“Billionaires, tech CEOs and top members of the Republican establishment flew to a private island resort off the coast of Georgia this weekend for the American Enterprise Institute’s annual World Forum, according to sources familiar with the secretive gathering,” Ryan Grim, Nick Baumann, and Matt Fuller report for The Huffington Post. “The main topic at the closed-to-the-press confab? How to stop Republican front-runner Donald Trump.”
“Apple CEO Tim Cook, Google co-founder Larry Page, Napster creator and Facebook investor Sean Parker, and Tesla Motors and SpaceX honcho Elon Musk all attended,” Grim, Baumann, and Fuller report. “So did Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), political guru Karl Rove, House Speaker Paul Ryan, GOP Sens. Tom Cotton (Ark.), Cory Gardner (Colo.), Tim Scott (S.C.), Rob Portman (Ohio) and Ben Sasse (Neb.), who recently made news by saying he ‘cannot support Donald Trump.'”
“He wasn’t the only topic of the wide-ranging conference, however,” Grim, Baumann, and Fuller report. “At one point, Cotton and Apple’s Cook fiercely debated cell phone encryption, a source familiar with the exchange told HuffPost. ‘Cotton was pretty harsh on Cook,’ the source said, and ‘everyone was a little uncomfortable about how hostile Cotton was.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Cotton obviously doesn’t understand the issue. Stay the course, Tim!
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Fred Mertz,” “Dan K.,” and “Lynn Weiler” for the heads up.]
How about stopping and processing Hillary Clinton ?
How about mass murderer George W Bush who killed thousands of innocent people in two wars based on lies, and gave 16.5 trillion dollars to Saudi Arabia to arm ISIS! And what about the Budh a depression, the Bush torture,?
Cuckoo cuckoo….
In case you haven’t noticed justice for that nation only means what they can dish out to others, when it comes to taking justice they are hiding out at the ranch, like a typical bully nation.
A president tried for war crimes and crimes against humanity? It’s the logical thing and the people of the free and civilized world can see that. The closest thing anyone will get is their current president farting off the most ridiculous statement ““a belief that we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards.”” that makes Pontius Pilate look good.
When it comes to justice denied in this case, it’s mission accomplished.
It will be great when Bush’s war crimes finally catch up with him. Even if he continues to evade Justice from the courts of law, I believe in other forms of Judgement that are inescapable.
But don’t forget, Senator Hilary Clinton voted ‘Yes’ to the invasion of Iraq in 2001, a vote on whether or not to kill thousands of people and create Isis at the expense of America’s tax payers and America’s reputation abroad (real foreign policy expert there.) And later the same year, Senator Clinton voted ‘Yes’ on the Patriot Act, to ‘temporarily’ revoke everyone’s Constitutional rights to privacy, and then voted ‘Yes’ to reauthorize the same law 5 years later. I haven’t forgotten the things she ‘got done’ when given elected power. But by all means, keep blaming W Bush during an election he’s distanced himself from.
You keep using that phrase (war crimes), I do not think it means what you think it means.
Unless you actually believe that Saddam’s henchmen, and later, Al Qaeda pros / amateurs were secretly in his employ (cuckoo). Or that the annual funding requests, all congressionally-approved, didn’t happen (cuckoo). Or that all they only started committing atrocities in response to our attempt to oust them. Or that the Iraqis were lying when they asked Obama (ya ‘boy*) to leave our troops there.
Or maybe, you’re an ally of the terrorists.
* ‘boy not to your liking? OK, we’ll use corrupt, incompetent, malicious, narcissistic man-child.
Here’s something to make fanboy’s brain hurt.
What would you idiots being saying and doing if Tim Cook had come out regarding the FBI request with this:
“At Apple, we’ve always valued privacy. When we marketed OS X as being the most secure operating system in the world, we lied. We knew it actually wasn’t. But as a marketing company who has a bunch of fanboy followers who will believe anything we say, at any time, it’s easy to BS people. As Charlie Miller, the guy who hacked into OS X in seconds said, “Mac OS X is like living in a farmhouse in the country with no locks.” But you guys ate up the marketing, and our tiny desktop marketshare grew a little. So that’s that.
With iOS, we also market it as being secure. We don’t want that marketing disrupted. We don’t want people to think, or know, that it’s not secure. Because we’ll lose money. So here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to make this a political issue, and get everyone to believe that by complying with a Court Order to help the FBI access data off of a terrorist’s phone, everyone is going to be less secure, and we’ll threaten national security.
