Comment by robbiet480
4 years ago
To quote another tweet from Matthew Green, the author of the Twitter thread (https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/14231103447303495...):
> Regardless of what Apple’s long term plans are, they’ve sent a very clear signal. In their (very influential) opinion, it is safe to build systems that scan users’ phones for prohibited content.
> That’s the message they’re sending to governments, competing services, China, you.
Is it? That’s just something the tweets have read in.
The message could equally well be ‘We won’t become an easy political target by ignoring a problem something most people care about like child porn, but we are going to build a point solution to that problem, so the public doesn’t force us to bow government surveillance requests.’
It’s easy to nod along with an anti-Apple slogan, but we need to consider what would happen if they didn’t do this.
If Apple thought this kind of dragnet was a losing political fight that tells me they've become too weak to stand up to unreasonable government demands. Where is the company that won the public opinion battle over unlocking a mass shooter's phone?
This isn’t a government demand. This is something the public cares deeply about, and Apple is solving it their own way.
Public opinion is not in favor of giving safe harbor to pedophiles and child pornographers, and I can’t see why anyone would even want Apple to fight that battle.
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