Obama on ‘Fetishising Our Phones’
As might have been expected, president Obama will use the waning moments of his presidency to further attack individual’s rights to privacy.
Please consider Barack Obama warns over ‘fetishising our phones’.
Barack Obama has warned the tech industry against “fetishising our phones above every other value”, in the US president’s first comments on the encryption debate since Apple locked horns with the FBI last month.
Apple is engaged in an increasingly bitter legal fight with US authorities over whether it can be forced to help investigators break into the iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino shooters. On Thursday, the Department of Justice accused Apple of using “corrosive” rhetoric to create a “diversion” from its legal responsibilities — which Apple later called a “cheap shot”.
Obama warned the tech industry that if it refused to make concessions, the US Congress may pass new legislation that Apple and its Silicon Valley allies would find even harder to stomach.
“If everybody goes to their respective corners and the tech community says, ‘Either we have strong perfect encryption or else it’s Big Brother and an Orwellian world’, what you’ll find is that after something really bad happens, the politics of this will swing and it will become sloppy and rushed and it will go through Congress in ways that have not been thought through,” Mr Obama said.
This week the head of the UK’s electronic surveillance agency urged tech companies to co-operate with law enforcement. Robert Hannigan, GCHQ director, said the debate over cyber security and privacy should not obsess over “backdoors or front doors. It is about whether entry into the house is lawful at all.”
Back doors, Front Doors, Government Entry
In essence, the president is stating “Give us your back door and your front door, or we will barge your doors down“.
Sadly, Donald Trump and Ted Cruz have both sided with Obama. Marco Rubio and Hillary Clinton appear wishy-washy, but I believe we know where they really stand.
Foreign Policy offers these snips in a post entitled Marco Rubio Sounds a Lot Like Hillary Clinton on Apple and Encryption
“I think Apple is absolutely in the wrong,” Trump told MSNBC this week. At a rally on Friday, Trump called for a boycott of Apple until they comply with the FBI’s demand. “How do you like that?” he wondered aloud. “I just thought of that.”
After acknowledging the privacy concerns of undermining encryption, Cruz told CNN this week, “I think law enforcement has the better argument.”
No matter who wins, prepare to have your front door and back door unlocked, or the government will open your doors for you, with force.
Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump: Constitutionalists Not.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
