Undoing encryption: the argumentative function of metonyms

ABSTRACT

The recent legal dispute in San Bernardino pitting the Apple Corporation against the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) concerned whether Apple was legally obliged to help law enforcement access the contents of a deceased terrorist's iPhone. The metonym of the “warrant” played an important role in public disputation regarding the relationship between the FBI's investigation and Apple's encryption technology. Representing a complex temporal sequence that includes the licensing of a search, a search, and a rendering of intelligible data, the metonym warrant enabled anti-encryption arguments that avoided overtly advocating decryption or public key use. The warrant metonym enabled this argumentative tactic by drawing more attention to the term's licensing feature, as it embedded the assumption that the search should be effective. Our analysis of this argumentation demonstrates how metonyms are inference-generating tools capable of instantiating normative frameworks that establish the argumentative framework for a dispute.

KEYWORDS:

• Metonymy
• naming
• figures
• encryption
• apple

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. “In the absence of a uniform policy, our nation will effectively delegate the crafting of national security and law enforcement policy to boardrooms in Silicon Valley. That is, important responsibilities of our government will be carried out by Apple, Google, and other technology companies, who will advance the best interests of their shareholders, not necessarily the best interests of our nation.” (Vance, Encryption Tightrope, march 1, p.2, ital. authors)

2. New York Times, 2016; “If, technologically, it is possible to make an impenetrable device or system, where the encryption is so strong that there is no key, there is no door at all, then how do we apprehend the child pornographer?” Mr. Obama said. “How do we disrupt a terrorist plot?” http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/12/us/politics/obama-heads-to-south-by-southwest-festival-to-talk-about-technology.html

3. For many argumentation theorists, only propositions can enunciate the conceptual relations bolstering claims, a view that denies words – including metonyms – the status of a premise (Vorobj 2006, 8; Walton 2008, 137).

4. Burke contrasted a poetic (metaphoric) sense of the word with a scientific (metonymic) one (44–52). Perhaps Burke's influence motivated scholars to focus on language's metaphoric operations to the neglect of its metonymic properties. Elsewhere, Burke's () brief discussion of the metonymic reduction process noted that the “material scene” is the location of “dramatizations” (506–7). Of course, Burke listed metonymy as one of the four master tropes, but the bulk of his corpus exhibits a stronger interest in the workings of metaphor.

5. See the Government's response to Apple's Motion to Vacate the order on p. 10. https://www.eff.org/document/government-opposition-apple-motion-vacate. “Congress intended the All Writs Act to flexibly meet “new problems” like those devised by Apple.… That controlling precedent and the All Writs Act – not Apple's technological fiat – should determine whether Farook's iPhone will be searched. Apple and its amici try to alarm this Court with issues of network security, encryption, back doors, and privacy, invoking larger debates before Congress and in the news media. That is a diversion. Apple desperately wants – desperately needs – this case not to be “about one isolated iPhone.” But there is probable cause to believe there is evidence of a terrorist attack on that phone, and our legal system gives this Court the authority to see that it can be searched pursuant to a lawful warrant. And under the compelling circumstances here, the Court should exercise that authority, even if Apple would rather its products be warrant-proof.”

The Justice Department's reliance on the All Writs act was a regular strategy. For instance, the language the Justice Department used in a comparable case in Brooklyn. In Re Order requiring APPLE INC. To assist in the execution of a Search Warrant Issued by the Court Justice Department Brief. On P. 20 “The All Writs Act provides in relevant part that “all courts established by Act of Congress may issue all writs necessary or appropriate in aid of their respective jurisdictions and agreeable to the usages and principles of law.” 28 U.S.C. § 1651(a). The government's application requests that this Court issue an order requiring Apple to provide reasonable technical assistance – specifically, to perform a passcode-bypass – that is necessary and appropriate in aid of the Court's search warrant for Feng's phone.” (Emphasis added)

