Tim Cook Talks About Encryption, Right to Privacy, Public Safety, and DOJ (time.com)

TIME reporters sat down with Apple CEO, Tim Cook, to talk about encryption, public safety, and right to privacy among other subjects. The wide-ranging interview captures Cook's discomfort with how his company has been treated by the Department of Justice. Following are some interesting excerpts from the interview: The thing that is different to me about Messages versus your banking institution is, the part of you doing business with the bank, they need to record what you deposited, what your withdrawals are, what your checks that have cleared. So they need all of this information. That content they need to possess, because they report it back to you. That's the business they're in. Take the message. My business is not reading your messages. I don't have a business doing that. And it's against my values to do that. I don't want to read your private stuff. So I'm just the guy toting your mail over. That's what I'm doing. So if I'm expected to keep your messages, and everybody else's, then there should be a law that says, you need to keep all of these. [...] Law enforcement should not be whining about iPhones; it should be rolling around in all the other free information that criminals and terrorists are spewing through social networks and Nest thermostats, surveillance cameras and Hello Barbies. [...] Going dark -- this is a crock. No one's going dark.

Comments

He makes a good point

[LichtSpektren]

The DOJ obsessing over the locked phone of a dead shooter in the guise of protecting America, while being totally silent about the insane privacy violations of Windows 10, seems rather hypocritical.

Re:He makes a good point

[kheldan]

What you see as hypocritical, they see as strategic.

I'd like to point out, for the benefit of those who somehow haven't already got the memo, that there are 'law enforcement' types all over the place, who would like nothing better than to return to the 'good old days' of being able to drag a 'suspect' into a room, and beat them senseless, repeatedly if necessary, until they sign a pre-written 'confession' of their 'crimes' -- then railroad them through the court system, and into prison. That's the sort of mentality we're dealing with here, even if (on the surface) they seem more sophisticated about it. Law enforcement at all levels tends to attract control-freak types who in their heart of hearts believe they're above the law they're supposedly enforcing, and should be allowed to do whatever they want in pursuit of that so-called 'enforcement', and that peoples' 'rights' should be more like a 'privilege' that they can revoke whenever they feel like it.

Re:He makes a good point

[SeaFox]

At least Jack Bauer was actually trying to save people's lives and prevent actual terrorism from happening, not just grabbing power.

You're kinda missing the point. That what all bad cop types think they are doing.

The justice system, and the courts in particular, exist because sometimes the person really is innocent.
Jack Bauer is sure he knows how the real criminal is and (I'm assuming) is right. But there are lots of other types that are simply wrong. That person they are sure is a terrorist/pedophile/killer/etc is not the man they want. Rights and trial-by-your-peers exist so people are not held accountable for crime they didn't commit by some manic with a badge who thinks red tape only exists to make his job harder. No, it's to make sure he does his job right and his procedure itself doesn't become a form of punishment.

Re:In this article:

[anegg]

The "going dark" theory doesn't seem to hold water. There is vastly more information available now, in a very "hoover-able" (able to be sucked up) fashion, than ever before.

The law enforcement community in the US complained that with the digitization of telephone service, they would not be able to tap phones when needed - so they got a law that requires all phone switches be remotely "tappable" and voila, better access than ever before by law enforcement. We have all taken to using mobile phones, smart phones, and e-mail; all of which places all kinds of information in an electronic form that can be easily captured when before it was in ephemeral conversations and/or a million pieces of paper that couldn't be easily trolled through in a million years.

Sure, there has been a change in how law enforcement gathers information, with some ways going away, but new ways being made available. Overall it seems to me (without being in any way an expert) that there is probably a substantially larger amount of information available more easily today than 30 years ago before the explosion in personal digital communications. Encryption may impede some access, but overall it seems like a net gain.

Having said that, it doesn't necessarily make it a simple job to get the goods on someone to have all of the information available. It still has to be analyzed, assessed, and linked together with all of the other bits in order to be useful in an investigation. Its easy to see why law enforcement wants to make this process as easy as possible. But that's why we have constitutional protections - to help lay out the ground rules for finding a balance. I'm not surprised that there are some in the law enforcement community leaning on the scales as hard as they can, probably with the hopes of making sure the balance tips just a little bit more towards making their jobs easier.

Obligatory John Oliver

[UnknowingFool]

John Oliver with his commentary on the matter. Funny and fairly balanced.

Apples position

[Anonymous Coward]

you have a right to privacy Only when we can't figure out some way to monetarise your information!

propaganda

[Tom]

Going dark -- this is a crock. No one's going dark.

This is key. Their main argument is bullshit. They are not going dark. If anything, they have massively more surveillance than they did, let's say, 50 years ago. Or 30 years. Or virtually any time.

