I would say that this has been Tim Cook's narrative for a while, and along this path we've seen iOS integrate things like WiFi MAC randomization and website ad blocking.
I would say that this has been Tim Cook's narrative for a while,
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.
> Having an orientation that gets you jailed or killed in some countries
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].
Why not? He said himself that this gave him a deeper understanding of the struggles of minority groups:
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.
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.
If your opinion is that his orientation influenced/drove his ideals and motivations, it's relevant to mention. I don't think the gp is arguing that's the only way to have those ideals.
In a perfect world it wouldn't be, because it wouldn't make a difference.
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.
He(or she) literally said why in his(or her) post.
If you are part of a group for which discrimination is very real, then you naturally value privacy laws much more.
You can't seriously ask that question if you have been following the Snowden leaks, the corrupt behavior and proven lies of certain very powerful government officials.
Serious question. Is it safe to assume that the NSA can't? NO
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.
Have you heard of Ernst Röhm the Nazi general who was openly gay during his tenure?
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.
> Someone's sexual orientation has no weight on the values system that he/she would subscribe (...)
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).
The OP's statement was basically that being a homosexual makes him automatically being a lover of individual freedom and liberties to which I objected and exposed the flaw in that argument citing a historical example of a famous openly gay person who was all for everything that's the opposite of freedom and liberty.
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.
This is not correct. It is correct to say that having found a cat that does not like milk, we know that cats do not necessarily like milk. That is valuable and relevant.
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.
I am not, nor have I ever been, a big fan of Apple. (apart from all the usuall complaints, I am one of those freaks who just doesn't like Apple's interface & design). But this is a step in the right direction. Would it be better if it were more open? sure. Is it useless if it isn't? not really, it still protects the users and puts pressure on other manufacturers to do something similar.
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.
This is all a waste and show off as far as I'm concerned until they go open on everything.
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.
I agree with you that there is no privacy protection one can rely against the highest level state actor threats without open tools for privacy.
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.
I'm inclined to agree in that they can't really be trusted if they can't be thoroughly audited and all the lockdown is an obstruction to that.
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.
I'm a big fan of using open source software to build a business on - particularly BSD/MIT/Apache (aka "permissive") licenses - but the idea that "Open Source === Audited" is laughable.
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?
