Things you don't expect to hear...

Things you don't expect to hear...  I listen to NPR sometimes to get a better understanding of progressive views, so you don't have to.  On the way back from an errand this morning (picking up grease from Tractor Supply!), I heard an NPR reporter named Alina Selyukh giving a report about the Apple/FBI brouhaha over the terrorist's phone that the FBI wants to unlock.

So what's unexpected about that?  Here's what: her report was cogent, accurate, and very much on point.  One example of the unexpected excellence: she spent a bit of time discussing some of the speculation on the nature of the outside (i.e., non-Apple) help that the FBI is getting to unlock that phone.  She listed several methods, some of which required physical access to the particular phone (hardware-based methods) and some of which did not (exploits of software vulnerabilities).  Alina then talked about how the methods requiring physical access really don't impact our personal security (for our own iPhones) nearly as much as the software vulnerabilities do.  That's a distinction that's obvious to a technologist, but not to many people, and Alina did a great job navigating that with easy to understand language.  Her whole discussion, in fact, was completely jargon-free.

Kudos, Alina!  That was a very nice job.  And you've just enticed me to follow you on Twitter – and I have to tell you that's the very first time I've even been tempted to follow someone on NPR.