Silicon Valley’s top CEOs snubbed President Barack Obama’s appearance at Stanford University today for the White House Summit on Cybersecurity and Consumer Protection, but Apple CEO Tim Cook used his invite to make the case for improving security.
Cook addressed attendees before Obama took the stage and reaffirmed Apple’s belief that everyone has a right to privacy and security. In part of his speech, the Apple CEO warned of “dire consequences” if the proper balance between security and privacy isn’t maintained.
“We must get this right!” Cook told the audience. “History has shown us that sacrificing our right to privacy can have dire consequences.”
“We still live in a world where all people are not treated equally. Too many people do not feel free to practice their religion, or express their opinion, or love who they choose. We live in a world where that information can make the difference between life and death.”
In his address, Cook explained that we shouldn’t have to trade our security for information at our fingertips. “If those of us in a position of responsibility don’t do anything to protect every right of privacy,” he warned, “we risk losing something far more valuable than money. We lose our way of life.”
The White House invited Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer and Google’s Larry Page to the event but all declined. Following his remarks, Obama signed an executive order that allows private tech companies to share cyber-threat data with government agencies and each other. The order comes just a week after one of the largest health insurers in the nation, Anthem, got hacked.
Cook also reiterated that Apple’s business model is to sell great products, rather than selling data to advertisers, because customers’ trust means “everything.”
“We know hackers are doing everything to steal data,” Cook said. “That’s why we’ve created the most secure devices we can.”
https://youtu.be/QI6DvV2muDE
Buster Hein is a freelance writer who lives in Phoenix, Arizona. Twitter: @bst3r.
12 responses to “Tim Cook warns of dire consequences if we sacrifice privacy for security”
Snowden says iPhone is owned by the NSA.
Snowden…snowden?! Look legitimate whistleblowers do NOT flee to other country’s when they have a legitimate fight at home. You especially do not flee to soviet-putinist-russia which has a HISTORY of killing whistleblowers and former KGB agents – look it up for yourself. If you have an issue or beef, that can turn you into an Erin Brock-o-wurst or something SHE had more balls and less of a bitch than espionage data (I mean, there IS a war, cyber war going on for the last 16 years and china started it-USA better finish it) and he hands the secrets of a nation to others and made NO EFFORT to report abuse or make changes within the system first! Nope, this guy is NOT a reputable source of information FOR YOU or anyone who would be affected by his disclosures; he is a great friend of APT’s and APT1 however.
NSA spying? IT better! The 300-pound NSA Pitbull gets caught in a german cellphone/the neighbor’s garden?? BAD DOG…YOU got CAUGHT…! Now, what were you chasing my lovely 300-pound Pitbull that made you dig a 20-foot hole in a so-called friends rose garden?!? Bad Dog! Now, come home I have pork roast for you and whatever you found, I am handing over to the CI-freakin’-A, oh yeah!
Snowden didn’t tell us a thing we already didn’t know. Everyone with a brain knew NSA spying was going on.
His escape story is beyond suspicious.
What really happens to REAL whistle blowers that reveal REAL secrets is what happened to Bradley Manning. 35 years in jail.
In my opinion Snowden is an inside job. A distraction. We wait for Snowden to hand feed us while other secrets get safely buried and other whistle blowers get little to no press.
Snowden is a hero, but for a very high-level target like him, no device is secure.
The iPhone probably is one of the more secure devices for the rest of us.
Who really cares what that dimwit traitor says?
He also accused Google and Facebook of selling user data. No they don’t, like Apple, they horde user data to ensure they have a better profile on you than their competitor. And what does it matter? They all give us up to the government. What does it matter? We can block ads, oh no wait, Apple prevents that by locking their devices and forces you to access the internet through their network so they can track and control what you see.
Sounds like Trollfinger has no idea what Google’s business model is.
Do you know how the App store works? If you don’t like Safari……download another browser.
Ghostery for instance blocks all ads and tracking (and theirs if you disable it manually).
You realise that Google owns the largest violator of user privacy, Doubleclick, right?
Great that Tim Cook takes this position, and as often happens, others will come over to Apple’s view in due time. So this little speech could be of real, maybe even historical, significance. I sure hope so. Privacy violations can, and do, have serious consequences, and fear of such consequences would give everyone of us a little ‘big brother’ in our heads, leading to self-censorship and thus loss of freedom, every day and every minute.
I like the idea that privacy is important to Apple, but from what Tim says, I don’t feel that it’s as important as it should be to him. He gives this speech right before the president signs something encouraging tech companies to share more data with the government? That doesn’t make me feel like my privacy is that important to him.
Tmmy-Boy; less than a week ago, you announced that you had handed over the source code to all iOS devices so the soviet-commie-copy-everything-and-paste-chinese could be sure “…there were no back-doors and no cyber espionage tools are in Apple devices” No doubt and for sure you did the EXACT same thing when you let them have access to the new data centers you put in Shanghai and Beijing so that you could make all that good money…profits, your profits. I mean you are a business and NOT a charity. Now you have the unmitigated-spineless-gall to want to band-aid your public image by complaining about ‘ privacy ‘ and expecting the paying public to take your word about how secure your money-grubbing business and devices are.
That is how you do it isn’t it Timmy-Boy?! You screw over your customers, and then cry foul if someone vows to catch you doing it and you…showing you really know your customers/humanity..you ask them to let you do it again by backing your cost-saving move to hand the personal security of each individual BACK to each of them in the face of APT1 and the withering fire of the present cyber-warfare being waged by the VERY nation to gave access to your source code for all your devices! This was the same thing Microsoft did in the late 1990’s and has been doing for every one of their products ever since! LOOK what it has gotten us; gotten SONY; Gotten Target; Gotten Anthem; Gotten The Home Depot; Gotten The Department of Energy, NASA, The Center for Disease Control, Malaysian Airlines, etc, etc, etc….; Gotten every single network in the free western world! ALL, all, for your beloved and exalted profits! The APTs are nation-states. They print money and use supercomputers and in china, where I have lived, they don’t just use the military to hack, they use private, citizen hackers like indian scouts from the old American wild west. That means there are Millions of people who get paid to just break into our devices and you went out and did THIS!
What good is money if your commie-chinese friends are selling your source code to putinist-russians, and they are, and stealing all the money any of us make!
How arrogant of you to silently make all your customers victims and then throw rocks at the ONLY force that has the legal authority and duty to stop this roving band of hacking and falun-gong-murdering thieves!
Shame on you Timmy-Boy…you are two-faced and fast becoming a part of the problem …such a fool!