Publicity Seeking Florida Sheriff Promises To Put Tim Cook In Jail For Refusing To Decrypt iPhones

We've written quite a few times about Polk County, Florida, Sheriff Grady Judd. You may recall him from the time he arrested two teenagers because they admitted to "bullying" another teen who committed suicide. Judd also promised to arrest the parents of both girls as well, stretching an already ridiculous understanding of the law to absolute breaking points (in fact all of the charges were dropped against the girls, because, all the talk of bullying was basically not true).

Judd also has made news for falsely arresting and then publicly shaming men, saying that they're "sexual predators" and parading them in front of the press, seizing their money and possessions and then "negotiating" to only give them back some of what they seized. Oh, and then there was the time that Judd used Craigslist to help arrest prostitutes... but then blamed Craigslist for the problem.

Judd certainly has a reputation for generating press attention by saying the most outrageous things, and he's keeping that up now, by holding a press conference to announce that if Apple CEO Tim Cook doesn't decrypt an iPhone for him, Judd will arrest Cook. Yeah, good luck with that plan.

"Let me tell you, the first time we do have trouble getting into a cell phone, we're going to seek a court order from Apple and when they deny us I'm going to go lock the CEO of Apple up," Judd said in a press conference Wednesday.

Another report of the press conference said that Judd followed this up, for emphasis, with: "I'll lock the rascal up."

Yeah, you see, that's not how the law actually works. And you'd think, as Sheriff, Judd should know that. But he doesn't. Or he does and he doesn't care. Neither of which is a good sign in a sheriff.

"You cannot create a business model to go, 'we're not paying attention to the federal judge or to the state judge, because we're above the law,'" Judd said.

Of course, that's not the issue at all. It's not about ignoring a judge, it's about building a secure product, and what kinds of things a court can or cannot force a company to do to the security of its products. No one is saying they're "above the law." Except, it seems, Sheriff Grady Judd, who thinks that he can put Apple's CEO in jail based on his own desires, rather than what the law actually says.

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