Vox Sentences: Apple’s fight with the FBI is bigger than just one iPhone

Explaining Apple's legal battle with the FBI; another deadly bombing in Turkey; Pope Francis's visit to Mexico.

Vox Sentences is written by Dylan Matthews and Dara Lind.

TOP NEWS

United States v. Apple

Andrew Burton/Getty Images

• Last night, a magistrate judge in California ordered Apple to help the FBI gain access to an iPhone used by Syed Farook, one of the suspected San Bernardino shooters.

  [Washington Post / Ellen Nakashima]

• Vox's Tim Lee describes the tech involved here: The government doesn't want Apple to unlock the phone directly (which it can't do), but rather to disable a feature that makes it harder to successfully guess the phone's password.

  [Vox / Tim Lee]

• Apple is refusing, in a strongly worded statement that accuses the government of intruding on its customers' liberty.

  [CNN / Evan Perez and Tim Hume]

• It's not clear how much of this back-and-forth is really necessary. A federal case in New York last year implied that the government might already have a way around the block it's asking Apple to dismantle, and that Apple has helped the FBI in the past.

  [The Daily Beast / Shane Harris]

• But this is happening as Apple and other companies face broader demands from the US government to allow "backdoor" access to devices — a debate reinvigorated by the San Bernardino shooting.

  [Ars Technica / David Kravets]

• As BuzzFeed's Charlie Warzel points out, it's in Apple's corporate interest to pick this fight — showing customers that it deserves their trust.

  [BuzzFeed News / Charlie Warzel]

• But Daniel Denvir argues for Salon that it's also in law enforcement's interest to focus on encryption, so its other uses of expanded surveillance go undetected.

  [Salon / Daniel Denvir]

A "spiral of violence" in Turkey

Defne Karadeniz/Getty Images

• A car bomb in Ankara, Turkey, killed 28 people today and injured an additional 65.

  [AP]

• The bomb appears to have targeted a convoy of military vehicles stopped at a traffic light, though civilians were also killed.

  [Al Jazeera ]

• This is the latest attack in Turkey in what Jared Malsin describes for Time as a "spiral of violence" that began last summer and has hit various regions of the country.

  [Time / Jared Maslin]

• The attack could have been perpetrated by ISIS, Kurdish separatists, or leftist militants. For what it's worth, unnamed security sources told the Guardian they think it was the Kurds.

  [The Guardian / Constanze Letsch]

• Disgruntled officials might have a reason to suspect the Kurds: They're upset with the rapid advances made by US-led Kurdish troops in the Syrian civil war.

  [Reuters / Daren Butler]

• Anyway, further information on the attack might take a while to emerge. Turkey's government placed a gag order (as has now become routine) on photos or videos of the bombing only minutes after it happened; it also blocked Facebook and Twitter in the country.

  [D8]

El Papa en México

Gabriel Bouys/AFP/Getty Images

• Pope Francis ends a trip to Mexico today.

  [Vox / Michelle Hackman]

• Continuing to tweak Vatican traditionalists, Francis visited an indigenous church in the region of Chiapas, where Catholic practice has often blended with Mayan traditions, and blessed the church to preach in indigenous languages there.

  [Boston Globe / Nicole Winfield and Sonia Perez D.]

• (Lest one forget, of course, the last time Pope Francis was in North America he canonized a brutal colonialist.)

  [Vox / Dara Lind]

• Francis's message to young Mexicans could best be described as "tough love" — though in a country that keeps lapsing back into violence, Jorge Ramos argues, it wasn't tough enough.

  [Fusion / Jorge Ramos]

• Before leaving, Francis conducted an outdoor mass on the US-Mexico border — attended by some 70,000 people.

  [Los Angeles Times / Molly Hennessy-Fiske, Cindy Carcamo, and Tracy Wilkinson]

MISCELLANEOUS

The case against the $100 bill. [Washington Post / Larry Summers]

• Canada was praised for its welcoming attitude toward Syrian refugees. So why did one 16-year-old Syrian boy wind up in solitary confinement there for three weeks, despite committing no crime?

  [The Globe and Mail / Samer Muscati and Carmen Cheung]

• Journalist Adrienne LaFrance took a look at the gender ratio of people she was quoting or mentioning in her articles. The results were disturbing (and I suspect many other journalists wouldn't fare much better).

  [The Atlantic / Adrienne LaFrance]

• Punctuation in novels, graphed. Cormac McCarthy really hates semicolons.

  [Medium / Adam Calhoun]

• A brief history of how TV has dealt with actresses' pregnancies, from I Love Lucy to New Girl.

  [Washington Post / Caitlin Moore]

VERBATIM

"Fat Cats on a Diet: Will They Still Love You?" [NYT / Jan Hoffman]

• "You know, Nino [Scalia] was a classmate of mine at law school. He was no more an originalist than the man on the moon."

  [Michael Dukakis to Slate / Isaac Chotiner]

• "Faced with a cash shortage in its so-called caliphate, the Islamic State group has slashed salaries across the region, asked Raqqa residents to pay utility bills in black market American dollars, and is now releasing detainees for a price of $500 a person … Having built up loyalty among militants with good salaries and honeymoon and baby bonuses, the group has stopped providing even the smaller perks: free energy drinks and Snickers bars."

  [AP / Lori Hinnant, Zeina Karam, and Susannah George]

• "Kanye West protege Paul McCartney was denied access to living legend Tyga’s Grammys after-party at Argyle in Hollywood last night, according to some footage obtained by TMZ. 'How VIP do we have to get?' asks the singer/guitar player, who appeared on 2015’s 'FourFiveSeconds' alongside West and Rihanna. (McCartney also dabbled in songwriting on some lesser known British singles from the olden days.)"

  [AV Club / Mike Vanderbilt]

• "John Guillebaud, professor of reproductive health at University College London, tells Quartz [pain from menstrual] cramping can be as 'bad as having a heart attack.'"

  [Quartz / Olivia Goldhill]

WATCH THIS

Broad City's weird and wonderful world of jokes [YouTube / Estelle Caswell and Caroline Framke]

Estelle Caswell / Vox

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