Slashdot Mirror
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."
Are you honest person? You have something to hide?
Yes, every honest person has a lot to hide and it is called privacy! And it is important that everyone would value their privacy and encrypt everything just in sake of others rights for privacy!
If some authority has problems, they are free to come to knock on my door or call me. I can talk on front door or in the phone.
Anybody who stands to lose more by having their (illegal) activities uncovered compared to being penalized for using (banned) encryption will still use it, so only the good guys, who don't use it to cover up their criminal activity will stop using encryption. At the same time they will be more exposed to data and identity theft, blackmail and illegal snooping. This just shows how little actually the FBI cares about the safety of common, law-abiding citizens. They don't see their mission as protecting people from becoming victims in the first place, but rather as catching criminals after the fact. It's logical if pretty evil - the more crime there is in USA, the more money and power the FBI gets. But folks - which one of those is better for us? Prevention or prosecution?
This is an exclusive OR. Choose only one.
"Either we build our communications infrastructure for surveillance, or we build it for security. Either everyone gets to spy, or no one gets to spy", as Bruce Schneier says.
"The more prohibitions there are, The poorer the people will be" -- Lao Tse
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."
But the director of the FBI, would must know what he is talking about, and must know that its just completely wrong.
Of course he knows. He knows better than most people do. When he talks of breaking encryption, he's talking about weakening your encryption, not his. He's going continue to use the most robust tools at his disposal to protect his privacy. But he's the good guy, at least in his mind. You, he's not so sure about.
In the end it doesn't matter what he wants. It's a foolish request that can't be implemented. The tools to communicate securely over unsecure channels are freely available to everyone at no cost. More importantly, we have the math. You can't outlaw math.
If you have a hole in a system it will be abused by malicious people.
Like the federal government.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."