Those applauding Apple are missing the point

Tech bloggers, anarchists, and entrepreneurs all loudly applauded Apple’s Customer Letter this morning saying it had rejected the FBI’s request to unlock the phone of the San Bernadino Terrorist.

The general mood of the remarks (from my limited sample) are:

1. It’s good for technology
2. Screw the government, we don’t trust them anyway

Both of these self-congratulatory sentiments are not only misguided, but miss the point entirely.

“Good for Technology” 

There’s a fair point that creating a backdoor means it can be exploited by others. Revealing a weakness encourages more people to try to find more weaknesses. However, there’s no guarantee that engineers at Apple haven’t created this backdoor already and there’s also no perfect software. Given enough time and resources, folks could and likely will find a way around the problem.

“We don’t trust the government”

Apple’s more malicious point is ‘don’t trust the government, trust us.’ I’m under no illusion that unlocking the San Bernadino iPhone will give us some major victory on terror, but it could undeniably help make people safer by finding their links in the US. 

On the other hand, Apple both provides and gives your data for money to people it has vetted minimally. Advertisers who are trying to sell you things. It has made giving away your entire contact list and message history as easy as tapping on a button. These are decisions people wouldn’t make on their own, to feed Apple's massive machine.  

Their internal affairs are notoriously strict and secretive, and they have a history of shutting out or killing players who they don’t like. 

The US Government is a group of officials who have about as much oversight as is reasonable in today’s society. You can request their documents, watch their hearings, and you can even participate in who gets elected through a process we call democracy. But watching C-SPAN is often seen as a punishment.

The government isn’t fully transparent, but Apple is even less so. It may be better than a company that makes all its money from ads (eg Google) but nonetheless it is a private, for profit company.

You may not trust the government (and there’s ample reason not to) but you should trust Apple less.

Difficult Choices

Apple is wrong in this instance. With all of its engineering prowess, I’m sure there is a way to get the data off of the iPhone without endangering the personal data of everyone.

No doubt the government could use the methods in the future to make everyone’s data less safe. That is a bad outcome.

But Tim Cook, who profits off easy, nebulous use of our personal location, health, and messaging data, should not be applauded for talking out of both sides of his mouth.