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Tim Cook: "Weakening Encryption Or Taking It Away Harms Good People"
Patrick O'Neill writes: Over the last year, Apple CEO Tim Cook has repeatedly made headlines as a spearpoint in the new crypto wars. As FBI director James Comey pushes for legally mandated backdoors on encryption, Cook has added default strong encryption to Apple devices and vocally resisted Comey's campaign. Echoing warnings from technical experts across the world, Cook said that adding encryption backdoors for law enforcement would weaken the security of all devices and "is incredibly dangerous," he said last night at the Electronic Privacy Information Center awards dinner. "So let me be crystal clear: Weakening encryption or taking it away harms good people who are using it for the right reason."
Two Words: The Fappening
Imagine Government has access to your private files LEGALLY, such that exposure of your files, your property, your life is completely unprotected by legislation?
The advantage Apple has is that they don't rely on advertising for any significant part of their revenue. Which means people who buy their products are still customers, not products. That's a good thing.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Like the federal government.
Well I think the idea that "If you have a hole in a system, it will be abused by malicious people" is a big part of the reason I'm uncomfortable with the federal government having access to people's personal info. Yes, there's the whole danger of dictatorship and secret police and bla bla bla. It's a real danger, but it feels far off. Far more immediate is the danger of... just some asshole that works for the NSA or FBI abusing the access. For all the assurances that "we have access to your data, but we promise only to look at it after we get a warrant from a secret court," you know that there's some dude at the NSA looking through email from people he went to high school with, just for kicks. And that's creepy and all, but if that guy is also a bit crazy and malicious, he can do some damage to people's lives.
So ultimately, the danger of the Federal government having access to your data is less that the Federal government is itself dangerous, but having access to private data without sufficient oversight is going to be abused by individuals within the Federal government.