“U.S. President Barack Obama arrived in Silicon Valley bearing gifts for Tim Cook: A seal of approval for Apple Pay,” Tim Higgins and Elizabeth Dexheimer report for Bloomberg.
“The White House announced Friday that Apple Inc.’s mobile-payment system will be enabled for users of federal-payment cards, including Social Security and veterans benefits that are paid out via debit cards. The deal includes the Direct Express payment network and government cards issued through GSA SmartPay, which handles more than 87.4 million transaction worth $26.4 billion each year, according to the General Services Administration,” Higgins and Dexheimer report. “‘It has big promotional value”’for Apple, Richard Crone, chief executive officer of Crone Consulting LLC, said. ‘It makes it look like the federal government is endorsing Apple Pay.’ …On Friday, Cook said Apple Pay will become available in September for many transactions with the federal government, such as at national parks.”
“Obama arrives in Silicon Valley at a time when his administration’s relationship with technology and Web companies has grown frosty over government spying and the privacy rights of their users and customers. Facebook Inc. CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Yahoo Inc. CEO Marissa Mayer, and Google Inc.’s Larry Page and Eric Schmidt all were invited but won’t attend the conference at Stanford University, according to the companies,” Higgins and Dexheimer report. “The company announced that it would no longer be able to access data, such as photos, stored on devices running its newest mobile operating system called iOS 8. The changes attracted criticism from James Comey, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Hopefully, Cook didn’t give up anything important (back doors, encryption keys) for that seal of approval. We trust he did not.
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. – Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759
Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free. – Ronald Reagan, March 30, 1961
Visit the Apple-backed reformgovernmentsurveillance.com today.