[Cryptography] Apple Reply to USG Opposition to Vacate Decrypt

[Jerry Leichter]

> Apple Reply to USG Opposition to Vacate Decrypt, March 15, 2016
> 
> https://cryptome.org/2016/03/usg-apple-177.pdf (351 pp, 22MB)
This is an extraordinary document, and well worth reading in its entirety.  (It's not nearly as long as it appears - the actual text is 25 pages, followed by perhaps five times as many pages of attached documents, letters, and other exhibits.)

It starts of (in a footnote) saying "The government’s brief assails Apple’s intentions and motivations. We do not intend to respond in kind."  That is, it claims the high ground.  But what follows is a detailed exposition of how the government's filing took citations out of context, picked words from within sentences so as to almost reverse the meaning of the original, and even in one case took a quotation and stuck three words after it in such a way as to give a completely impression of what the cited case was about.

This is nasty stuff.  In a system based on precedent, accurate citation is key. Opposing sides may present different citations that they believe are on point; and they may disagree on the interpretation of citations; but to deliberately distort the meaning of citations is a complete violation of the way the system is supposed to work.

I'm not a lawyer, but it strikes me that this kind of thing is coming close to a fraud upon the court.  Certainly, no judge is going to be happy if a party tries to mislead him about what the cited cases actually say.

And it's not as if the government could have any hope of getting away with this.  The citation system is completely open - it should have come as no surprise to them that lawyers for Apple - certainly lawyers of the calibre that Apple has hired - would check every single word closely.  Not only is this kind of thing unacceptable - but there's not really any chance of getting away with it.

                                                        -- Jerry