20 years ago, what chances did police have to get a recording or transcript of a conversation between criminals one month after the fact? Unless they already were watching and wiretapping them, almost none. Today, chances are quite good that you will find some e-mails, chat log or other exchange.

10 years ago, what chances did police have to find out where someone was on a given day one year later? Unless they were already shadowing him, almost none. Today, he checked in on Facebook or Foursquare or his phone location data gives him away.

Maybe there was a high point a few years ago, when most of what we have today was already there, but encryption was lagging behind. Maybe compared to that short golden period they now see less - but it is still vastly more than ever before in the history of police work.

And when someone lies to get something, you already know they can't be trusted, so giving them something that can potentially be abused would be really, really, very, very stupid.

Re:so.. where is this going to go

[Aighearach]

He's not going to protect us, he's going to protect himself, his company, his values. That protects others who share his values.

No need to run off the rails because he isn't Harry Potter.

Re:Cook is wrong about why banks keep information

[seth_hartbecke]

Banks, in order to operate with integrity, DO need to keep a transaction ledger. Honest ones had been doing so for centuries before the Bank Secrecy Act.

There is a highly important yet subtle difference here. The Bank Secrecy Act requires banks divulge information they already were keeping.

A similar act given to apple would require them to divulge information about your account (information they are already keeping). But, the newest FaceTime does peer-to-peer VoIP if it can. Is Apple required to engineer a backdoor in to listen to a conversation that *today* they only facilitate the initial call setup? Should they be required to keep an audio copy of the call? Apple currently does not store the call, and if possible they only arbitrate the two phones finding each other (they may not even transit the call audio). This would be like requiring you bank to keep tabs on how you spend your cash.

Re:Cook is wrong about why banks keep information

[radarskiy]

"If the federal government can compel banks to keep this information I'm not sure what prevents them from compelling Apple as well. "

What prevents them is the lack of actual law that authorizes the federal government to do so. If we want the federal government to able to compel Apple to turn this data over then we must make a law authorizing the federal government to do so. IF not, then the federal government should not be using unrelated threats to compel a "voluntary" action that it cannot actually compel.

Re:In this article:

[MightyMartian]

Exactly. The last point is important. The FBI and local law enforcement fucked up the evidence. This is the equivalent of not properly locking down a crime scene and all the fingerprints being smudged out, and then blaming the owner of the building where the crime scene was located.

Re:Generally Dislike Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

I generally dislike Apple because they're so damn expensive for what you get hardware-wise

Had it occurred to you that they're more expensive exactly because they're not making a profit off mining your data?

Nice swipe at Google along the way....

[Bearhouse]

"My business is not reading your mails"

Nope, because you make craptons of cash selling hardware.
I was going to say the usual "overpriced" hardware but...what price your privacy?
My wife and I are happy with android, but we upgrade regularly.
With the effective demise of blackberry, soon might be Apple is only option

Re:Nice swipe at Google along the way....

[NatasRevol]

From someone up above:

"Has it occurred to you that Apple is more expensive exactly because they're not making a profit off mining your data?"

Re:In this article:

[gweihir]

I think "going dark" is actually about "we need to see everything", i.e. not about enforcing laws at all, but about creating strong chilling effects. There is a special kind of despicable human being that cannot stand others having independent "unauthorized" thoughts and, worse, putting them in writing. Traditionally, an all-seeing, all-knowing God took care of that. These days not even most religious people fall for the idea that "God" would enforce the agenda of all-too-flawed worldly "authorities", so they are now trying to enforce that "you cannot hide your thoughts" by technological means to make people self-censor and self-oppress.

For the case at hand, this means this is not about the phone at all and not about the firmware Apple is requested to write. It is about that said despicable individuals cannot deal with being told "no" when they want to demonstrate that nobody is safe from them. While I am sure not all of the FBI and DoJ is like that, the current "leaders" there have the mind-set of the Inquisition and the GeStaPo and are a huge threat to free society.

Re:In this article:

[gweihir]

Police work _must_ be hard. They _must_ be limited in what they can do. It is not and has never be the task of the police to catch every criminal. It is their task to keep the problem enough under control so society continues to function. As soon as police work becomes too easy, they expand into areas they were never supposed to go and control everything. Police-persons just cannot help themselves, that is their mind-set. The result of a failure to strongly limit the powers of the police is a police-state and that almost universally evolves to full-blown fascism over time.

Don't get me wrong, we need them. There are enough bad actors that need to be kept under control. But the police itself immediately becomes such a bad actor if not controlled tightly. Handing them the rains is about as stupid as handing it to the military or to the big corporations: They all place their own agenda far before the welfare of society.