Tim Cook: Privacy Is Worth Protecting (washingtonpost.com)

An anonymous reader writes from InformationWeek: In a wide-ranging interview with The Washington Post, Apple's CEO Tim Cook talks iPhones, AI, privacy, civil rights, missteps, China, taxes, and Steve Jobs -- all without addressing rumors about the company's Project Titan electric car. One of the biggest concerns Tim Cook has is with user privacy. Earlier this year, Apple was in the news for refusing a request from the U.S. Department of Justice to unlock a suspected terrorist's iPhone because Apple argued it would affect millions of other iPhones, it was unconstitutional, and that it would weaken security for everyone. Cook told the Washington Post: "The lightbulb went off, and it became clear what was right: Could we create a tool to unlock the phone? After a few days, we had determined yes, we could. Then the question was, ethically, should we? We thought, you know, that depends on whether we could contain it or not. Other people were involved in this, too -- deep security experts and so forth, and it was apparent from those discussions that we couldn't be assured. The risk of what happens if it got out, could be incredibly terrible for public safety." Cook suggest that customers rely on companies like Apple to set up privacy and security protections for them. "In this case, it was unbelievably uncomfortable and not something that we wished for, wanted -- we didn't even think it was right. Honestly? I was shocked that [the FBI] would even ask for this," explained Cook. "That was the thing that was so disappointing that I think everybody lost. There are 200-plus other countries in the world. Zero of them had ever asked [Apple to do] this." Privacy is a right to be protected, believes Cook: "In my point of view, [privacy] is a civil liberty that our Founding Fathers thought of a long time ago and concluded it was an essential part of what it was to be an American. Sort of on the level, if you will, with freedom of speech, freedom of the press."

Comments

True

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately, the fact that privacy is worth a lot is why so many people are trying to sell our privacy to the highest bidders.

Re: True

[morethanapapercert]

I think you may misunderstand the entire point of a "service" like Facebook. Facebook doesn't exist to provide friends and family a way to communicate, share media, or to play casual games. There are many many other places where those functions can be provided, in a decentralized way. Facebooks raison d'etre is the harvesting, collating, analyzing and then selling the vast amounts of personal marketing data people can be so easily persuaded to provide.

Playing Farmville, private messaging, tagging photos, all of that is just bait in the trap, with your personal data being the "fur" Facebook gathers for profit.

I hold the concept of Privacy in high regard. On the other hand, I recognize that any free thing needs to be paid for by somebody That's why, despite the occasional annoyance factor, I avoid using ad-blocking software for most of my browsing. When the marketing efforts get too annoying, I block them as best I can. But when it gets as egregiously, offensively, frightenly bad as Facebook, I drop out altogether and urge everyone I can influence to drop out as well. (one of the reasons I loathe Facebook as I do is because I don't have to have a profile there, I don't have to have accepted the terms of service, for the company to accumulate an awful lot of personal information about me. My less clued-in friends and family will happily, and more or less obliviously, tag me in photos, provide my email address to Facebook partners so they can send invites and so on.

Re: True

[fredgiblet]

I use a separate browser for Facebook. It's not much, but it's something.

Privacy is the only reason we do business

[Dust038]

I agree with our Founding Fathers, but they also didn't know what a germ was. Anyways... Without Privacy there is no Security. I rarely agree with Mr. Cook but I do agree with him on this, Realistically any Entity would be unable to contain a tool that exists of this caliber. I reckon that within days, maybe hours of Apple releasing a tool to assist the Feds, the tool would end up being publicly distributed and Apple would have to make a new one...and another one...ad infinum (My latin is kinda bad, I think I got that right)

Re:Privacy is the only reason we do business

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. That's why we need to start from scratch, starting with a new and modern constitution. I've started it below:

We the [REDACTED] of the [REDACTED], in Order to form a more perfect [REDACTED], [DELETED], [DELETED], provide for the common defense of Social Justice, [DELETED], and secure the [REDACTED] of [REDACTED] to [REDACTED] and [REDACTED], do ordain and establish this [REDACTED] for [REDACTED].

