Tim Cook has made his point — Apple will fight to the death to protect the privacy of its loyal customers.
A good company with strong management must stand for something. By contrast, too many corporations today and the CEOs who run them — including several of Apple’s competitors, who’ve scurried off the radar screen in the midst of this current flap — prefer to take cover behind “no comment" and are reluctant to stand up for what they stand for.
But Apple is a good company (full disclosure: I'm a stockholder), and Tim Cook has proved himself a strong leader who isn’t afraid of controversy.
Apple and its CEO stand for cutting-edge products that are wholly dedicated to satisfying the demands of their clients. And with the iPhone, security concerns are high on the list of client demands. That’s why Tim Cook has drawn a line in the sand regarding the U.S. Department of Justice’s requests to decrypt a terrorist killer’s phone.
So good for Mr. Cook. Point taken.
Now that he has stood on principle and properly warned about government overreach, Mr. Cook needs to back off and allow Apple to decrypt the codes on San Bernardino mass murderer Syed Rizwan Farook’s iPhone.
Mr. Cook’s defense has reached the point of diminishing returns for him and the company. The U.S. government’s aggressive public relations offensive has successfully persuaded many that Apple’s primary concern is less about customer privacy than it is about corporate marketing and protecting its worldwide brand. If Mr. Cook and Apple don’t acquiesce to the government’s wishes soon and work out a joint solution, the public relations consequences will be punishing.
When it comes to terrorism and finding out if you’ve got a potential killer living next door to you, most Americans, even privacy-conscious ones, reject the arguments of the Silicon Valley purists who preach that privacy is sacrosanct. As the government does, most people want to know who the killer communicated with and where those individuals are located.
Mr. Cook argues that to accomplish such a decryption, Apple would have to create a “back door,” or new software that would circumvent the phone’s security features. He worries that if this software got into the wrong hands — of, say, criminals or a repressive government — it could imperil the security of other Apple iPhone users.
Therefore, the real question is this: Is asking Apple to make this software adjustment worth the risk?
Unequivocally, the answer is yes.
When two dozen people are killed by two lunatics following the dictates of radical extremists, the government must follow every possible avenue to track down co-conspirators and nefarious allies. At some point, common sense — not to mention survival — has to trump philosophical principle.
That point has been reached. And Apple must now work with the government to isolate this one phone and control access to the special back door software the company creates. Mr. Cook argues that “there is no way to guarantee such control.”
Perhaps. But if anyone is capable of controlling its secrets, it is Apple, the company founded by the notoriously secretive Steve Jobs and that has a rich history of staying mum about the long list of breakthrough products in its pipeline.
So for his own good and that of his company and shareholders, Tim Cook must avoid forcing the issue to go to court and losing the public relations war. Rather, he should immediately seize the moral high ground and settle with the DOJ.
Heaven forbid that while the issue is being adjudicated, another terrorist attack occurs, launched by someone whose identity is revealed on the San Bernardino killer’s cell phone. Were that unimaginable scenario to happen, the opprobrium directed at Mr. Cook and Apple would be unprecedented.
A smart CEO will realize that that is a risk simply not worth taking — even for principle.
