Apple Vows to Defend Its Customers as the FBI Launches a War on Privacy and Security

Tim Cook deserves tremendous credit for the courage to come out and so aggressively and publicly denounce what the FBI is trying to do. If he hadn’t decided to publicly challenge the court order and write a detailed treatise on precisely why, the American citizenry would be left completely in the dark. This would be an unethical and unacceptable position.

Second, this case could very well be headed up to higher courts. The greatest risk in these sorts of cases revolves around judicial ignorance when it comes to technology issues. The government knows all too well that most judges are clueless when it comes to tech, and that all they have to do is scaremonger with the word “terrorism” and judges will almost always default to the government position. Cook’s very public stance will at least shine some light on the issue and hopefully fuel robust, intelligent public debate which could inform judges ahead of being presented with technology related cases they don’t really understand.

Read the rest here.