I think I found the problem

[Sax Russell 5449D29A]

Could we create a tool to unlock the phone? After a few days, we had determined yes, we could.

Now there's your problem. You should not be *able* to unlock it by any known means and this approach should be supported by both software and hardware design. Design a phone that you *can not* open even upon request and you've solved the problem in the best possible way.

Re:I think I found the problem

[dgatwood]

To be fair, the iPhone in question lacked the secure enclave. The techniques to crack into it would not work with newer hardware. It is still an open question whether other techniques could compromise current hardware—though to be fair, that is always the case with new technology up until the point when somebody comes up with a way to break it, so I guess that isn't really saying anything. :-)

Re:I think I found the problem

[dgatwood]

People just don't want unbreakable security. They like the idea that if they forget the passcode or if they pass away, someone will be able to break in. They want things to be just secure enough to deter "criminals" but no further. (Sure, such a line is impossible to draw. It doesn't mean users don't want it both ways: impossible for the "bad guys" to break, possible for the "good guys" to break when necessary.)

No matter what you do, there will always be outliers on one side, the other, or both—situations you couldn't predict that result in something being uncrackable when it should be crackable or vice versa. What I think most users want is the ability to choose one way or the other without having seemingly minor decisions come back to bite them in the backside (e.g. turning on two-factor only to find out that doing so unexpectedly prevents certain types of password resets).

What this means is that every behavior that has recoverability impact needs to be explained clearly to the user, and where possible, there should be no interdependencies between these settings. This also means that there should be a mechanism for people to add third-party trust into the system. For example, a kid should be allowed to add trust to his/her parents' account, allowing anyone with access to their account to gain the ability to request a device-present password reset in some way. This should be enabled by default on phones owned by kids, and parental controls should prevent it from being removed until the kid turns 18.

The problem is, those sorts of features don't sell devices. They aren't glamorous features that everybody wants to work on. They're additional effort that, unless mandated by law, probably won't ever happen. And if we start allowing lawmakers to meddle in crypto, there's a nonzero risk that they'll want to be implicitly added to that trust in some nefarious way unless the design deliberately makes it impossible for that to happen. This, in turn, means that adding those features is particularly challenging, making them even less likely to be implemented.

Re:I think I found the problem

[AthanasiusKircher]

People just don't want unbreakable security. They like the idea that if they forget the passcode or if they pass away, someone will be able to break in. They want things to be just secure enough to deter "criminals" but no further. (Sure, such a line is impossible to draw. It doesn't mean users don't want it both ways: impossible for the "bad guys" to break, possible for the "good guys" to break when necessary.)

This is true. People want "unbreakable phone security" as much as they want "unbreakable home locks" -- "unbreakable" sounds great until they accidentally get locked out and need to call a locksmith.

Same goes for phones. A small minority want unbreakable encryption. The rest of people have some small number of edge cases where they really would want to be able to call up someone and get the phone unlocked.

Re:I think I found the problem

[MikeMo]

You'll recall that the phone in question was an older model with far less security than the phones they sell today. The particular tool being requested was essentially a new version of the firmware that would ignore the failed unlock attempt counter, installed via a maintenance path. It is said they are working to remove that, too.

Re:I think I found the problem

[gweihir]

It was an older model with known flaws. They never said anything about the newer ones.

Re:I think I found the problem

[JesseMcDonald]

Same goes for phones. A small minority want unbreakable encryption. The rest of people have some small number of edge cases where they really would want to be able to call up someone and get the phone unlocked.

True, but they don't necessarily want the manufacturer of the phone to be the one holding the spare key.

Also, unbreakable encryption doesn't mean that your expensive phone becomes completely and permanently useless if you forget the password. You generally just have to wipe it back to the factory defaults and start over. It's not the end of the world, especially if you store copies of the more important information somewhere other than on the phone. This is a good idea in any case, since, on the whole, forgetting your password is probably a less likely risk than simply losing the device or suffering physical damage sufficient to render the data unrecoverable.

Re:I think I found the problem

[gweihir]

And you know that how? The facts is that they know today that there was a problem with a design that went into production several years ago. We do not know (and in fact have no indication) that they knew back then when the decision to go productive was made.

