John Oliver took on Apple’s continuing privacy standoff with the FBI during Sunday’s Last Week Tonight — describing how crucial encryption is when it comes to protecting important data such as, “our financial information, health records, dick pics, trade secrets, classified government records, [and] dick pics.”
And you know what? As well as being very funny, it’s actually one of the best mainstream news reports I’ve yet seen on the whole issue.
Check it out below.
Oliver runs through the entire case, explaining not only what encryption is, but accurately characterizing the arguments being made on both sides of the political fence.
Apple doesn’t escape without the odd word of criticism (mentions of Foxconn suicide nets, and joke about the supposedly-ugly iPhone 6s’ rose gold color show that Oliver isn’t a complete Apple shill), but the popular comedian comes down firmly in favor of Cupertino — especially when explaining why the arguments made against it are so terrible.
Many of the points made will be familiar to you if you’ve been reading every report written about the encryption debate. However, with plenty of scare-mongering and misinformation still circulating (including a disappointing lack of government criticism on the part of supposedly liberal commentators), this is exactly the type of coverage that will help the divided American public come to a conclusion on this important issue.
Well worth a watch!
