On Monday evening, Apple CEO Tim Cook delivered a lengthy speech on privacy and encryption to the Electronic Privacy Information Center, declaring that Apple “doesn’t want your data.”
According to Tech Crunch’s transcription, Cook called the government’s campaign against encryption an “attack on our civil liberties.”
The government has been pressuring tech companies to build so-called “back doors” into their products, making it easier for agents to access information for investigations. They claim that the increasing sophistication of encryption will make it too difficult for them to maintain surveillance.
But tech experts have long pointed out that making access easier for the government will simultaneously make it easier for criminals to break into private data.
“We think this is incredibly dangerous,” said Cook. “If you put a key under the mat for the cops, a burglar can find it, too.”
“Removing encryption tools from our products altogether, as some in Washington would like us to do, would only hurt law-abiding citizens who rely on us to protect their data. The bad guys will still encrypt; it’s easy to do and readily available.”
Cook insisted that “we have a deep respect for law enforcement, and we work together with them in many areas, but on this issue we disagree.”
“Encryption threatens to lead us all to a very, very dark place,” FBI Director James Comey said last year.
Cook also took shots at companies like Google and Facebook, which work with advertisers in order to provide free services.
“You might like these so-called free services, but we don’t think they’re worth having your email, your search history and now even your family photos data mined and sold off for god knows what advertising purpose. And we think some day, customers will see this for what it is,” he said.
Read more from Cook’s speech at TechCrunch.
