Trump Acts to Keep Guantanamo Bay Prison Open

in Cuba open. He made the announcement during his State of the Union address, asking Congress to ensure that in the fight against ISIS and al Qaeda, we continue to have all necessary power to detain terrorists wherever we chase them down, wherever we find them, and in many cases for them, it will now be Guantanamo Bay. It's a major reversal of the policy of former President Barack Obama, who would order the detention facility be put on a path off to closing and the terrorists suspects held there

tried or transferred to facilities elsewhere. European allies and Muslim leaders, among others, have expressed strong opposition to how detainees have been held at Guantanamo without charges and in grim condition. Joining me is J. Wells Dixon, a senior staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights. Well, the facility holes only forty one prisoners now and no new prisoners have been sent there since Trump was elected. Is there a reason to keep it open. There's no good reason to

keep it open. I think, unfortunately, the president's decision to keep it open surprising. As unsurprising as it is, you know, it is really confirmation of his willingness to pander to his shrinking political base at the expense of national security and human rights, because there is no, um, there is no reason, actual foreign policy reason or national security reason to keep it open. Quite quite the contrary, President Obama tried to have Guantanamo closed and failed after some seven years.

Are their practical problems with closing it? Well, there's a lot of blame to go around when it comes to the fact that Guantanamo is still open. But I think it's important to recognize that it was the policy consensus of both President Obama and President Bush that the prisoner Guantanamo needs to be closed, right and and Donald Trump's uh decision to to make it the formal policy of the United States to continue to detain Muslims there forever

is really very significant. Um, because you know, even if even if you don't prioritize human rights, Uh, they're keeping Guantanamo open undermines our national security. Right, Consider the President talked about ISIS. Consider the fact that ISIS invokes the very existence of Guantanamo as a recruiting tool. Right. ISIS and other terrorist groups use the propaganda value of Guantanamo to recruit new members to attack US. So keeping the

prison open is really counterproductive. Now, the detainees that are there, have they been tried. Almost no one at Guantanamo has been tried, you know, there are there have been a total of seven hundred and eighty Muslim men and boys held at Guantanamo since it opened sixteen years ago. And you know, more people have died at Guantanamo than have been convicted there. I mean, Guantanamo is really a complete

failure when it comes to prosecuting alleged terrorists. And UM, you know, the that's not going to change, right because it is endemic to UM to a prison that was designed to be entirely outside the law. I mean, you know, the for example, the nine eleven case has been going on for years and years at Guantanamo and we are nowhere near the actual start of that trial. I mean,

it's been a complete failure. And if you know, if if I were um uh nine eleven victim or a family member of a victim, I would be outraged that the alleged perpetrators of of that terrorist attack continued to

be held in Guantanamo rather than be tried in federal court. Um. President Trump, during his speech, and I take it he was referring to the prisoners who have been released from Guantanamo, said we foolishly released hundreds and hundreds of dangerous terrorists, only to meet them again on the battlefield, including the ISIS leader Al Baghdatti, who we captured, who we had who we released? What about that? Have some of the people released come back to fight against the US? Well?

President Trump's statements in that regard are absurd. For one thing, All Beg Dotty was never held at Guantanamo. All Beg Dotty was held into rock and he became radicalized because of what the United States did to him in detention, first of all. Second of all, the the the claim that detainees who have been held at Guantanamo have gone on to do bad things after their their release is

wildly overstated. Right, the Director of National Intelligence publishes figures um statistics on this issue and has said that, you know, less than five percent of the individuals held at Guantanamo who were released by President Obama have gone on to do anything contrary to the interest of the United States. The other thing I'll say about it is, you know, if a former detainee writes an editorial, for example, in the New York Times criticizing American foreign policy, that gets

held against them. I mean, they get put on that list as a consequence of that. UM. So you have to be very skeptical. But you know, even if you're not a skeptic and you're you're inclined to believe the government take them at their word. When the Director of National Intelligence says the figure is less than five percent,

statistically insignificant. There's been a lot of discussion about an Apple software update released in early seen that slowed older model iPhone models, but apparently there wasn't enough discussion by Apple before the software update. The Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission are investigating whether Apple violated securities laws by not making proper disclosures about the software update.