Once we play this PR game with you, and make you believe you won’t be safe, then you can help pressure the government for us to overturn the Court Order. That’s right. We’re using you and manipulating you for our own corporate gain. We could really care less about you. We just want your money. But you’ll think we care. That we have your best interests in mind. And the country’s. And that’s the goal of this.
Let’s now turn to some FAQs that people have sent in.
–1. Apple changed the encryption technology in iOS in 2014, and this is what has made it difficult for the FBI and others to access data from the iPhone. Prior to this, law enforcement was able to access the data on locked iPhones. Yet, you weren’t saying that people and the country were less secure and our national security was in grave danger prior to this.–
Thanks for the question. That’s right, you’ve just identified one part of our BS. Yes, law enforcement could access data on locked iPhones prior to the 2014 change and no we didn’t say the world was less secure and national security was threatened and everyone should be scared. We marked the phone as being secure. But now, because our bottom-line is threatened, we’re trying to scare you.
–2. How can anyone believe that a company as secret and locked down and secure as Apple can’t keep a data access initiative like what the FBI is asking for secure? Especially since you have a zillion iTunes accounts with credit card information, etc. and you’ve managed to keep that secure and over a network for many years…–
Nobody should believe that we can’t keep our iPhone data access method secure. But our fanboys, and there’s lots of them, will believe anything! That’s what makes our PR job so easy. So then we can argue that by breaking into the iPhone for the FBI, our method will spread around the world and everyone’s phone will be broken into! But in reality, the chances of this happening are very slim.
–3. Tim, you’re really becoming political on different issues and using Apple as a sounding board. Don’t you have a lot of work to do at Apple? Isn’t this a distraction?–
Well, I am political on a lot of issues because I have a false sense of self-importance. I don’t realize that I’m not anything near a politician. I’m not an expert on national security. Neither am I an expert on law enforcement. Eventually, I’ll realize the error of my ways but by that time, I won’t be at Apple anymore. Are our products “great”? Not really under my watch. But who cares! We have so many fanboys that we could box anything and they’d buy it! By the way, after this FBI thing, I’m going to circle back to gay rights issues.
–4. Did you intentionally make the iPhone impervious to law enforcement’s data access methods in 2014? And now you’re dealing with the consequences and are trying to spin this into a social and political issue that threatens everyone’s security?–
Yes, we did purposely thwart law enforcement’s data access methods. And now we’re dealing with it. Why did we do this? Because we didn’t want anyone’s naked shower pics to be exposed. When a string of famous people’s iPhones were being hacked with naked pictures of them floating around the Internet, it was really bad PR for us. We can’t let anything disrupt our precious iPhone revenues.
–5. When the hell are you going to fix the million bugs in OS X and iOS? When are you going to have a MacBook with a decent processor and graphics chip in it so it doesn’t stutter all of the time? When are we going to get a Watch that has more than 1 day battery life? When are we going to have an iPhone screen that doesn’t wash out in the sun and have a bunch of glare? When you are going to give us some really revolutionary software and not this tired old junk? And on and on…–
Thanks for the question, you! I’m so busy with political stuff I guess I plum forgot about all this. Oh well, you guys will buy anything anyway so screw you!
F-
Work on consistency and avoid self contradiction, especially when you are pretending to speak for someone else.
Your post is way too long and no one is going to read through it. That’s too bad because you appear to have put a lot of effort into it, and you might have good points buried in there somewhere. But we’ll never know because it comes across as a rant rather than something anyone’s going to have any interest in engaging. And it make it easy for others to dismiss you. Unless of course that’s what you want.
A number of posters here have opinions I do not agree with. But I read and sometimes engage when they have articulated their point of view succinctly. You might try to do the same.
JWSC:
Your post says nothing. Advances nothing.
“What would you idiots being saying and doing if Tim Cook had […] [blah blah blah]”
In that weirdly contrived alternate parallel universe you made up, I imagine are correct about everything, and we are all wrong, so very wrong. That’s why I’m proud to be a member of the real universe, and not a fantasy built to match one random idiot’s preconceptions.
As far as number 2 goes, the answer is people will be involved.
I have in VERY Good Authority that this is not true… Its a bogus rumor!
Cook ought to stick to technology and leave politics to someone else…
I’m sure Cook didn’t seek out this meeting. And Cotton should be the one getting out of politics. He clearly wants to weaken security for everyone.
BS.
If Cook wants to get his ideas enacted, he should write to his congressman just like any other citizen. What he is doing now is joining his corporate cronies in plain old fashioned corruption.
