Last Friday, Tim Cook was among a handful of Silicon Valley officials who met with White House officials to discuss the use of technology and social media in fighting terrorism. The Intercept today reports that Tim Cook again took the stance of there being no backdoors in technology to allow access to user data and devices.
Cook argued during the meeting that it is the responsibility of the White House to come out and say firmly that there should be “no backdoors” to user information. This would mean that the government would have to overrule requests from FBI director James Comey, who believes that prominent tech companies should build a way for law enforcement to access information.
Cook has repeatedly spoken about how there should not be a sacrifice of user privacy to obtain national security, but Attorney General Loretta Lynch responded to Cook’s call for no backdoors with the argument that there should be a balance, decided by the administration, between privacy and national security.
The meeting last Friday consisted of executives from Apple, Facebook, Twitter, Cloudflare, Google, Dropbox, Microsoft, and LinkedIn, as well as White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, Loretta Lynch, James Comey, Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson, NSA Director Michael Rogers, and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.
President Obama this evening gave his final State of the Union address and while many speculated that encryption and using technology to fight terrorism would be a tentpole of the speech, it was noticeably absent. Obama did mention that technology should be used to fight things like climate change and that computer science should be taught in all schools, but encryption did not come up.
In the past, Obama has been against there being a backdoor to user data, but the ideas of many Washington officials have changed since the attacks on Paris and San Bernardino. Obama has often said that he would rather work with Silicon Valley companies on other ways to counteract terrorism (via Re/code). The President, however left out his stance during his final State of the Union address tonight.
As the United States prepares for the election in November, encryption will continue to be a big topic and Apple will continue to be a company often brought up in encryption related debates. It remains to be seen as to whether Apple and Cook will be able to fight the growing number of people who would prefer backdoor access to user data.
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Encryption will make or break candidates in the upcoming election. Hopefully we can get someone in office that has half a brain and understands that backdoors are never a good idea.
“Encryption will make or break candidates in the upcoming election.”
Hah.
Haha.
Hahaha.
Have you met the American voting populace?
I’m not going to single out any individual here, but based on comments made on this topic from both various politicians and even law enforcement executives, it’s clear that most parties involved in these discussions don’t understand what encryption is and how it works. If people from these two groups that speak openly on the topic and clearly don’t know what they’re talking about, why would anyone expect the general public to understand the subject any better. Most politicians are attempting to position tech companies that embrace security and encryption as evil and acting to enable criminals. These people are either willfully ignorant or they are trying to frame the argument in their favor in hopes that the majority of the general public is ignorant on this topic. I’d like to give the politicians the benefit of the doubt of simply not knowing what they are talking about, but you never know. Either way, if politicians are successful in framing this topic for the public in their favor, this will not be an issue for the next election.
I don’t mean to get political on a tech blog, but this is why we can not let someone like Donald Trump who knows nothing about technology be elected president.
If you force companies to put back doors in, who is going to make sure that the bad guys are not using those same back doors?
There is no way to prevent this, it’s inherent with putting in a back door into ANY device or software that is connected to some kind of public network.
Look at what happened to “Hacking Team” — their ENTIRE internal servers were dumped.
It’s not a matter of IF the bad guys will figure out how to get into these backdoors, it’s when.
This will make us as a nation even less safe.
Really, because you think Hillary is a computer genius?
If a person says they dislike lions, it does not mean they like tigers.
“The same individual or group claiming to be behind a recent breach of the personal e-mail account of CIA Director John Brennan now claims to be behind the hijacking of the accounts of Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence confirmed to Motherboard that Clapper was targeted and that the case has been forwarded to law enforcement.”
http://arstechnica.com/security/2016/01/us-intelligence-directors-personal-e-mail-phone-hacked/
Alexander Lloyd – Your posting was just nullified! :)
I can sort of understand the privacy of people is vital, especially with all the cyber hacking that has taken place and things like the NSA… but at the same time, what if a criminal is using an iphone with no back door access – the FBI will have very limited ways to obtain evidence to prevent a threat or use for prosecution…
I think if the FBI, NSA, CIA, etc were all more trusting, then it would probably be a different story — a high secure backdoor could be put in place with a 3 way verification and read only function.
Yes you want to protect your information – but people shouldnt be overly protective (after all, most people have already shared numbers, emails, and other person information on the net that are much easier to obtain)…surely you would want peace of mind that your country is being kept safe… and surely you wouldnt worry so much unless you have things to hide.
I have plenty to hide…
-Names and addresses of friends and family; handing out their email addresses and personal phone numbers is there business, not mine or any hackers;
-Banking and other financial information;
-photos with geotagged information, detailing where I’ve been and when.
That’s all MY business, and not the business of you, the government, or anybody else. As has been pointed out many times, a back door for the government is a back door for anybody.
Thumbs Up to you – Very Well Said!
It’s the people who maintain this “If you have nothing to hide, why do you care so much about privacy . . ” that do a real disservice to the general consensus of this discussion. As so many other posters have said – If there’s a “back-door” no matter how secure it is – It Will Be Discovered NAD Exploited Against Us!
