Yeah...

I think the interesting point is that the FBI is asking Apple. Undoubtedly, other arms of the US government have this ability. NSA's Tailored Access group could do it. The case is explicitly about forcing Apple to do it. And that in itself is interesting. The US Government could do this but it wants to set the precedent that it can bully companies into doing it for them. Witch tells me it has nothing to do with terrorism and everything to do with control.

I' think you're very close with that idea but I'd replace military industrial complex with corporatism. The same corporatism that inhibits change on climate issues, industrial imprisonment, campaign finance, banking reform, etc. There was a time when we could equate what was good for our corporations as good for our countries but this time has passed. We need to stop being distracted by media chaff and start acting in the interest of our communities and individuals.

That should have read: IT/programming jobs were *not classed* in the bullshit category. But I can't find the edit button for the original post...

I've read David Graebner's study and this has very little to do with it. The study set out to discover where our increase in productivity went to. He concluded that we created whole new classes of jobs that didn't exist before and aren't strictly necessary to produce goods which chewed up the productivity gains. IT/programming jobs were classed in the bullshit category. It was more along the lines of marketing, HR, etc. He also pointed out that the more crucial the job was to production the less likely it was to be well paid and the more likely the workers were to be over worked. He also pointed out that the pay rate and/or staffing is usually under active assault.

Three of his examples of this were teachers, garbage men, and firefighters.

At the same time bullshit jobs (like marketing and public relations) were well funded and the workers usually only put in 30 hours out of an expected 40 hour work week.

It has nothing to do with how workers spend there time and everything to do with the creation of waste in a capitalist system that should be driven to efficiency.

What's stopping the NSA from man in the middling all this SSL traffic? They have the fibre providers rooted, I find it hard to believe that they don't have to print certs like the treasury prints money. I seem to recall China doing something similar with one of their root CAs a couple of years back.

What I'm amazed about is the fact that private corporations have access to this data and no one seems to care. Snowden wasn't even a member of the NSA he was just a contractor. I highly doubt that private security companies are above reproach in using tools only for the intended purposes. I can't even imagine what Blackwater would have gotten up to with access to such tools.

I think if you look into it you'll find the companies purchasing these are probably replacing backup generators which have very high maintenance costs. High enough to cover the early adopter premium.