I'm starting to think Apple has found its first viable post-Jobs narrative.
While part of it may be PR, I also believe that these are Tim Cook's values shining through. Having an orientation that gets you jailed or killed in some countries, makes you value individual freedom and privacy.
It's great to see this new Apple.
It definitely is. The NSA has access to all this data anyways. They just need to get it nailed down legally now, as far as possible.
Apple just can't be seen as collaborating.
How so?
Serious question - is it?
The NSA might or might not share with the FBI, and the FBI might or might not be able to use what's shared in court, which could explain why they want new authority.
Being gay has given me a deeper understanding of what it means to be in the minority and provided a window into the challenges that people in other minority groups deal with every day.
Source: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-10-30/tim-cook-s...
I think it is relevant to the discussion, because I believe that this is a much deeper motivation than profit maximization. Though, there are of course many other ways to reach the conclusion that privacy is important.
Although things are better these days than there were, there is not complete equality - and I am not speaking legally.
There is no need to "come out" to your friends and family that you are straight and like girls (if you are male and vice versa).
Until there is no bigotry, until there is literally no difference in what sex you prefer, then something like this will have an effect on your life, thus it may have played a part in Tim's view regarding his current position.
Cook was born in Alabama in 1960. For a long time, his orientation could get him jailed or killed in his place of birth. Hell, as of 2016 Alabama still is hardly a good place for people with Cook's sexual orientation[0][1][2].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Moore#Same-sex_marriage
[1] http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/01/06/462161670/...
[2] 13A-6-65(3)[3], though ruled unconstitutional (since 2003 and Lawrence v. Texas), is still on the books
Apparently his homosexuality and the resulting stigmatization didn't stop him from espousing horrendous values and ideals.
Someone's sexual orientation has no weight on the values system that he/she would subscribe to and thus shouldn't be taken into consideration in any serious discussion about the topic.
They _may_ have no weight, indeed, as your anecdote illustrates.
People tend to empathize more with people they have something in common with (some research suggests [0][1]), so I think many of us would certainly have a mindset affected by our minority-held sexual orientation, in matters where our sexual orientation actually plays a role (security being one of the more obvious cases).
[0]: http://psp.sagepub.com/content/36/3/398 [1]: http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPag...
If the OP's argument was limited to only the privacy part, I'd have agreed tentatively with him/her as it's undisputed truth that gays under persecution or living in discriminatory environments favor privacy intensely and therefore it could be argued that this influenced the decision of Tim Cook in the apparent fight with the FBI.
> I found a cat that does not like milk.
>
> Therefore, if I see a cat, I can draw no inference
> about the probability that they like milk.
But nevertheless, we can still have some confidence that, absent other indicators, cats like milk.
p.s. Here’s another example closer to home of a “cat that did not like milk:” Roy Cohn, who carried out anti-homosexual witch hunts, and later died of AIDS.
Edit: Adding link to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Cohn
With this move, they will also waste very valuable developer's (crypto experience ain't cheap) skills.
What would that bring them? Other companies would rip off iOS, bastardize & put their slow skins on it, and never release security updates (or modified source files).
I agree that opening up security infrastructure would be good though.
Who knows, maybe internally they're even looking at making things more open but that could require a lot more work w.r.t. scanning for patents and such in their code and perhaps they want to have a strong solid release of whatever they would consider a "full system" before they put up their code for all to see.
Apple doen't, historically, have much of a history of opening up but they did open up Swift recently. Perhaps new winds are starting to blow like they did at Microsoft.
On the other hand I think they could really be doing good things behind the veils, and that could benefit very large numbers of people who don't have the knowledge or inclination to defend their own communications, (and anyone who has the knowledge and inclination but also the misfortune of needing to communicate with those who don't).
I don't know anything about Jacobs beyond what we've just seen here, but I would guess someone who has worked on that level with Open Whisper Systems wouldn't be prone to accepting poor security design, nor to accepting unethical practices in handling user information. I'd be much happier with an open Apple Inc. too, but as long as it keeps standing for a closed and locked environment, Jacobs seems like just the kind of person I would want working there.
How many huge bugs have been discovered in very widely used open source libraries/applications and identified as having affected the software for many years?
Would you be satisfied if Apple provided the option for NDA-sealed access to the source, allowing people/researchers to view (but not redistribute) their stack?
Edit: fixed brain shart (extra word)
OpenSSL was vulnerable since end of 2011. Fixed mid 2014.
And it's one of the most popular and commonly used open source technologies.
BUT Apple appears to be effective at keeping the contents of smartphones out of the hands of police and prosecutors and out of the courts. If you can't distinguish between those levels of protection, you are allowing the perfect to be the enemy of the good.