Wake Up People – we’re no longer in Kansas – We’re living in a world where information is the new currency of the bad guys!
If all they have to prosecute a criminal is what is on their iPhone then they don’t have a case and should go back to the office and keep trying.
Correct me if I’m wrong. If one creates a backdoor, then it will eventually be hacked and those hacks will get distributed to anyone to use on anyone’s account.
That would mean that someone would eventually be able to hack a Politician’s device just as easily as the Government can get access to a potential terrorist. The way I see it, it’s either they lock everyone’s device so no one can get hacked or everyone’s device can be potentially hacked. I don’t think the Government would be able to get any tech firm to make it where ONLY the government gets access and that hacker’s won’t be able to circumvent the device.
I think we need to trust Tim’s instincts when it comes to back dooring.
You are a bad person and you should feel bad.
Just like devices are not only sold in America, and the whole world is not just America. What limits the definition of “government access”
China and America already accused each others about putting backdoor in products for purpose of espionage.
So it’s only government of USA who have the right of accessing all the devices in any country, from those owned by nobodies to high-ranked government officials ? Likewise the other way around.
Thank you Tim. Now let’s get you a fresh steaming cup of retirement.
The United States and the so called western world have already lost half of their democratic freedom. With the kind of politics merely in Near East since 1950 we generated terrorisme. Inside the USA you have partially lost your freedom by your own NRA, not so in the West-European countries including Great Britain… A myriad of secret services, as in USA and elsewhere, who out of selfishness are not suitable to really solve the problem. They are mainly big money destruction machineries, and there only positive side effect is that they created a lot of expensive government jobs…
Perhaps one should rather investigate and eradicate the roots of terrorism, but not by supporting the defense industry, such as the Cheney / Bush did it recently in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Thank you tim cook ,, Apple always leads in users’ data privacy.
you will lose if you fight the government.
With that attitude – you’re right. Just look back to the American Revolution and see how the American Citizens lost!
“Attorney General Loretta Lynch responded to Cook’s call for no backdoors with the argument that there should be a balance, decided by the administration, between privacy and national security.”
Yes – after reading much of the Snowden papers and seeing the wholesale removal of our Constitutional Rights by our “government” – I would trust our Political / Court System to protect our privacy. Rather like trusting Donald Trump to deliver some real substance instead to the hot air rhetoric he spews.
I am not convinced this is a necessity. If you are suspected of doing something, like being a terrorist, do they really need access to your phone…? I mean they can already track you via the imli or phone number using cell towers etc, so evidence is already being gathered. Giving back doors to a government that has already proved it cannot be trusted is crazy. You also have the next issue of the law would only apply to people in the USA, so would access be given to every iPhone in the world? This would be breaking the law in many ways of other countries.
While thinking about it, it is as simple as just using older devices with older software, so given that you could probably run a phone for 4-6 years without updating the software, they (criminals and terrorists) would be ok anyway as they would not use the latest devices…! Or they could simply find another way to communicate like they did before…
It doesn’t take much to get to the realisation that this is nothing to do with crime and terrorists…! If you have already arrested someone, then use the law already there to hold someone in contempt by a judge for refusing to unlock a device. Simply lock them up until they do unlock it…! Isn’t that what contempt laws are for…???
This whole technical discussion is useless with politicians, who know nothing about it. Maybe what these companies need to do is to prove how useless a backdoor would be: just give these agencies a backdoor to a pair of phones with a special version of their software, the phone users taking the role of terrorists. Then these two guys just encrypt the messages they want to exchange using a complex key outside of the phone itself. No matter what these experts do, they would simply have access to a lot of encrypted data. Since only the two individuals exchanging the messages have the encryption keys, how useful would this data be to the agencies?
Great point. PGP has been around since what — the 90s? It’s still unbreakable when used properly.
It makes me think they really don’t want these backdoors to go after “terrorists” — they want it to go after drug dealers and gun smugglers, pedos, etc.
Here’s a great quote I found by Phil Zimmerman, the creator of PGP:
“To complain that end-to-end encryption is crippling them? It’s like having a couple of missing pixels in a large display. They have the rest of the display! They’ve never had it so good. They didn’t have this stuff 20 years ago.”
So true!
A massively rich corporation continues to obstruct law enforcement in order to support sales and yet more profit.
It’s very clear that Apple – and others – have been made clearly aware of what is at stake, but they continue to put profit first.
I would be in favour of governments now starting to take some action on this.
Maybe it’s time to start treating the greedy corporations as part of the problem, not part of the solution.
Time to have another look at that tax issue?
John Smith, with a name like that apparently you have nothing to hide. HA
BTW, anyone have link to the position of the other companies’ executive regarding the matter ?
This is an Apple site so focusing on Tim is normal. But quite curious about what Facebook, Twitter, Google, Microsoft, Dropbox, etc position themselves regarding this matter.