“Apple has at least one firm political ally in its fight with the FBI over an encrypted iPhone linked to the deadly San Bernardino terrorist attack: the independent voter,” Steven Musil reports for CNET.
“The poll, conducted by Wall Street Journal and NBC News, asked respondents which scenario concerned them more: that the US won’t go far enough in monitoring terror suspects’ communications, or that the government would go too far and violate the privacy of its citizens,” Musil reports. “Overall, 47 percent said they feared the government wouldn’t go far enough in protecting national security, while 44 percent feared it would intrude too far into citizens’ privacy.”
“Republicans leaned toward protecting national security over a government overreach concerns, 57 percent to 37 percent, respectively. Meanwhile, Democrats were a little more evenly split on the subject, with 50 percent worrying the government would go too far and 40 percent worrying it wouldn’t go far enough,” Musil reports. “The only voter group that seems to be siding with Apple on the issue is the independent voter. By a 2-to-1 margin, independent voters, who don’t tend to identify with either major US political party, said Apple shouldn’t cooperate with the FBI’s efforts to crack open a phone (58 percent). Only 28 percent of independents said the company should cooperate.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: It’s a sad testament to U.S. public education (or lack thereof) that so many don’t understand the issue:
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
Encryption is either on or off. This is a binary issue. There is no in-between. You either have encryption or you do not.
There have been people that suggest that we should have a back door. But the reality is if you put a back door in, that back door’s for everybody, for good guys and bad guys. — Apple CEO Tim Cook, December 2015
This is not about this phone. This is about the future. And so I do see it as a precedent that should not be done in this country or in any country. This is about civil liberties and is about people’s abilities to protect themselves. If we take encryption away… the only people that would be affected are the good people, not the bad people. Apple doesn’t own encryption. Encryption is readily available in every country in the world, as a matter of fact, the U.S. government sponsors and funs encryption in many cases. And so, if we limit it in some way, the people that we’ll hurt are the good people, not the bad people; they will find it anyway. — Apple CEO Tim Cook, February 2016
Oppose government overreach.
Yes MDN it might be a sad testament to your public education but it’s a real testament to your government and media control over the masses. When it comes to being a blind sheepish country it’s mission accomplished.
polls, statistics and manipulation.
How about asking people if Apple should allow all governments in the world to hack into their phones?
The dummies at MDN aren’t listening (or reading). The issue being debated needs to be recast to which specific data can and should be securely stored for legitimate government access without touching anyone’s phone data. Not all data is a privacy rights issue. Email and message transmission times and addresses is needed to track bad guys and is supported already for phone calls/messages only. Become a part of the solution rather than a barrier of security which matters as well as privacy.
So you think Apple should write software that allows brute force attacks that allows only partial access? Do you have any idea what you’re talking about???
He’s a troll and they don’t care about anything, least of all making a ass of themselves. I suppose in a couple of years we will all have to have our full names, addresses and personnel information listed instead of a moniker.
First, I am an avid reader of MacDailyNews. I check it several times a day. With that being said, would you please stop quoting Tim Cook and Benjamin in almost every single article. It is repetitive and just a little bit irritating. Please dial it back for a while, or come up with new quotes.
Particularly when the original context of the Franklin quote is to support the freedom of the people, acting through their elected representatives, to tax those who sought to protect their financial security through tax avoidance. Dr. Franklin, throughout his career, was always clear that the public welfare had to be protected against private interests no less than the other way around.
The use of the quote to paint Franklin as a libertarian is not quite as egregious, however, as the repeated use of a quote by a major slave owner to the effect that no man has the right to put chains on another. Patrick Henry had peculiar notions about who was allowed to ask for Liberty rather than Death.
OK, how about:
It is better to risk saving a guilty man than to condemn an innocent one. —Voltaire
It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so. — Mark Twain
There is no order in the world around us, we must adapt ourselves to the requirements of chaos instead. — Kurt Vonnegut
If the facts don’t fit the theory, change the facts. — Albert Einstein
In the end, everything is a gag. — Charlie Chaplin