• Tag Archives iphone
  • Cant buy an iPhone in California

    I am at a total loss on this one….

    http://9to5mac.com/2016/01/21/california-bill-encryption-iphone-sales/

    California is now presenting a new bill that, if passed into law, would stop Apple from selling iPhones on its home turf, via ZDNet. The bill requires smartphone manufacturers to sell devices that have backdoors to allow them to be decrypted. Naturally, this affects iPhones which use high-strength security methods and make it practically impossible for anyone including Apple to gain access without the passcode. If this proposed bill sounds familiar, there’s a reason for that. A nearly identical proposition was made in New York state earlier in the month.

    Although the bill is only being proposed and isn’t law at this time, it poses a big issue for Apple which is facing pressure from politicians across the US to relax its stance on privacy in favor of security.

    Tim Cook and Apple has repeatedly taken a hard-line stance on privacy. Most recently, Cook met with White House officials to encourage them to back Apple. Cook wants government to plainly state that there should be a ‘no backdoors’ ruling regarding consumer electronics. These proposed bills in California and New York fly in the face of that policy.

    It would seem that for once, a big corporation has the consumers back when it comes to privacy… A fact that I have trouble swallowing.
    It would also seem that the government wants to make privacy illegal. A fact that I have no trouble believing at all.

    Bottom line, it’s a mess and it will be fought in court no doubt, or at the very least, behind closed doors.

    Bottom bottom line…. Your data is not yours. You only think it is.

    [And no, before you even ask, I am not going to be drawn into the discussion about if the FBI / courts / IBM / Facebook / The President or whoever should be able to force Apple to make a golden key to enable these departments to access data on a given iPhone. I am interested in tech, not politics].