Cook could run for office if he wanted to serve the people in getting tax reform or social justice reform. But no, he’s too weak to do it. Besides, the salary at Apple is just too much to refuse. As Emperor of Apple, he has the entire Apple cash pile at his disposal and he’s using it for political purposes. You know damn well that he chose this meeting. Apple is more political than ever, and they are going to do everything in their considerable power to pick the next president instead of letting the people choose.
America the republic hasn’t existed for a while. It is a corporatocracy, now with Cook gladly throwing his influence around.
Whether or not you agree with Cook or Apple on any single issue, this is crony capitalism. This corruption is exactly what the most forward thinking founding fathers wanted to avoid. The bicameral legislature was supposed to ensure that citizens were fairly represented in the Lower Chamber (House of Representatives) while the rich folk could have the House of Lords — ahem, Senate. Instead now we have corporations, including Apple, openly corrupting the democratic process.
If there was ever a time that needed electoral reform, now is it. Get the money out of politics once and for all. No corporation, including Apple, should be allowed influence like this.
This is part of why I’m so critical of Apple on this. Even the most hopeless, nerd fanboy has to step back and understand this. Apple DOES NOT CARE ABOUT YOU. They care about one thing: money. And I have no problem with that.
The problem I have is when a corporation starts inserting itself into politics and pushing a particular agenda and particularly when the issues are so serious. Apple is such a large company that their influence is significant.
No corporation should be in a position or allowed to call the shots of a state. Private interests need to be considered but there’s a stopping point.
Apple is tyranical in its way of doing business and it’s really put me off. I criticize Jobs for this too. But Cook is becoming so political I’m asking if Apple has lost the plot…
The products aren’t great anymore. But they still have the ability to do great products. Time will tell if all this political bullshxt has caused even more adverse affects to Apple’s product line and product roadmap.
Apple is a tech company not a government, and they’re acting like they’re the Whitehouse. Tim Cook seems to have developed some sort of God Complex and it’s bloody alarming. First it was the gay rights stuff and now he’s on to this.
Tim Cook and Apple need to shut up and get back to work. Deal with stuff more behind closed doors and grow up. Stop causing fear in people to try and get your way Tim. Get a life.
He never attended such a meeting… Its bogus rumors!
You mean leave it to Hillary and Trump? Tim has more of a responsible, common sense clue for what is in the best interests of the people than these two corrupt exploiters.Tim Cook and Bernie Sanders would both make better presidents.
I would prefer Bernie, as well.
Arrest him for exercising his Constitutional rights!
The Constitution does not grant corporations the freedoms of citizenship. It is silent on the matter, so more recent legislation, most of it written by the foxes who guard the henhouse, is what rules the land today.
Don’t be so blind as to sell out your republic to unchecked corporate influence, even if your favorite corporation wants to play politics.
Cook was dragged into this when the government forced the issue by trying to coerce Apple into creating an insecure operating system.
This is a bogus rumor!!!
So when the Government shows up at your door step and they say: ‘We are the Government and we are here to help’. What do you do? What is Tim supposed to do? Let them have their way?
When the government shows up at your doorstep, you say “show me a warrant!” If they don’t have one, tell them goodbye. If they have one, you comply, but make sure to say “I do not consent to this search.” If they try to talk with you, assert out loud that “I choose to remain silent” and “I want my attorney.”
More detail: https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/searches-and-warrants-what-do-when-encountering-law-enforcement
Unless of course you win a trip to the exclusive Guatanamo on the Bay Resort. In that case you’d probably be crying things out loud of course, I know I probably would if my human rights were stripped by war criminals committing crimes against humanity.
I’m not sure I follow your point.
Are you saying that people will probably cave if they are tortured? If so, then…duh?
I don’t disagree that much of what has happened (and is happening) at Guantanamo includes war crimes.
I am saying that most people would probably cave in if they are tortured and I thank you for realizing that this falls under the category of war crimes and/or crimes against humanity that will go unanswered.
The point is that since World War II most prisoners have been protected by the Geneva Conventions. This has been circumvented by defining “unlawful combatants, a category of persons who do not qualify for prisoner-of-war status under the Geneva Conventions.” This has basically given carte blanche to that government to do what they please, torture, no trial, basically nothing to protect them.
The point is that once a government moves into that posture, it’s not a big jump to start treating their own citizens that way, and in certain aspects the Snowden revelations have noted just that.
So right now I gather a citizen is in theory protected as you pointed out, by the need for a warrant to search, right to remain silent and the need for an attorney but this hangs by a delicate thread in that country at this moment.
You made a great post by the way, that link is certainly quite useful to protect oneself against the coercion that is well known in law enforcement.
