Undoing encryption: the argumentative function of metonyms

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe recent legal dispute in San Bernardino pitting the Apple Corporation against the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) concerned whether Apple was legally obliged to help law enforcement access the contents of a deceased terrorist's iPhone. The metonym of the “warrant” played an important role in public disputation regarding the relationship between the FBI's investigation and Apple's encryption technology. Representing a complex temporal sequence that includes the licensing of a search, a search, and a rendering of intelligible data, the metonym warrant enabled anti-encryption arguments that avoided overtly advocating decryption or public key use. The warrant metonym enabled this argumentative tactic by drawing more attention to the term's licensing feature, as it embedded the assumption that the search should be effective. Our analysis of this argumentation demonstrates how metonyms are inference-generating tools capable of instantiating normative frameworks that establish the argumentative framework for a dispute.