The Feds Can’t Crack An iPhone?

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And now comes the big iPhone hacking controversy.   I find it terribly curious and even funny that the FBI and presumably even the recently formed NSA can’t get into an iPhone without Apple’s help.   It would be funny, except that – according to our newest unimpeachable source, Wikipedia – the monolithic National Securty Agency, which that brilliant tactician and critical thinker, George W. Bush put together in his big push for smaller government,  has an estimated annual budget of $10.8 billion.

And they can’t get into an iPhone?    Or maybe they’re unhappy with the FBI and just don’t want to share their resources?   Or maybe hacking into terrorist’s cellphones isn’t their thing?   Or pherhaps Apple is just that good and the federal government is really that bad?

If the United States Government can’t get into an iPhone,  if their radar-equipped blimps, which apparently don’t work anyway despite costing billions,  float away and need to be shot down by local law enforcement before they crash into houses, just how safe are we?

According to one report, local cops used shotguns to bring down the wayward JLENS blimp before it floated away and did any more damage.   How analogue is that?    The Baltimore Sun reports that “After 17 years of research and $2.7 billion in funding, the system has been hobbled by defective software, poor reliability and vulnerability to bad weather.”

It seems strange that with all the technology at our command, be it satellites and ground-based or naval radar, the best our government can do to protect the east coast from incoming threats is to revert to putting blimps in the air, a defense technique that dates back to at least 1908?   A system that failed to detect a protester flying into DC airspace on a gyrocopter?

Is it possible that some things simply cannot be anticipated and therefore defended against, unless we all go live in a cave?

The problem now you see, is that the government had better get those blimps back up in the air, because if they don’t, and if there’s another attack on the east coast, those who supported the program will surely condemn those who did not, and will cry out loudly that “if only we had our blimps up there this woudn’t have happened!” 

So go ahead honorable members of Congress, cover your  backsides and  provide more funding for the failed blimps.   While you’re at it, maybe you can come up with enough money to build a better biplane?

One thought on “The Feds Can’t Crack An iPhone?”

  1. If we deducted the price of all the Defense Department and Homeland Security’s failed technology we could rebuild the nation’s infrastructure and properly fund our health and education programs from the existing defense budgets!

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