A lot of the big tech companies had an inside look at the growing surveillance state far before the average citizen did. I think an argument can be made that the should have done more to inform the public.
Are you suggesting they go out of business like Lavabit? That is the stand you're taking when you disobey orders to keep government requests secret. And, I'm not sure a large corporation has that option. How could shareholders accept a fine for which they're not permitted to know the details?
Remember when Snowden first revealed the Prism program? All the tech companies issued similar statements saying they want to tell people more, but did not have permission from the US government. For example, Apple said,
> Like several other companies, we have asked the U.S. government for permission to report how many requests we receive related to national security and how we handle them. We have been authorized to share some of that data, and we are providing it here in the interest of transparency. [1]
Also, I'm sure Yahoo would've loved to rally support from its users when the government was threatening to fine them $250,000 per day for refusing to hand over data, but they were not allowed to tell anyone [2]
I do believe the government was doing what they thought was right to protect public safety. However, they don't understand technology. Ted Lieu is about the only guy in Congress who does. We need a bit more representation there to have our voices heard, whether through electing Congressmen with CS backgrounds, independent lobbying like the EFF, or just better tech reporting and questioning in the White House daily briefs.
The existence of the FISA courts is something we should be scrutinizing more. Former NSA Director Hayden pointed out in one interview that we're the only country who has such secret courts. With these courts, democracy is circumvented. Currently, the public is not able to participate in the discussion of what's right on some major issues that have far reaching impact.
I'm only suggesting that Apple and others could have taken a stand in favor of privacy much earlier, and that their decision to do so now likely has more to do with their bottom line than any genuine concern for public welfare. BTW, hi Rob! You know me from the PPUA :)
Hi! =). Apple is free to design products as they wish, right? If their products still have security issues, the tech community will call them out on that. I bet the public will pay more attention to such critiques on Apple's security now too.
My understanding is people who are serious about security do not currently depend on Apple. Those folks use open source software and build it themselves. That said, I'm still interested in defending Apple's position (and not necessarily Apple) because I want our government to understand how to maintain public safety. Relying on access to people's phones, going forward, is not the right way to do that. You could argue that I am advocating privacy, but I'd say I am more in support of security.
Definitely, the US government can ban or backdoor every commercial encryption product on the planet, and those that are serious about security will still be using GPG, Tor, Linux/BSD, etc.
Remember when Snowden first revealed the Prism program? All the tech companies issued similar statements saying they want to tell people more, but did not have permission from the US government. For example, Apple said,
> Like several other companies, we have asked the U.S. government for permission to report how many requests we receive related to national security and how we handle them. We have been authorized to share some of that data, and we are providing it here in the interest of transparency. [1]
Also, I'm sure Yahoo would've loved to rally support from its users when the government was threatening to fine them $250,000 per day for refusing to hand over data, but they were not allowed to tell anyone [2]
I do believe the government was doing what they thought was right to protect public safety. However, they don't understand technology. Ted Lieu is about the only guy in Congress who does. We need a bit more representation there to have our voices heard, whether through electing Congressmen with CS backgrounds, independent lobbying like the EFF, or just better tech reporting and questioning in the White House daily briefs.
The existence of the FISA courts is something we should be scrutinizing more. Former NSA Director Hayden pointed out in one interview that we're the only country who has such secret courts. With these courts, democracy is circumvented. Currently, the public is not able to participate in the discussion of what's right on some major issues that have far reaching impact.
[1] http://www.apple.com/apples-commitment-to-customer-privacy/
[2] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/11/yahoo-nsa-lawsu...