Attorney ✦ Writer
If you’re doing something that is likely to lead to questions from law enforcement, maybe you shouldn’t be using a cellphone or other device to conduct your nefarious business.
Which leads to my First Principle of Criminality: They only catch the stupid and the slow.
Declan McCullagh: Apple deluged by police demands to decrypt iPhones (via Daring Fireball)
Hus•tle. \ˈhə-səl\ 1. n., the unique partner dance done in ballrooms and nightclubs to disco music.; 2. v., to sell something to or obtain something from by energetic and especially underhanded activity.
Scrip. /skrip/ n., a certificate to be exchanged for goods, as at a company store.
Amazon.com, like Microsoft before them with Microsoft Points, have rediscovered Company Scrip. We usually just call these schemes “gift cards” or “gift certificates,” but this one is different. Per the Terms of Use, the value is subject to change, there are no refunds, and it isn’t transferrable. So it is actually worse than scrip.
The lock-in continues. Amazon.com have announced a program called “Amazon Coins,” whereby you give them money and they give you credit to use to purchase apps and games. They haven’t included books and other goods in the program, but I’m sure that is only a matter of time.
This seems like a hustle to me. Then again, if you are using an Android device, you are used to being hustled.
I’ve provided two definitions for the word “hustle” at the top of this entry. Deciding which definition is appropriate for Amazon Coins is left as an exercise for the reader.
Over on my Official Blog, I take a look at the legal implications of the DOJ obtaining the phone records of the AP. (TL;DR: we don’t know enough yet; probably legal, icky.)
Looking to the bigger picture, it is difficult to get too bent out of shape about this happening to the AP. They, and most other news organizations, the erstwhile guardians of the freedom of the press, at best stood idly by, and at their worst actively encouraged, this sort of government intrusion during the darkest years of the Bush Presidency, gives this mess a soupçon of Schadenfreude.
That being said, no matter what the outcome of any investigations or whether there was a warrant properly issued or not, the chilling effect on the press and on leakers will be enormous. And that may just be the point.