Not that I’m a fan of any of these boobs running for President, but this smacks of crony-capitalism. I’m highly disappointed that Apple is actively stepping into the swamp called politics.
A Trump presidency would put Apple out of business, especially his trade policies. He himself even said Apple should be boycotted.
Rep8blikans should thank Cook and his peers for thier contribution to try and save the country, even more specifically – the doomed k party from quick oblivion.
America has survived eight years of Obama lies and run totally without balls. Let the new dictator rule for four years and see if Trump can actual keep one promise. All fear uncertainty yet no President has been able to guarantee a promise – hence nothing to worry about. And remember, the leader is merely that, a figure that represents — its the party that governs.
Good points. Many don’t realize we are a country with too many cooks in the kitchen, about 545 cooks to be exact. That is why no one can keep their promises.
What the president can do is set an agenda and rally the troops (us) or make “threats” or “deals”. It’s up to us to select people that stay the course (represent us) and don’t sell their souls.
However, I am most fearful what Obama may do till he is out. If nothing then, whew!, America has survived him.
“That is why no one can keep their promises.”
No, that is the method by which they can say they kept their promises, but the “other 544 members” would not support their position.
Hence, all 545 guys/gals keep arranging to increase spending year after year, all the while pretending to work for “the people,” but in reality they are impoverishing the whole nation.
Cooks, or Crooks?
Cotton is a rising star in the GOP and is almost as dangerous as Trump. He rides in his military coat tails but I think he’s smelled a little too much gunfire smoke. Mitch McConnell is the slimiest POS in politics today, another untrustworthy Senator. I feel sorry for Tim having to spend time in such a rat’s nest of bigotry, white supremacy and homophobia. Trump WILL NOT BE PRESIDENT. Of 310 million people in a country, there are legions of idiots. But HRC not Bernie Sanders will lose to Trump.
Tom Cotton is a wholly owned bitch of the Koch Brothers. They bought him that Senate seat.
Well over a year before the primaries, Koch funded Astro-turf outfits were hammering sitting Senator Mark Pryor 24/7/365 with ads that made him look like a cross between Osama Bin Laden and the Anti-Christ. Every media outlet-all the time.
Pryor, a fairly conservative Democrat, hasd won election the previous cycle with about 65% of the vote. When pressed for specifics as to why no re-elect him you could get no consistent answer from voters.
Cotton is a young man in a hurry and is a butt boy to the Koch empire. Writing a letter as a constituent is an exercise in frustration as you will get a canned response from the high church of Ayn Rand.
Expect him to run for President in a couple of years. The party of Jesus the Prosperity Pimpmight actually be crazy enough to nominate him. Think of him as Raphael “Ted” Cruz – without the charm.
And Karl Rove is the political “genius” that helped give the republican party Mccain and Romney. Bilderberg Tech????
A “secret” meeting that has been held every year. The Trump connection is just an invention of the media. That ‘s not what the meeting was about.
Cook and other business leaders would rather Clinton win than trump so that they’re left alone with screwing with America and a chance of having real health care. I was an Apple fan, but Cook is pissing me off too much lately with his politics. I’ll buy another brand of phone this year. Screw Apple and Cook especially who thinks no matter he says is right.
Raise your keyboards. How many of you think your vote means a damn thing?
…hang on, I gotta answer the door…
Are you ever gonna make it back to your keyboard?
Great article in the NYT about this issue:
“The most important party business is the nomination and election of office seekers who will serve the interests of the party’s intense policy demanders. The italicized phrase marks the key difference between our theory and most other contemporary theorizing about parties. In our theory, parties — that is, the groups that constitute parties — do not care about winning for the sake of winning office. They care about the policy gains. And they make those gains not simply by the election of someone nominally affiliated with their party. They make them by the election of someone committed to the maximum feasible achievement of group goals…
It is natural to think of parties in a two-party system as majoritarian. Ours, however, are not. They want to win elections, but they do not necessarily wish to represent a majority of voters. As a by-product of their wish to govern, parties must offer a degree — perhaps a large degree — of responsiveness to popular majorities, but responsiveness to voters is not why parties exist. They exist to achieve the intense policy demands of their constituent groups. One might criticize parties for lack of deference to majority will, but their groups would not much care. Intense policy demanders nearly always believe their demands are just and that it is their duty to work for these demands whether or not most voters agree with them.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/01/opinion/campaign-stops/why-cant-the-gop-stop-trump.html?smid=nytnow-share&smprod=nytnow&_r=0
The more they resist him, the greater Trump chances are of winning. People will vote for him just to spite the establishment.
