[andyjdavis]

>A PR person would bristle at the idea of denying to unlock the phone of a terrorist

Not if they were any good at their job. Very publicly standing up against what many would see as heavy handed government and being seen to defend the rights of the little guy (who happen to be their customers and potential customers) got them an enormous amount of very positive press not just in the US but in many countries. It would have cost them a small fortune to pay for that kind of advertising.

I am not saying that it wasn't a good thing for them to do but I really doubt it was some sort of selfless act that happened over protests from PR.

[matt4077]

It's not easy to decide either way. I recently advised a women's rights organization in a similar matter: they were poised to publish a scathing (and somewhat stupid) indictment of islam with regards to women's rights. It's obviously a minefield, with popular opinion divided almost equally.

You have to judge the intensity of emotions it will cause in people, the propensity of people to act on those emotions and the base desirability of the different groups.

In this case, they rightly passed on the 'opportunity' because it seemed as if the people who would agree were unlikely to donate to women's rights in the first place (and vice-versa).

(And because their employees threatened to collectively quit)

[robbiep]

> 'with popular opinion divided almost equally.'

that's interesting. This is a factual statement, or is it opinion?

[matt4077]

I just tried to look up statistics and the results mostly depend on the wording. "Afraid of islamic radicalization": 53:47, "Islam part of Germany":37:60, "Muslims can be German": 70:30 etc.

[coldtea]

>Not if they were any good at their job.

That's close to the "No true scotchman" fallacy though.

Truth is, most PR persons in real life would not have gone this far against FBI in such a situation. Even if the "standing up" gave them some positive press, there would still be millions of conservative types giving them hell for not helping catch the bad guys.

In fact even progressives is not a given that they'd have applauded. Imagine if the FBI next asks Apple to help them with the phone of a rape/murder suspect, or the guy at Orlando.

[aaronbrethorst]

Good PR is sort of like a Turing Test of being a decent human being; it cannot be differentiated from being a reasonable person.