According to people familiar with the matter, and Apple spokeswoman told Bloomberg News that it has received questions from some government agencies and is responding to them. My guest is Armor ben Shahar, professor at the University of Chicago School of Law. Armory, will you first described the slowdown and Apple's response. Yes, a. Apple admitted that the software updates

deliberately slowed down the performance of old iPhones. They explained, according to the apology that they posted online, that these slowdowns were meant as an upgrade, not as a derogation of the service, and they were intended to stop the unintended shutdowns of phones with old batteries. So rather than force people to replace batteries, they said, we would slow

down the phone and avoid that. Of course, the result was the people head to replace not the batteries, but the phones, not knowing that the problem is all stems from the software updates. Now, our justice and the sec looking at the same or different possible violations of the law. So you know, securities fraud here is kind of a byproduct or an echo of the fraud that is alleged

to have occurred in the product market. There are, by the way, now many class action lawsuits and investigations by state Attorney general for the possibility of fraud committed by Apple in the product market against consumers. At the same time, whenever there is duch fraud in the product market, it affects the stock price. And Apple was bleeding, so it made statements to the public and to their investors about

what they did and why. If these statements were in some sense incomplete fraudulent misleading, that could lead to also this echo of securities liability. Here's Apple CEO Tim Cook's explanation. He told ABC News earlier this month that when the company put out the sow Square update, we did say what it was, but I don't think a lot of people were paying attention, and maybe we could have been clearer. Is that a good enough excuse to avoid legal action.

I don't think so. I mean, if you look clearly, yes, Apple said things, and in their contract with consumers, in the seventeen page of tiny fined print ten thousand words, there is a statement and that says something like we don't warrant YadA, YadA, YadA. You know how these things go. So they said it in the contract, but they also created a completely opposite impression for people when they recommended upgrade.

Those little flashes that you get on your phone or a MacBook that constantly ask you to upgrade and suggest upgrade full of all sorts of junk notices that prompt people to do things. But the one thing that is not was not said to people in these occasions is hey, if you do that, by the way, your device will no longer be as functional as it used to be. So, you know, to let be, we have the real choice

that failure is more than an oversight. This isn't the first time that Apple has been accused of deliberately throttling the performance of its older phones. One accusation has been that Apple deliberately slows down the old phones to make people buy the new phones. Apple denies that has there ever been any proof of this planned obsolescence. Well, you know, the tech blogs are full of discussion about sorry about

the planned obsolescence of phones. It just seems a little too much of a coincidence that as soon as devices new devices and new generation of devices is rolled out, the software of the old devices is slowed down in a way that would obviously increase the demand and bring Apples cash register for new phones. So This is kind

of circumstantial. I don't know that there is any stronger evidence than that, but security class actions, pay litigation as well as consumer litigation could try to smoke these things out. As you mentioned. So, Apple is facing at least eight class action lawsuits in federal courts in New York, California, and Illinois, and one in Israel. So what are the

allegations there? The allegations there would be primarily deception, that Apple violated consumer protection laws that require them to give people the food truth, not just part of the truth.

There is you know, their precedent for these for businesses trying to prompt people to do to buy, to purchase more products that are not needed, and the courts have found often in the past in such situations there is deception, there is fraud, and if there is fraud then there is there will be damages under state consumer protection laws that could be very high. And I have to say, well, I think that many class actions regularly filed against tech

companies are frivolous. This one since quite meritorious. Well now throwing at that point. As part of its public apology, Apple cut the prices of battery replacements in its stores from fifty doll from which was a fifty dollar discount. Would consumers get more than that realistically in a class action? I mean often you get coupons or reimbursements or some coupon for something in the future, and here there's already a fifty dollar discount that Apple is given. Yeah, that's

a very good question. I think our class action apparatus does not do well in terms of getting money into the pockets of consumers. It does do well in terms of getting money out of the pockets of businesses. If Apple gets to pay into whatever fund to the lawyers and somewhat to the consumers, it could be expensive, especially its statutory images are triggered, it's gonna be hard to identify the exact loser users who were deceived, and therefore these class actions are not going to be easy to

to succeed in overall. But the possibility is there for significant bill for Apple legal bill. So I'm read about a minute here, the government has requested information from Apple, According to people who asked not to be named, What kind of information would these agencies be looking for? Is it a smoking gun memo or something less the That's

a good question. It's you know that Apple keeps insisting that what it did was in good faith, that it was not their intent to increase the demand for new devices to just to help consumers avoid unplanned shutdowns of

their phones. That is the question, because under many of these statutes that create liability, the question is why towards Apple's intent and the I think that the information that the government and UH plaint exployers are trying to get out is information about what was going on lots for the Apple thinking about all right, about thirty seconds yes or no answer here? How likely is there to be

an enforcement action here? Actually not yes or no? One to ten yes not probably not enforcement action, but yes, long dragging class actions and eventually probably a very large settlement. All right, Thanks so much. That's um re Ben Shahar, a professor at the University of Chicago School of Law. Thanks for listening to the Bloomberg Law Podcast. You can subscribe and listen to the show on Apple podcast, SoundCloud and on Bloomberg dot com slash podcast. I'm June Brosso. This is Bloomberg