Requiring companies to weaken devices with 'back doors' means we open up innocent Americans to the bad actors who would love easier access to our citizens' personal information.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
The notion that we would market devices that would allow someone to place themselves beyond the law troubles me a lot.
Do we want a back door in an iPhone where the government can go in to track movements if they have probable cause? I know the director of the FBI and local law enforcement want that capability.
Really, what the government is asking Apple to do is to make every individual who uses an iPhone susceptible to hacking by bad people, foreign governments, and anyone who wants.
Anyone who steps back for a minute and observes our modern digital world might conclude that we have destroyed our privacy in exchange for convenience and false security.
The American people must be willing to give up a degree of personal privacy in exchange for safety and security.
A lot of individuals out there carry a lot of proprietary information on their mobile devices, and they're not protected. It's a very target-rich environment.
Just because technological advances have made it easier for the federal government to collect information doesn't mean that our privacy rights can or should be violated on the ground or in the air.
It's more than unsettling to realize there are large companies out there developing backdoors, exploits and trojans.
The director of the FBI has been visiting Silicon Valley companies asking them to build back doors so that it can spy on what is being said online. The Department of Commerce is going after piracy. At home, the American government wants anything but Internet freedom.
I must admit, my old tribe is not unanimous on the view I've taken, but there are other folks like me, other former directors of the NSA who have said building in backdoors universally in Apple or other devices actually is bad for America. I think we can all agree it's bad for American privacy.