Re:I think I found the problem

[allo]

To be fair: A normal computer doesn't have this at all and a strong passphrase protects it just fine.

Re:I think I found the problem

[allo]

* disk encryption passphrase.

Re:I think I found the problem

[Sax Russell 5449D29A]

We do not know (and in fact have no indication) that they knew back then when the decision to go productive was made.

Umm, what? iPhone 5S and 5C were both released Sep 20 2013. One had secure enclave and the other one didn't.

I think that's pretty much "they knew".

Re:I think I found the problem

[dgatwood]

There already was a way to break the encryption, they knew about it and they still went ahead with the design.

All encryption is breakable if you can get to the keys, and the compromises basically amount to being able to get to the keys and brute-force the passcode for the keys. That's not really an unreasonable design when you consider how few attackers would have the resources to even do that much. The fact that they've hardened it further is a good thing, of course.

... even proper encryption key handling alone would've avoided that fiasco yet they failed to implement such feature leaving every phone of that particular model susceptible to brute-force attacks.

If by proper encryption key handling, you mean a dedicated crypto processor with its own isolated storage and no way to extract the keys from it, then yes. However, that's several orders of magnitude more hardened than you would typically expect for encryption key handling outside of major CAs. It certainly isn't typical of... well, anything, really.

Re:I think I found the problem

[dgatwood]

To be fair: A normal computer doesn't have this at all and a strong passphrase protects it just fine.

A strong passcode protects an iPhone just fine, too, AFAIK. A four-digit numerical passcode does not, and would not protect a computer, either. If anything, it would protect a typical computer far less, because it is far easier to interpose a disk emulator (passing reads through, storing writes to a separate device) on the SATA bus between a computer and its drive than between a CPU and flash parts that are soldered onto the logic board.

Re:I think I found the problem

[allo]

Yeah, but that's the point. Of course a secure enclave does not hurt. But Kerckhoff's Law says, if your scheme isn't secure if everything but the password is known, it's not secure at all. So use a damn passphrase which is secure and you do not need to worry about hardware implementations. With a fingerprint sensor, the iphone has everything which is needed to have convenience AND security with a long passphrase. Otherwise you can use an android phone with SnooperStopper to have different passcodes for the lockscreen and the disk encryption (and shutdown on 3 wrong codes).

Re:I think I found the problem

[gweihir]

Your thinking is flawed. Less security does not mean "breakable", just the same as more security does not mean "unbreakable".

Something he and I agree on.

[Chas]

I don't care for Cook personally, or Apple, or the entire Apple-sphere.

But this is one thing he and I have a meeting of the minds on.

My privacy is valuable. Which is why I'm so parsimonious doling out pieces of it. Why the hell should I have to submit five forms of identification, provide blood, sperm and stool samples, open up my financial data back to the date of my birth, get a hundred and thirteen character witnesses, etc, etc just to participate online?

Fuck that noise. I'd rather shiver in a cave in the woods.

On top of that, my privacy also protects me from theft of my identity and, theoretically, also provides protection against illegal behavior by bad actors with government credentials. Hence, it guards my freedom.

And don't tell me it never happens. It does.

If you have zero use for your freedoms, rights and liberties, by all means. Go ahead and shotgun all your data to the Internet.

But the second you (or anyone (and I mean ANYONE) else) demands that I do the same, you're going to be met with a giant "fuck you" and a fist in the face.

Re:Something he and I agree on.

[fustakrakich]

I'd rather shiver in a cave in the woods.

And groove with a pict?

Re:Something he and I agree on.

[Zontar The Mindless]

Nice one.

We don't protect ourselves by destroying Freedom

[Zombie Ryushu]

We don't protect ourselves by destroying Freedom. The FBI Knew there was nothing on that Phone. They wanted to set the Precident so they could unlock everyone's Phone. These invasive privacy efforts do nothing to protect private citizens from terrorist attacks. They exist to create an atmosphere of fear and social control and paranoia in our own society.

If we really wanted to stop Sunni terrorist organizations we would be relentlessly trying to level places where they are Headquartered like Raqqa.

Obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

We the [APPS] of the [APPS], in Order to form a more perfect [APPS], [COWS], [COWS], provide for the common defense of Social Justice, [COWS], and secure the [APPS] of [APPS] to [APPS] and [APPS], do ordain and establish this [APPS] for [APPS].

Truly protecting privacy is NOT profitable

[shanen]

The Founding Fathers would be appalled to see how the use and abuse of personal information is completely subverting their Bill of Rights. You have no protection of anything if all of your personal information is already outside of your control. If Cook was sincere, then he would at least offer a business model that would profit by protecting privacy (even if it were optional). For example:

Create a privacy protecting intermediary (PPI) that would be motivated to gather and protect ALL of your personal information in accord with YOUR wishes, not just profit maximization by selling your personal data ad infinitum while also using it to ram unneeded products down your throat.

From a time-centric perspective, here is one possible implementation: You would specify how much of your time you want to spend shopping and what you want to buy, and the PPI would anonymize your personal information and preferences and merge your data into groups of similar shoppers. That shopping time would then be auctioned off to companies that want to reach those highly qualified customers. The companies would not bother you directly, but only via the PPI. Another important parameter would be how many options you want to consider. (Personally, I would always want to see at least 3 offers for any major purchase). The PPI would split the proceeds of the auction with you, but the PPI would be strongly motivated to protect your privacy to protect its own position as the middleman.

One more thing: Competition between PPIs. You should always be free to take your data to a different PPI. Yes, that means you would have the right to demand the first PPI forget that you ever existed. Different PPIs would compete based on such parameters as percentage splits of the auctions and supplementary services like REAL filtering for ALL spam. (Personally, I would be shopping for the PPI that would maximize my time efficiency, but I suspect most people would focus on the most money.)

Re:Truly protecting privacy is NOT profitable

[Coren22]

Maybe some of the things, but this particular incident...nope.

There was a warrant involved, the owners of the phone were dead, so have no right to privacy, so there was no constitutional or privacy issue.

If they were afraid of the tool getting out, why not unlock the phone in their facility with a tool designed to unlock ONLY that phone?

This was Apple making a stand to raise their sales numbers, that is all it was.

Also, them taking this stand did not stop the tool from being created and used, and guess what? It didn't get abused and leaked to the internet!

Re:Truly protecting privacy is NOT profitable

[shanen]

Your reply was evidently intended for the comment above mine. No relevance to anything that I wrote.

However, you do sound amazingly naive. May I recommend you consider reading Data and Goliath by Bruce Schneier, Future Crimes by Marc Goodman, Geeks by Jon Katz, The Facebook Effect by David Kirkpatrick, and The Filter Bubble by Eli Pariser?

Re:Truly protecting privacy is NOT profitable

[fuzznutz]

There was a warrant involved, the owners of the phone were dead, so have no right to privacy, so there was no constitutional or privacy issue.

And Apple was an uninvolved third party conscripted against its will to perform duties against its conscience. Would you be so eager to be conscripted to work on a project for an arbitrary government agency just because you knew how to do the job? Particularly if you thought the project might affect the reputation or long term profitability of your business?

This was Apple making a stand to raise their sales numbers, that is all it was.

And sometimes people do the right things for the wrong reasons.

Also, them taking this stand did not stop the tool from being created and used, and guess what? It didn't get abused and leaked to the internet!

As far as you know.

Re:My response

[TiggertheMad]

Me: No it's not

The fact you are posting AC rebuts your claim far better than I could.

Re:Ethics? Yeah .. no

[lambsonic]

Human traits do propagate to businesses run by humans. Greed is often one of those traits. However, a desire to do good can also be one of those traits. I am not saying that we should inherently trust Tim. I am saying that we shouldn't undermine his argument by assuming that he is being insincere. Accuse him of being a hypocrite for not being concerned about other ethical problems, but the argument that he makes should be evaluated on its merits.

