“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.