, but not the denominator.

I don't think that's a distinction worth making in most circles. It's only after a few years of study that one starts to see the distinction between the knowledge needed for software development vs. the mathematical aspects of computing theory. And then they keep on re-intersecting anyway, with things like programming language type systems, concurrency, and proving certain qualities of a piece of software. Good software developers need some theory, and most good theoreticians end up programming sometimes.