I’m thinking that it would be most interesting for Trump, should he win the nomination, to get Bernie for his vice-president. They could appeal to a lot of people with the slogan, “They tried to screw us, but now it’s our turn.” or something like that!
Sanders isn’t that stupid. Sanders knows he would destroy Trump in a national election. And if Wall Street wasn’t putting all their money behind Clinton, then Sanders would defeat her too.
Sanders is moderate and pragmatic — unlike Trump, Cruz, or Clinton, who think they know it all.
So, people get mad when corporations interfere and influence politics but now it’s ok?
Cue all of the Machiavellian “ends justify the means” explanations.
There is ZERO correlation between cook knowing what’s best for people regarding encryption and cook & other elites knowing better than voters about who the people choose as nominee. Epitome of hypocrisy.
Heard a great analogy for unfettered capitalism the other day:
In the USA today, what we have is an Easter egg hunt. All kids are invited to play, but instead of setting up a system where all kids have equal opportunity to find eggs, the bigger stronger bullies run amok over the younger tots. And the rules of the egg hunt are established by the parents of the bullies: winner takes all.
It is very easy to see that for many generations, the people with money — mostly corporations — have dominated partisan politics. By distracting voters, they are easily able to get their puppets elected to office and to write bills that sway the playing field in their favor.
The corrupt politicians who compromise Congress haven’t represented the citizens for generations. The red tape and loopholes they create are designed to enrich corporations, not create a better society for all citizens. The electoral system and the very making of laws is dominated by corporate leaders.
And now Apple has officially become one of the corruptive influences, throwing its money and weight around to get their candidate (Hillary Clinton) elected by any means necessary.
What a crock. I used to think better of Apple, but it’s just another greedy corporation now.
What’s Cook gonna do, give them all a BJ??
I agree with Chase here. A group of rich an powerful people coming together to stop someone they don’t like from becoming president is very disturbing.
I do not want Donald Trump to be president in any way shape or form, but this is scary.
If this happens, what little remains of our democracy is dead. No American should support this kind of behavior.
I am not a Star Wars fan, but for all those who support this…
‘So This Is How Liberty Dies…With Thunderous Applause’
The meeting happens often. That one issue they are dealing with is this does not mean the meeting was called specifically for that purpose.
Doesn’t matter. This should not be a course of action planned by anyone.
“Way down south in the land of COTTON, ol’ times there were not forgotten…”
There is a reason for Donald.
If you do not know what that reason is, then you will not see it coming, most likely for you.
People get fed up. There is a tipping point when the propaganda being forced down the throat makes you want to completely rewrite the slate. Be careful. It happened in Germany in the ’30s. If it happens now, it will not be unicorns and rainbows. It will be the end.
I have in VERY Good Authority that this is not true… He has not attended such meeting .. And has no intention to. .. Its a bogus rumor!
Please cite your Good Authority.
You will just have to trust me…..
No reason for me to plug this in if it did not come form a very credible source.
America desperately needs a wake up call. The world has noticed how corrupt the United States has become. Not the people. The inside government.
The average American has been brainwashed into believing that their Government is serving them well and would never lead them astray.
Well, its time you all woke up and said “what if” I’m wrong.
Its common knowledge that the Clinton’s and the Bushes are corrupt through and through. Don’t take my word for it. Use the internet search tools. Check out the many documentaries on YouTube. Some factual some unbelievable.
Learn about your world history. Where Hitlers money came from for his oil & engines. Learn about scull & crossbones, Bohemian Grove, JFK, Oklahoma city bombing, WTC Building 7.
Without the internet we still wouldn’t know the truth because TV News just don’t have permission to show certain things.
I don’t like all that Trump says, he’s not perfect, but America needs major change & I think he’s the man to do it. If nothing else, he listens to the general population. He recognises what the people want. Unlike the others who have secret agenda’s.
Hopefully this scull duggery on an island to coerce the rich companies to interfere in the countries politics will be seen by Tim Cook & others as to what it really is.
Boy, they must be really scared as to what Trump has achieved. Giving the average American a voice.
Meetings such as this are how OLIGARCHIES work.
What is of course ironic is the deliberate and systematic stupefaction of USA citizen, for the sake of manipulation, has backfired and the oligarchs don’t like the BOZO who’s usurping their puppeteering control. <–Well, that's one way to look at it.
Oh and Senator Cotton of Arkansas: Catch up on your reading! Put the US Constitution on the top of your list, if you even have a reading list. (0_o) You'll find it here:
https://www.congress.gov/constitution-annotated/