Re:Ethics? Yeah .. no

[kuzb]

If it's altruism, it's very selective altruism. Apple has a long and sorted history of distorting things to suit their bottom line. Generally speaking if someone is dishonest most of the time it isn't unreasonable to believe they're probably being dishonest when there is some doubt.

grudging thanks to Apple

[supernova87a]

Apple certainly has no shortage of issues to criticize them on. But on the issue of privacy and making the iPhone backdoor-able, at least they were smart enough to know what they could not know and could not control, and to want no part of it.

And what they were smart enough to know is that no government authority, no matter how secure and authoritative it claims to be, can control all of its own people and the hundreds of places that a backdoor capability might leak or be used improperly. The FBI cannot even control leaks and incompetence within their own ranks -- what's the likelihood that a capability so valuable would remain unleaked and well-protected in their hands, even with many checks?

So I applaud Apple for at least knowing that it should not develop such a capability and instead leave it in the hands of users to choose when to make things private, out of even Apple's reach.

There have always been secrets, and people trying to foil the methods of hiding them. Time for the government to do a bit more legwork for the next move.

You fools

[Anonymous Coward]

You fools. Apple's security and privacy are to protect the walled garden. They keep "your data" private to prevent their competition from monetizing you. They keep "your phone" secure to protect the walled garden. There is not an ounce of concern about your dignity or rights; this is 100% about greedily protecting their revenue stream.

People have ethics, companies do not

[TiggertheMad]

You have it half right. Apple is corporation, which are sociopathic entities that essentially 'feed' on money. You give them more money, they grow. You cut their money, they die. People within them can influence their behavior, but only in the short term, since a company often has much going on than one person can ever track and influence, and can easily outlive a single person.

Tim Cook could 'be your friend' and it sounds like he is at least a somewhat ethical person. But even he doesn't have complete control over Apple's behavior. If he makes just one bad call, the board will kick him to the curb, so everything he does is certainly influenced how the board and stockholders feel. But similarly, even if he wanted to make Apple products non-repairable and filled with the blood of orphans and nuns, he doesn't have complete power to do so. So ascribing the things you mentioned to him, probably isn't completely accurate.

Re:People have ethics, companies do not

[kuzb]

You're correct to say that Tim is not Apple - he's just the very public face of Apple. it's also true that the board could act in conflict with his own personal interests and he'd be forced to comply with them. However since he's the public face distinguishing between Tim and Apple serves no purpose. In this context they're the same thing. Tim could at any time quit Apple if he believes they're acting against his personal views. He doesn't require Apple to continue to survive as he's independently wealthy enough to live more comfortably than most of us given his current finances. It'd be very different if he couldn't just leave due to financial dependence. He hasn't quit which means he at least finds Apple's behaviors acceptable enough to keep collecting a paycheck. Given this, I don't think I'm wrong about Tim. He likes the power, or the money, or both enough to not care that Apple's practices are at best anti-consumer. The short of it is that Tim is scum, just like Jobs.

Thief!

[HideyoshiJP]

..that morning, Cook had stood in front of employees at Apple headquarters and held up the phone, which a staffer had hand-delivered from a store in Beijing to commemorate a notable occasion: Apple had sold its billionth iPhone.

Wait, did Tim Cook jack someone's iPhone just because it was the billionth? I can only imagine a scene similar to Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.

Re:He's full of shit

[rsborg]

the odd types of security flaws often found in iOS and in particular OSX, and Apple's suspiciosly long silence before fixing them, even when the fix is simple and given to them, clearly shows that they are willing to both insert and leave discovered security holes in their products because the government tells them to. The whole hard stance on privacy is a necessity to keep the sales up, and to keep all that sweet money from going to foreign competitors. Don't think for a second your Apple devices and computers are a good choice for privacy.

Compare to every other phone manufacturer and tell me who does it better. Lemme guess - you don't own a mobile phone? Cause thats about the only way you can guarantee privacy if you don't have some level of trust in your phone manufacturer.

I wish he would support it more broadly

[Polo]

Tim, I would like more control of my iPhone so I could assure privacy myself.

a few quick examples:

- Can I use my apple phone without apple knowing who I am?
- Can I block some apps from internet access at all times (not just over cellular)?
- Can I create/adjust my own content blockers?
- Can I have a firewall, bidirectional? Please?

