Archive for March 2016

The Book of Job: Little Things and Great Ones

A message of the Book of Job, then, is that God is not just or fair in the limited way we understand those things. God’s covenant with us is that He will be our God and we shall be His people; there is nothing in there promising no crucifixions, as Jesus could tell us.

Constitutional Rights Under Assault in Apple Encryption Fight

Assuming that the equivalency of our cellphones and ourselves is near-complete now, and that it will come even fuller soon, are we willing to allow phones to be treated as if they were separate from ourselves when it comes to our limited but precious privilege against self-incrimination? The DOJ’s paradigm is that cellphones are like documents or things external to ourselves, things which may lawfully be seized and searched, given probable cause, even to incriminate us. But is that really different from saying that one’s brain could be seized and searched? Back in the days when “telephone” meant a communications device that lived on a desk, yes, it was different. Now, when “phone” means a computer into which we pour so much of ourselves (and which happens to include voice communications among its myriad of functions), the difference grows harder and harder to maintain with a straight face.