Apple CEO Cook defends decision to fight DOJ on iPhone ‘backdoor’
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Asked by a participant at Apple’s annual shareholders meeting to comment on accusations that it wasn’t fully cooperating with the investigation into an Islamic terrorist attack at the Naval Air Station Pensacola, Florida this past December, Apple CEO Tim Cook again defended the decision not to introduce a so-called “backdoor” to its products that would give law enforcement greater access to the tech giant’s devices during criminal investigations.
iPhone passcode lock screen“We have supplied all of the information we have on all of the requests we have received,” [Cook] said. “Don’t think for a second that we have something that we aren’t giving.”
“You put a backdoor in your house and anyone can come in the backdoor. And so the phone is the same way,” he told shareholders…
It’s not just Cook who opposes a backdoor mechanism for devices like the iPhone. Security experts across the spectrum say such a move would immediately create an exploitable vulnerability in Apple’s devices, putting the privacy of every user around the world at risk.
What’s more, if Apple gave the U.S. access to a backdoor, authoritarian regimes such as the Chinese government could use the tool to spy on dissenters.
As Cook himself explained, “You can never have a backdoor just for the good guys.”
MacDailyNews Take: That no “backdoor” would be secure is blatantly obvious to even the most painfully dimwitted, so, therefore, those demanding these mythical “backdoors” must really want insecure devices that they can access at any time, for any reason whenever they conjure up a warrant and a judge to rubber stamp it.
Cook’s most lasting legacy, we hope, will be protecting users’ right to privacy even in the face of overreaching governments.
Why don’t these genius politicians next attempt to legislate in purple unicorns? They’re equally as plentiful as secure backdoors. – MacDailyNews, October 3, 2018
Simple logic dictates that an iPhone backdoor would risk the privacy and security of every single iPhone user on earth. It would also risk Apple’s sales worldwide. If Apple created backdoors to their products, sales of iPhones, iPads, Macs, etc. would drop dramatically.
What we really want to see Apple do next is to better explain the basics of this issue to the general public… There is no such thing as a secure “master key” or “backdoor.” — MacDailyNews, January 28, 2020
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
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 funds 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