Re:I wish he would support it more broadly

[kencurry]

also:

-Can I turn of the software update nagging?
-Can I play all songs by Artist with one tap (like I used to?)
-Can I permanently shut off the confusing Time Travel for Watch (what is that anyway?)

Otherwise, kudos.

Only for rich people if Apple's any guide.

[sethstorm]

The only reason they ever bothered is that some people of means were hurt by the lack of it. They don't care about ordinary people or what happens to them.

Re:Ludicrous duplicity

[Anonymous Coward]

it's hoovering up as much data about you as it possibly can and selling it off to whomever it can. Advertisers, sure. But they're the relatively benign tip of the iceberg. Insurance companies, credit rating agencies, healthcare firms,... They'll all gladly pay mr cook handsomely for the gigabytes of profile that Apple holds about every user. And Apple will quite happily oblige.

[Citation needed]

Re:Regrets from the faggot perhaps?

[MikeMo]

Tim Cook didn't leak anything. That was social engineering.

what a fool

[Anonymous Coward]

He talks privacy yet build huge cloud analysis data centers.
He really needs to step down.
No new products in years. What a failure.

Re:We don't protect ourselves by destroying Freedo

[AbRASiON]

From my understanding this guy is correct. The rumours go, that the guy who did the shooting deliberately smashed to pieces his personal phone and left his WORK iphone in his drawer / house or something.

I imagine law enforcement would want to check the thing but it was always likely to have very little on it.

Re:You bought the lie

[supernova87a]

And pray tell, if Apple had done that, would it have been the end of the matter and they would never be asked to do it again?

Re:My response

[gweihir]

I like the deep irony you are using here: Posting as an AC that "privacy is not worth protecting", refuting your own claim before you even make it. Well done!

There can be no free society without privacy

[gweihir]

In a free society, people must be able to experiment with ideas and thoughts. Some of these thoughts and ideas will by the very nature of the process be, to put it mildly, problematic. Other will threaten holders of power. Hence, in order to no have to self-censor, people must have privacy in the spaces they use to evolve their ideas and opinions and that is what a free society is all about. Today, these spaces are more often than reflected in the computing equipment people own.

Sure, many people do not use these freedoms or only use them rarely. That does not matter one bit. If they are missing, freedom goes out the window and tyranny sets in. And tyranny is far, far worse than any other threat could ever be.

Re:Artem Vaulin wasn't worth protecting

[gweihir]

As soon as you make a decision who can have privacy and who cannot, you have already lost the moral argument completely. Next steps: "abc" did not deserve free speech. Then "abc" did not deserve any freedom at all. And finally "abc" did not deserve to live. Look up "genocide" for the next step after that and for the overall approach "evil".

Re:Yes, but at what cost?

[gweihir]

No, it is not. The two are intricately linked. Freedom without privacy is not possible. However, privacy is easier for the forces of evil to attack, as most people fail to see the link. Usually, when it comes to placing cameras into people's bedrooms, even the most stupid "I have nothing to hide" morons start to notice something.

Re:going off

[gweihir]

That one is simple: For Tim Cook, it is a flash of inspiration that goes "off". Your you it is a dim glow that starts to come "on".

uh, he don't care about no stinking ethics

[cats-paw]

Then the question was, ethically, should we?

yeah- i'm sure he wrestled with that mightily.

what he wrestled with was the financial implications. Somehow they came to the conclusion that it would cost them more money to go ahead and break into that phone- probably because they'd have to start doing it all the time.

That's how that decision got made, not because of anything soft and fuzzy like ethics.

Re:uh, he don't care about no stinking ethics

[tlhIngan]

Then the question was, ethically, should we?

yeah- i'm sure he wrestled with that mightily.

what he wrestled with was the financial implications. Somehow they came to the conclusion that it would cost them more money to go ahead and break into that phone- probably because they'd have to start doing it all the time.

That's how that decision got made, not because of anything soft and fuzzy like ethics.

Here's a simple, basic question. We know iOS accounts for about 20% of the market, and Android, 80% (4 android phones sold for every iOS phone).

