by James Corbett TheInternationalForecaster.com
March 23, 2016

If all you do is read the MSM then everything you think you know about the Apple / FBI case is 100% wrong. But you probably already knew that.

You know how the FBI is implying that access to Syed Rizwaan Farook’s phone data is of ticking time-bomb Jack Bauer-esque importance to the future of the free world? Well, that’s a lie. In fact, the data is of no value whatsoever to the “investigation” into the San Bernardino Shooting (if that’s what this can even be called, given that everyone’s dead). It isn’t even his phone, anyway, but a work phone, and Apple already gave the FBI the data from the phone’s last backup, anyway.

And remember when the FBI swore that the case would set no legal precedent for the government to do the same type of thing in the future? Yup, that was a lie, too.

Oh, and you know how the FBI absolutely positively wanted this backdoor for only one phone in the history of the universe, and only because it’s super important for stopping those scary bearded terrorists (pinky swear)? Another lie.

And now, finally, after weeks and weeks of alt media reporting demonstrating that the entire case is a red herring because the FBI doesn’t need a secret backdoor to access the iPhone’s contents anyway (and that Apple has always been eager to help police unlock iPhones), the DOJ is finally admitting that it doesn’t need a backdoor to access the iPhone’s contents after all.

This would lead most sane people to wonder what all this fuss has been about, then. The answer is simple: it’s a psyop. A psychological operation perpetrated on the public in order to influence their perception and shape their opinion.

As a number of alt media commentators have pointed out by now, the psyop is quite simple: to get this example hard-wired into case law so that the FBI can use it as a precedent to make companies do…well, basically anything.

The decision they won against Apple was based on the All Writs Act, a general purpose 1789 law that literally authorizes any US court to “issue all writs necessary or appropriate in aid of their respective jurisdictions and agreeable to the usages and principles of law.” In other words, it allows the court to force any third party to do whatever it needs them to do to fulfill a court order. In recent years the government (and its subservient judiciary) have latched onto this act as justification for forcing tech companies to help them unlock computers and devices. The Apple case could be a key test of this act, however, and just how far it can go in requiring the active participation of a company (against its will) to effectively work for the government (for free, of course) in undermining its own product.

This is all well and true. But in fact, the psyop is even more fundamental than that. Legal precedent is one thing, but if the Bush and Obama years have taught us anything, it is that the government needs no legal precedent to do what it has done, from launching the illegal NSA spying program to illegally assassinating American citizens to declaring the government above the law. Ergo, the government does not necessarily need the legal precedent it is apparently seeking here. That is a formality, like getting public support for the invasion of Iraq.

What this show is ultimately about is the spectacle itself. The back-and-forth. Showing Apple “fighting valiantly” to protect the data and the government fighting back. Sure, a lot of the public will side with Apple on this; but not all. And even those who do side with Apple can be pacified when they see the government drop the case, as they very well may do here. But the fact still remains that there are ways to access this information without a purpose-built Apple “master key” because the NSA already brags about having any number of exploits for getting an iPhone to spill its digital “secrets.”

So the government will thrust, Apple will parry, the public will breathe a sigh of relief…and in the end, the government will still be able to access all your data no matter how the show plays out. Oh, and a larger percentage of the public than before will be behind the idea of government-mandated backdoors because of the “war on terror.”

Oh, and in case you think the 4-year traveling sideshow circus known as the Presidential sElection race has any bearing whatsoever on this case, Clinton has so far declined to say outright that she’s in favor of the backdoor…but you’d have to have been born on and fallen off the back of a turnip truck yesterday to believe that she wouldn’t be 100% behind the idea if she gets into power and can stop pandering to a Democrat base that outright detests her. And as for Trump: he says he’s “100%” behind the decision to force Apple to create the backdoor and called for a boycott of Apple products until they give the government whatever it wants. Vive la différence…