The law says, you shall not kill. Mitigation in self defence.. You kill anyway and you get sent to jail. It used to be death sentence, but it was public pressure that reduced that.
The law says, you shall break this encryption.... you do it, and if you don't you should expect jail. If this discussion causes the law to change its process, then all well and good... but if it doesn't then I would expect enforcement officers to come calling for Cook.
Corporates don't have the entitlement to be above the law. Heck, they've spent enough money to bend it to their way and we've let them do it, and trample all over it until now. Corporates aren't on our side. Ever. They're on whichever side gets money from our pockets, in to theirs... and Cook (and others) are playing on our distrust of government snooping in order to play a blinder here, and fool us in to believing that their products are secure from government snooping; because, as people have already pointed out, there are flaws in the system which, with time, the spooks could get the data out anyway.
Sorry, but I'm not buying it. I don't have my life on my mobile. I don't use it for banking. I very rarely use it for securely accessing any web sites. If spooks are transfixed on my phone, then good luck to them.
My privacy is guarded by me... and I don't entrust that guarding to a piece of electronics... because it's all flawed.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
