Archive: Opinions

The controversial privacy case between Apple and the FBI is a difficult one.  On the one hand evidence on an iPhone belonging to one of the terrorists who killed 14 people in San Bernardino would be helpful in convicting a very bad guy.  On the other hand privacy is a white-hot issue for many good reasons and there are good arguments against opening that Pandora's box.  In the best of all possible worlds it would be great if the FBI could access the phones of really bad guys -- only really bad guys, but not everyone else's.  Unfortunately we don't live in the best of all possible worlds.  So it becomes a matter of scale: should everyone's privacy be at risk just because there are a few really bad people?

Or to put it another way, when has a large federal agency ever violated individuals' privacy rights?  The joke going around is: "The NSA - The Only Government Agency That Really Listens."  But it's not.  And it is not just federal agencies we should worry about.  Corporations like News Corp that withstood a scandal when it became known that one of their newspapers was hacking cell phones.  Or Google, which has an interesting take on how their massive collection of personal data doesn't violate your privacy.

Apple says it wants iPhones (and its other devices) to be so safe that even Apple can't see the information you put into it.  That not only says Apple won't share your personal information, but that the company can't share it with law enforcement or anyone else including Apple.  That is in contrast to Google, which argues that it only sells aggregates of everyone's personal data to inform companies of trends, or uses the data to feed you ads that you will be interested in (really?  I'd be interested in fewer ads, especially all those popups, auto-play , pop-overs.  I don't mind an ad that just sits there for me to look at.  Sometimes I like those.  But I don't even want to go to a site that hijacks my attention from the reason I went to the site in the first place.) or to make their various services able to provide you with an integrated experience.

There is so much creepy about that integrated experience.  I don't want to see a monthly aggrage of my monthly Google activity.  And before you say I can opt out of receiving that email, let me remind you that they have that information whether ther they share it with me or not.  I want to choose whether or not to have an integrated experience, and I want to explicitly integrate it myself if it is to be integrated at all.  I get that this is how Google can make billions of dollars while providing many useful services for free.  Doesn't that beg the question of getting what you pay for?

Even if Google is the most morally sterling company in the universe, do I want them to have my personal data?  In a word, no.  I find those contextual ads really creepy.  At least Facebook has the decency to not pretend that it doesn't want to use your personal data for its own purposes.  While Google still has the best search engine going, I've started using DuckDuckGo to see if I will like it better.  They don't collect information on me, so I don't have to spend any energy worrying about what they are doing with it.

But then we have these situations where access to evidence is important to law enforcement.  That is no small thing.  The FBI isn't coming to my house to see what juicy emails I sent my wife, or to find out what I bought on Amazon this month.  (Amazon, by the way, does it, too, using your personal data to recommend more things it thinks you will buy.  There is big money in that.)  The FBI has only noble intentions to use the data for the greater good.  Terrorists are bad.  Killers are bad.  The FBI gets these bad guys for us so they can be punished and kept from doing more bad things.  The agency should use all the tools available to do that, and that is what they want to do.

Here is why I reluctantly side with Apple on this issue.  If the FBI has a back door into iPhones, that back door is discoverable.  Even if the FBI scrupulously stays away from all but the iPhones of the most heinous perpetrators, other agencies, companies and malicious individuals have the same odds of cracking that back door open.  If you think identity theft isn't something to worry about, wait until it happens to you.  And that is not the only kind of crime associated with privacy breaches.  Reputations, painstakingly built over years can come crashing down when private information, often taken out of context, is made public.

They say that there is no privacy any more.  Cameras in stores and on traffic lights, in public and private buildings record every minute of our existence.  So many people are indiscreet on social media like Facebook or Reddit.  What may seem like a joke when you post it on Facebook may mean not getting a job when a prospective employer sees it.  I know people who are quite close to me, but don't want me to 'friend' them on Facebook -- for whatever reason.  Too much baggage, knowing them in a different context from their other Facebook friends, whatever -- whose accounts are not flagged as 'only viewable by friends' so I can see everything they post anyway.  That is to say that individuals abuse their own right to privacy, and if we do that to ourselves, how might others abuse what they find?

Who is right, the FBI or Apple?  The problem is they are both right.  The problem is that either everybody is hackable, or nobody is.  You can't have it both ways.  I prefer the 'nobody is' option.

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