More on All Writs Act of 1789.<p>The Dangerous All Writs Act Precedent in the Apple Encryption Case<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.newyorker.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;amy-davidson&#x2F;a-dangerous-all-writ-precedent-in-the-apple-case?mbid=social_twitter" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.newyorker.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;amy-davidson&#x2F;a-dangerous-all-w...</a><p>&quot;Tim Cook, the C.E.O. of Apple, which has been ordered to help the F.B.I. get into the cell phone of the San Bernardino shooters, wrote in an angry open letter this week that “the U.S. government has asked us for something we simply do not have, and something we consider too dangerous to create.” The second part of that formulation has rightly received a great deal of attention: Should a back door be built into devices that are used for encrypted communications? Would that keep us safe from terrorists, or merely make everyone more vulnerable to hackers, as well as to mass government surveillance? But the first part is also potentially insidious, for reasons that go well beyond privacy rights.<p>The simple but strange question here is exactly the one that Cook formulates. What happens when the government goes to court to demand that you give it something that you do not have? No one has it, in fact, because it doesn’t exist. What if the government then proceeds to order you to construct, design, invent, or somehow conjure up the thing it wants? Must you?&quot;