This morning the following story popped up in my Flipboard news feed. Tim Cook: Apple Won’t Create ‘Backdoor’ to Help FBI Access San Bernardino Shooter’s iPhone http://flip.it/aKeSz
I’m not an Apple fan boy by any stretch of the imagination. Yes I own a Macbook Pro (I bought it in 2010) and I purchased a 2013 iPad Mini for my wife about a year ago, but that’s it. Both are relatively old products. I’m writing this post from a Nexus 7 Tablet, every smart phone I have ever purchased was an Android, and on my personal computers I run various flavors of Linux.
This letter by Tim Cook inspires me to support and consider further purchases from Apple. Encryption is a key component to keeping our security. We all saw the physical devastation that occurred on 9-11-2001, and we all saw the damage caused by just two terrorists in San Bernardino. Both were unspeakable and inhuman acts carried out by twisted human beings.
The government is asking for a tool, and yes it could be used for good. The problem is that Tim Cook is correct, this tool is ultimately a master key that could be used on everybody. We live in a digital age where identity theft is incredibly common, my own credit card info has been stolen 4 times in 6 years (three times that resulted in charges on my account, thankfully I was able to have those suspicious charges removed).
Encryption is incredibly important in protecting that data. Where we once walked around with maybe a few key items in our pockets and the rest safely locked in our home or elsewhere we now put our entire lives in our pockets and “The Cloud”. If that encryption is compromised it’s as good as leaving your door open with a blinking sign on the street that says rob me.
By refusing to assist security experts in breaking their own encryption Apple is taking a stand for stronger security. Apple isn’t fighting against the war on terrorism, and they aren’t aiding terrorists. Apple is protecting you from the next waive of terrorism, the Cyber Terrorist. The Cyber Terror threat is alive and well, and we need to start thinking differently if we are going to win. That means thinking long term. If you think for one second that a master encryption key would not be duplicated or stolen by our enemies you are underestimating them. This is our technology, perhaps we need to find better ways to utilize it, not break it.