6. The San Bernardino case is only the most recent flashpoint in a longstanding controversy. Over the past twenty-five years, Federal law enforcement agencies have expanded their respective missions by securing greater access to electronic data and digital communications. The opening salvos of the first crypto-war began in the early 1990s with argumentation aimed to secure electronic surveillance as a law enforcement prerogative. In 1990, the FBI initiated “Operation Root Canal,” a campaign to expand the agency's ability to monitor telecommunications which ultimately resulted in the implementation of CALEA. Intelligence agencies saw encryption as an obstacle to these efforts, concerns evident in a series of memos from Brent Scowcroft, National Security Advisor at the time. On January 17, 1991, a memo written to Dick Cheney, the Secretary of Defense, William Barr, the Attorney General, and Robert Gates Director of Central Intelligence, urged a two-step strategy, first securing law enforcement access to telecommunication, followed by efforts to bypass data encryption: “Justice should go ahead now to seek a fix to the digital telephony problem, and all parties should follow through on the encryption problem in about a year. Success with digital telephony will lock in one major objective; we will have a beachhead we can exploit for the encryption fix; and encryption access options can be developed more thoroughly in the meantime.” (Schnier and Banisar 1997, 160–3) A follow-on memo to President Bush outlining the same issues garnered executive approval to monitor digital telecommunications. After securing access to telecommunications transmissions, law enforcement agents turned their attention to decryption. On May 26, 1992, a memo from William Sessions, FBI Director to the Attorney General pertaining to Secretary of Commerce Barbara Franklin stated that her help was critical for “…buttressing the National Institute for Standards and Technology, whose efforts in support of our digital signature standard (the first phase of our strategy to address the encryption issue) must be re-energized.” (Schnier and Banisar, 210). These wide-ranging efforts to connect law enforcement activities to digital surveillance have consistently linked surveillance policy and goals to law-enforcement efforts.

7. Vance (2016, 3–4).

8. At p. 19; “Fully - remote forensic tools are more dangerous than ones that can only be used locally, as they are hard for the target to detect and thus more susceptible to illegitimate use. Likewise, tools that must be designed for a class of products are more dangerous than those that can theoretically be limited to a particular device. A signed firmware update that is not truly limited to a single device, even one created for legitimate forensic purposes, becomes like a “skeleton key” for the entire class of devices. A “skeleton key” that can be used remotely against numerous devices is thus a formidable cybersecurity threat should it fall into the wrong hands. On its face, the Court's Order does not call for such a tool – but it opens the Pandora's box that contains it.”

9. The Center for Internet and Society Amicus brief described the potential for the San Bernardino case to legally enable nearly ubiquitous remote surveillance: “If this Order stands, the FBI might demand next that Apple assist law enforcement by surreptitiously turning on an iPhone microphone or camera, for example. Mobile devices are among the most intimate devices in existence. Many Americans sleep with their mobile phones by their beds. Front and rear facing cameras are capable of seeing users and their surroundings at any time. There is a microphone capable of recording the user, and an accelerometer sensitive enough to identify users by their gait. Forced software “updates” could convert these consumer friendly features into government surveillance tools to be deployed against a target or a community. iPhones and other mobile phones are not the only common consumer appliances that this Order sets a precedent for converting to surveillance devices. Amazon distributes an appliance called the Echo that captures spoken voice. While Amazon designed the Echo only to send voice data to Amazon if it “hears” the word “Alexa,” that limitation, like the iPhone passcode limitations, is encoded in software. Similarly, smart TVs, like those sold by Samsung, capture and transmit owners’ voices in an effort to identify natural language commands and search requests. In responding to consumer privacy concerns, Samsung assured the public that TV owners’ voice data would only be collected if the TV user clicks the activation button and speaks into the microphone on the remote control. Again, like the iPhone passcode limitations, this privacy safeguard is a function of software. If the government is allowed compel Apple to change its software to enable decryption and forensic access here, will it also be allowed to compel Amazon to update the Echo, or Samsung to update its Smart TVs, to always collect some customers’ conversations?” (17–18).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ilon Lauer

Ilon Lauer teaches Rhetoric and Argumentation in the Department of Communication at Western Illinois University.

Thomas Lauer

Thomas Lauer teaches information systems courses in the Decision and Information Sciences Department at Oakland University.