Philip Houska At a recent meeting at the White House on counterterrorism measures in San Jose, California, Apple CEO Tim Cook, among others, had his say, criticizing government officials' lax approach to the issue of unbreakable encryption. The heads of other major technology companies, including Microsoft, Facebook, Google and Twitter, also attended the meeting with members of the White House.
Tim Cook made it clear to everyone that the US government should support unbreakable encryption. His biggest opponent in the iOS encryption debate was FBI Director James Comey, who had previously stated that if unbreakable encryption is implemented, any legal enforcement against criminal communication interceptions is practically impossible, thus also a very difficult solution to criminal cases.
"Justice doesn't have to come from a locked phone or an encrypted hard drive," Comey said shortly after becoming FBI director. "For me, it is incomprehensible that the market would come up with something that cannot be deciphered in any way," he added during his earlier speech in Washington.
Cook's (or his company's) position on this issue remains the same - since the launch of iOS 8, it is impossible even for Apple itself to decrypt data on devices with this operating system, so even if Apple were asked by the government to decrypt certain user data data on iOS 8 and later, it won't be able to.
Cook has already commented on this situation several times and came up with strong arguments during the December program 60 Minutes, where, among other things, commented on the tax system. “Consider the situation where you have your health aspects and financial information stored on your smartphone. You also have private conversations with family or colleagues there. There may also be sensitive details about your company that you definitely don't want to share with anyone. You have the right to protect it all, and the only way to keep it private is by encryption. Why? Because if there was a way to get them, that way would soon be discovered," Cook is convinced.
"People told us to keep the back door open. But we didn't, so they're closed for good and for bad," said Cook, who is the only vocal supporter of maximum privacy protection among the tech giants. He made it clear to officials in the White House that they should come and say "no backdoor" and definitively bury the FBI's efforts to look into people's privacy in the first place.
Although many security experts and others who speak out on the issue agree with Cook in his position, among the heads of the companies that are directly involved - that is, those that offer products where user privacy needs to be protected - they are mostly silent. "All other companies are either publicly open to compromise, privately colluded, or unable to take a stand at all." writes Nick Heer of Pixel Envy. And John Gruber of Daring Fireball ho adds: “Tim Cook is right, the encryption and security experts are on his side, but where are the other leaders of big American companies? Where is Larry Page? Satya Nadella? Mark Zuckerberg? Jack Dorsey?”
"But they didn't do it to me" - really?
considering Tim's orientation, I find the title homophobic
:-D
I see the only one with balls is Tim Cook!
It's always all just advertising, I hope no one believes that you haven't had it for a long time. That's like believing that the refugee crisis will be resolved by the summer :D