Apple CEO Tim Cook challenges Obama with impassioned stand on privacy

I don't get it. Why is everyone (including Snowden) talking about personal moments, privacy, intimacy etc when the problem is clearly about tyranny, dictatorship and misuse of power? We have very specific and numerous evidence that in the past the state used its powers to spy, threaten and discredit ideological opponents and activists, from M. L. King to all anti-war movements since Vietnam. Since the dawn of history the "state" was always the biggest threat to the safety of it's "citizens", not external aggression. We need to stay safe from our own state, that is why we must not give up our privacy, not because of some silly naked pictures on your phone.

I&#x27;m not sure what the US government is complaining about. If the baseband has direct memory access, they should be able to grab any cryptographic key off the phones without Apple or the user ever noticing, that is unless Apple has been getting stroppy lately about who gets to talk on their PCI bus.<p>As for Apple doing the right thing, even if they manage to keep the government out of people&#x27;s business today, they still hold the key to the universal back door and might give it away tomorrow. Apple certainly has the resources to develop a completely liberated phone, but NeXT and post-merger Apple has always been incredibly hostile to software freedom, and this speech doesn&#x27;t change any of that.<p>I don&#x27;t think they are afraid that they won&#x27;t be able to spy on people, but they are worried about maintaining the public opinion that privacy is for creeps and terrorists. But another interesting effect of closing every back door but the baseband is that there will likely be a power struggle within the intelligence and law enforcement agencies. Only the highest ranking officers will be able to push malicious firmware updates, regular police will have no choice but to stick with traditional police work.

I recently taught a small module on cryptography to some 13 year olds.<p>In one lesson, I asked them to write down what they thought of companies being forced to weaken encryption.<p>This was a very typical response from the group.<p>&quot;I think that encryption should still be allowed because I should have some privacy in my life and everyone else can. No one wants to be watched, stalked, etc. just because a couple of criminals may be able to start a (rare) terrorist attack, there should be other ways to stop them apart from making everyone elses life uncomfortable. You might aswell have no passwords for any website, it&#x27;s basically the same thing.&quot;<p>If kids get it, I fail to see why politicians don&#x27;t.

It&#x27;s worth remembering that Apple have stated that &quot;conversations which take place over iMessage and FaceTime are protected by end-to-end encryption so no one but the sender and receiver can see or read them. Apple cannot decrypt that data.&quot;[1]<p>I suspect that Cook is anticipating legislation that would require that Apple re-engineer its services to support &quot;lawful&quot; interception of the content of messages&#x2F;conversations, but is hoping that adopting a aggressive stance now will result in a compromise end state whereby interception must happen proactively and by exception (and within a clear legal framework - e.g. authorised by a warrant or court order) as opposed to a mass surveillance regime where everything is hoovered up (i.e. intercepted and stored).<p>1: <a href="https://www.apple.com/apples-commitment-to-customer-privacy/" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.apple.com&#x2F;apples-commitment-to-customer-privacy&#x2F;</a>

This is likely a jab at Obama, since Tim Cook is probably sick of all the NSA and FBI spooks plugging black boxes into his servers, not to mention how it&#x27;s illegal for him to even complain about it publicly. The scary thing is that I&#x27;m no longer a bonafide paranoiac for expressing an opinion like this. I&#x27;m probably right.

Tim Cook just earned a lot of respect today.

&gt;&gt; &quot;The Apple boss, who last year publicly acknowledged he is gay, added that “history has shown us that sacrificing our right to privacy can have dire consequences”<p>Why would this detail possibly be relevant to the point Tim Cook was making?

&quot;We should not share the control we have over our consumers with the NSA!&quot;

I think it would be convenient if Apple just &#x27;bent over&#x27; and started selling NSAPhones, but nothing will kill foreign customers who value privacy [1] more than to know the KGB, or MI6, etc (or Madagascar Intel, it doesn&#x27;t matter who, just not <i>their</i> country) runs their phone. I mean, what American would buy a KGBPhone? Apple&#x27;s just defending a now largely foreign customer base, it seems to me. I&#x27;m sure they&#x27;ll comply with requests, but they can&#x27;t be a pushover.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.cnet.com/news/china-likely-to-top-us-for-apple-iphone-sales/" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cnet.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;china-likely-to-top-us-for-apple-ip...</a>

That little &quot;namaste&quot; gesture that he ended it with - I wonder if he picked up that habit from Jobs?

Doesn&#x27;t the latest OS X share to Apple what people are searching for on their own computer? (By default).

Much better response imo than just not going to the event like some other tech CEO&#x27;s.

Definitely

clickbait title tho

Yea so apple doesn&#x27;t store and use my information and do creepy shit with stuff i never explicitly gave them my permission to use. Dont fucking insult me, cook.

This mean if can continue using my iPhone without risk! Lol