It's frustrating to want the entire story behind the FBI request for iPhone information and the Apple Tim Cook counter-argument for not granting the capability.  We get bits and pieces.  First it was one phone, then it was nine phones.  We heard it was a phone owned by the terrorists, then we are told it was municipality-owned phones, owned by their employers.  We heard it was an issue of privacy, but then we hear that the municipality gave permission.

Like so many issues of the day, and the subsequent stream of information, good and bad, we find ourselves asking, “What is true?”

Yet there are times we are afforded clear-cut crystalline food for thought.  Tim Cook’s response seems noble and just.  There are higher considerations, he offers.  But how tight to his ideals and protectionism would he be if there were just slightly different circumstances?

What if an Apple Store had been shot up by terrorists?  And what if there were strong indications it was to happen to another store?  Would Mr. Cook have the phone decompiled the next day?  Guessing yes.

It certainly is a complicated situation.  And the federal government in all likelihood is asking for a boundary-breaking consideration in this matter.  One that would snap the twig of personal phone privacy – a just concern.

Mr. Cook must feel like the boy holding his finger in the dike, saving the community with his tedious efforts. 

Why can't smart people come to a compromise on this issue?  Let us start with one phone, and see what the Apple people come up with.  Cannot the incursion be incremental?  Or is the federal government using this event as an entry point of sorts?

If it had only been Hillary's phone.  We could have asked the Chinese what was on it.