Apple's Tim Cook Sees No Tension Between Privacy And National Security

Apple CEO Tim Cook was probably more comfortable talking up his company's latest iPhones and Apple Watch, but privacy and security took center stage during his Monday night appearance at the Wall Street Journal’s technology conference, WSJDLive.

"We think privacy will be increasingly important to more people over time as they realize intimate parts of their lives are in the open and being used for all sorts of things," Cook said. "We think encryption is a must in today's world. I wish it didn't have to be this way, but that's what it is. Every day, you're reading about another thing going on. Things happen every day. How do you address that for the mainstream customer?"

The National Security Agency has proposed planting "backdoors" to get access to customer data held by technology companies, but has been met with strong resistance from tech companies like Apple as well as security experts, who say that the government cannot get special access to this encrypted data without also making it vulnerable to bad actors.

"We said no backdoor is a must," Cook said at the WSJD conference. "Do we want our nation to be secure? Of course. No one should have to decide between privacy or security. We should be smart enough to do both. Both of these things are essentially part of the constitution. They didn't say prioritize this one above all of these."

The on-stage interview got a little tense when the interviewer, Wall Street Journal editor-in-chief Gerard Baker, pressed Cook on the trade-offs between privacy and security. He posited that if the government knew everything, couldn't they prevent terrorist attacks like 9/11?

"You're going off in the deep with that assumption," Cook responded. "I think it's not so simple. I think we'd all agree that if there was a way to expose only the bad people, whoever that determiner of what bad is, that would be a great thing. But this is not the world. And so what I'm convinced of is that it's in everyone's best interest that everybody is blocked out. You may argue with that. There's always different perspectives and we're always interested in learning. But today, I don't know a way of protecting people without encrypting."

Right before Cook's appearance at the conference, NSA director Michael Rogers took the stage. He spoke about the agency's interest in working more closely with tech companies to find some sort of solution in this trade-off.

“Strong encryption is in the nation’s best interest,” Rogers said. “The ability to gain insights into criminal behavior is also good. ... I want [the NSA and technology companies] to have a dialogue, figure out how to do this and take the emotion out of this."

He pointed to his agency's work with Sony when the company was hacked in late 2014 as an example of how it can work well with the private sector. Sony contacted the federal government and the NSA, along with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, worked with the company to figure out who did it and how they did it.

"To me," Rogers said, "the future is all about how do we create an environment where we can build partnerships that spans the public and private sectors."

For Cook, this is part of an ongoing position the CEO has been taking in the debate around how tech companies handle user data. In a letter penned last month, Cook took a swipe at other tech company's business models that hinge on sifting through user data.

"When an online service is free, you’re not the customer. You’re the product," he wrote. "But at Apple, we believe a great customer experience shouldn’t come at the expense of your privacy."