Now, it's obvious the FBI and other LEOs have problems with iPhones - of all the phones they're asking to decrypt, the vast majority of them were iPhones, while very few were Androids. (Something like 290 iPhones to about 10 Androids).

Now, given this, the implications of unlocking the phone seem to be very minimal - I mean, the FBI and such can unlock Androids just fine - either with the manufacturer's help or on their own. Who knows how many phones they've gone through - we only know about the phones they haven't gotten into.

Tim Cook even called out other manufacturers to stand up beside him, and all he got was crickets. Google flip-flopped between saying they'd decrypt the phone, to a lukewarm "well, maybe Apple is right...".

So no, the answer is not obvious when it's "do what everyone else is doing" and "defy the government". It's even less obvious when you take public opinion which was decidedly split at best, to wanting Apple to decrypt the phone (neverminding a certain loudmouthed presidential candidate publicly demanding the decryption).

Re:Ethics? Yeah .. no

[lambsonic]

I agree that it is almost certainly selective altruism, but I think that most altruism is selective in exactly the way I think you mean. But personally, Tim Cook did have a long history of being private about his personal life, having waited until a very demanding time to bring it up. The privacy issue itself came up in a very demanding time. It seems to fit him in this case. But then, I am not the best at reading between the lines, so there is that.

So is Apple no longer buddies with the NSA?

[cloakedpegasus]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... lol. (I laughed because privacy doesn't exist in the medium where many of our thoughts largely exist, the internet and computers in general). Nearly all of us wouldn't know if the NSA/CIA/etc... came into our computers to check on us-- from the little I know these guys have a huge amount of brain power and almost unlimited authority. And I'm sure there are a few leaps in this thought, but I'm worried that perhaps the public might conflate the FBI's inability to access that particular iPhone, you know which one, to the government in whole unable to access whatever desired information from whatever desired device/iphone/computer/IP address/Etc....

Re:We don't protect ourselves by destroying Freedo

[ausekilis]

If we really wanted to stop Sunni terrorist organizations we would be relentlessly trying to level places where they are Headquartered like Raqqa.

To what end? Every bomb we drop that happens to harm an innocent person is egg on our face in other countries eyes. It's a deadly game of whack-a-mole that really doesn't have an end.

Hate breeds more hate. The Sunni and Shiites will never be peaceful to one another, and neither will truly accept Western civilizations (e.g. US and UK) as long as we keep going in and ham-handedly killing women and children in the name of peace. Ever wonder what sparked terrorism and revenge on the West? Do you think maybe some of the Cold War proxy conflicts in Afghanistan and Pakistan may have something to do with it? Maybe the two gulf wars tarnished our image?

It's funny that these terrorist organizations are so hard to track because they use "ancient" technology. Bin Laden used hand-written messages and couriers to plan and coordinate. They hid in caves, not in the backs or basements of bars. They stayed away from cell phones and other devices that could be tracked and monitored. Yet we are led to believe that these "lone wolves" were only able to chat via cell phone?

Re:Privacy is a Right?

[fuzznutz]

"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."

The ninth amendment was included in the Bill or Rights precisely to prevent governements and other authorities from claiming that the list of rights enumerated in the constitution was an comprehensive list

Every time I hear someone say where does it say X in the Constitution, I know they never made it to the 9th in their reading.

Stop reading here

[allo]

> After a few days, we had determined yes, we could.
Enough. What can be done, eventually will be done. Others try to secure their software, so not even they can crack it. That's the way to go, because otherwise there just need to be enough bribe or pressure and it will be done. Look at your anonymous vpn provider. They will most likely cooperate as well, turning over all their logs, which means nothing at all. That's useful security for you and for them. Now suppose they have logs but store them strongly encrypted. Then it's just a matter of a good argument to convince them to turn over the logs. And once they did it one time it's a slippery slope.

Call me cynical, but..

[Rexdude]

Translation: - "I care deeply about privacy because Apple's business model at present is based on selling hardware, not advertising."

Fuck Jobs in his stupid ass

[TiggertheMad]

The short of it is that Tim is scum, just like Jobs.

See, that's where you are wrong. NOBODY was scum like Jobs.....