×

Rush Limbaugh

For a better experience,
download and use our app!

The Rush Limbaugh Show Main Menu

Listen to it Button

RUSH: This is Randall in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. I’m glad you waited. What’s up?

CALLER: Thank you, Rush. If the FBI forces Apple to give them the ability to go through these phones, will the government be telling us that every part of our lives, information that we generate be subject to search and seizure, like information between me and my lawyer, between me and my priest, between me and my doctor, anything that I generate and put on a phone be subject to the government taking from me because they will be saying that my information does not belong to me anymore, it belongs to the government.


RUSH: Well, now, that is the last thing you said there, the way you structured that is actually quite fascinating. But before we get to that, the FBI, if you were to ask them, would say, “Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. We want one specific thing. We want Apple to give us a mechanism that would allow us to keep trying to pass codes until we get the right one.” But your question, “Okay, what are they gonna do once they get it?” I mean, everything in that terrorist’s life might be on that phone, including medical records, including conversations with lawyers; we don’t know. And, furthermore, let me tell you what this is really, really, really, really, really all about. What’s on that phone, since it’s an iPhone, a lot of the stuff’s encrypted. The FBI can’t read it anyway. They’ll be able to read one half some of the stuff.

What this is really about is, and this goes back to 1992 when this computer stuff started hitting. I think what the FBI really wants is to eliminate a whole lot of encryption on these devices. I think that’s the actual endgame. And this little fight here is just one step in that direction. But, yeah, it is a great question. Okay, they get into the phone, well, where can they not go on the phone? They need to find out what this guy was doing and with who, if there are any other terrorists involved, any other future attacks. They need access to everything on that phone, right? That’s your point.

CALLER: That would make this a police state from here on out because the government can come into our houses, search our houses, they can take our computers, they can pretty much now, taking our phones and getting the information off of that, that would make this a police state. We would have no privacy, no way of having any information that the government can’t get to. We would be, in a sense, a police state from here on out.

RUSH: Well, I don’t know if people want to — yeah, okay. It does, like I said earlier in the week, the real simple way to understand this is, despite everybody’s fears that the NSA and the FBI are following you and tracking you and know what you’re saying, apparently not, they can’t crack these little iPhones. They can’t crack ’em. They need assistance to get in. So the question everybody has is, how much security do you want? How much privacy do you want? ‘Cause it isn’t just about this phone. It can’t be.

Once they manufacture, once Apple manufactures a way — I mean, the operating system is the same on every phone. If they create a back door for this phone they’ve created a backdoor for every phone that they’ve got an operating system on. So I think these are important questions. And what the FBI’s relying on for the life of this country — you know, law enforcement always gets the benefit of the doubt.

They benefit from the fact that most people think that law enforcement wouldn’t go after people that are not guilty. They just wouldn’t do it. That’s why they think that everybody arrested is guilty, everybody that’s charged is guilty, everybody that’s under suspicion is guilty. It’s automatically assumed because law enforcement wouldn’t waste their time. It’s one industry that’s thought of as clean and pure as the wind-driven snow until you have been…

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: So Snerdley just asked me, “Rush, why did Bill Gates come out on the side of the FBI in this Apple thing?” Well, he didn’t. I mean, they ran the story and said — was it a Fortune magazine interview that he did? I forget who interviewed Gates, but the original report was that Gates was siding with the FBI on the premise, “Hey, it’s just one phone, come on, it’s not worth –” And then the next day after there was a hue and outcry Gates came out and said (paraphrasing), “They misreported what I said. I’m actually with Apple on this.”

But before anybody knew that, why would Gates side with the FBI over Apple? I don’t know. Latent competitive issues, Apple versus Microsoft. Who knows. I think in the club that Gates is in, the government’s also in that club, so that would be my guess.

Pin It on Pinterest

Share This