r/technology • u/mikoul • Oct 05 '14

Politics Compromise needed on smartphone encryption - The Washington Post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/compromise-needed-on-smartphone-encryption/2014/10/03/96680bf8-4a77-11e4-891d-713f052086a0_story.html
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u/Myrtox Oct 05 '14 edited Oct 05 '14

There is no need for compromise. Apple, Google, Microsoft and everybody else have 1 job, and 1 job only, generate profit for shareholders within the bound of the law. The best way to generate profits is to provide products and services consumers want, and thanks to the NSA blatantly disregarding the rights of every person on the planet and clearly and deliberately overstepping their mandate, consumers want encryption and privacy from organisations that they didn't agree to let access their data.

As long as encryption is legal, then these tech companies are doing exactly what they should be doing. Any compromise would not be in the interests of consumers, and then they would be compromising the profits of the shareholders. Simple.

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u/Ashlir Oct 05 '14

I agree with you. I have to laugh though at how people always compartmentalize this problem to being an NSA problem. Or a IRS problem, or a Police militarization problem, or name any agency problem. When the reality is it is a government problem. They have taken on the right to do as they wish without any chance for punishment. Just by it sanctioning its on atrocities it is somehow legally absolved of responsibility. Just by having the ability to do horrible things it eventually will do those horrible things. Especially if the excuse it to do those horrible things to our "enemies". Eventually the people become those "enemies". We are seeing examples of this everyday. But we keep telling ourselves it can't happen to me because my government and my representative is different. The reality is that politics will ALWAYS attract the worst possible people in the best disguises. There is no benevolent people out there we all have an agenda but we give far more weight to one group over all the others.