Other than a lasting love of Wall Street, Hillary Clinton’s poll-driven opinions on hot-button issues change as often as most people change their underwear.
But saying whatever the popular opinion is poses a problem when, as with Apple’s current privacy vs. “national security” standoff with the government, people voters are undecided on the issue. What do you do when someone asks you about it on the campaign trail, then?
If you’re the possible future POTUS, you take the bull by the horns and, well, offer an opinion that’s about as inoffensively middle-of-the-road as a Coldplay song in a wallpaper commercial.
Speaking in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Clinton said: “There has got to be some way to avoid breaking data encryption and opening the door to a lot of bad actors. But there has to be some way to follow up on criminal activity and prevent crimes and terrorism.”
Yay?
Describing the complexity of the issue by saying that, “I am someone who is just feeling like I am in the middle of the worst dilemma ever,” Clinton basically offered a perspective that was calculated to offend the least number of people possible.
I am in no way supportive of Donald Trump in the upcoming election but, seriously, at least he offers his real opinion on what is a crucially-important issue. It’s a lot easier to argue against that than it is this kind of banal platitude.
Clinton finished by saying that, “[This is] a problem we’ve got to come up with some way to solve. And I am not expert in any way to tell you how to do it.”
Source: Bloomberg
Luke Dormehl is a U.K.-based journalist and author, with a background working in documentary film for Channel 4 and the BBC. He is the author of The Apple Revolution and The Formula: How Algorithms Solve All Our Problems … and Create More, both published by Penguin/Random House. His tech writing has also appeared in Wired, Fast Company, Techmeme and other publications.
9 responses to “Hillary Clinton weighs in on Apple’s FBI standoff. Kind of.”
reminds of the episode of Cheers when woody ran for politics.. ” i believe in what you believe so together we believe, please help me help you so vote for me, together we will believe” LMAO..
Obviously the foremost expert on government security and encryption. The voice of reason in the sea of ignoramuses
Well Hillary doesn’t do opinions as such, she sits on the fence until she sees any benefit to herself and then decides. Later on she’ll flip flop on that decision if needed.
I love when a tech blog writer posts about their own political stance… Oh wait, no one likes that. Post the tech news, not your personal opinions. Lame
I suppose tech writers should never comment on political things relevant to their industry then? Cult of Mac featured political posts about Donald Trump when he made comments about Apple and I didn’t see you posting complaints about that.
I didn’t see them. They can absolutely post about political things relevant to the industry but they can do so without including their personal political opinions. “…change as often as most people change their underwear” isn’t all that fitting considering a huge portion of her campaign now follows along with what she touted her first time as president (joking, mostly ;)).
Snide comments like that in a post such as this really just aren’t necessary, whether dealing with Clinton or Trump–it’s a tech blog people come to to get news on Apple stuff, not opinions from the author on how they feel about the candidates. I’d say the same thing if I read something similar about Trump.
I’m sure we can both agree that everyone is about sick of hearing about everyone else’s political opinion–especially considering the circus we’re seeing in this election.
Yes we can agree on the circus and I definitely respect your response :) I will admit that Hilary is the last candidate I want to see in the White House and my own personal bias may have come into play when I read your first post and replied. At least it seems the CoM writers are taking shots at every candidate that can’t seem to understand how encryption works.
Exactly. This isn’t an in-depth takedown of Hillary’s policies, but rather pointing out the stupidity of her vacuous comments here. I’d do the same thing regardless of candidate.
She needs to take a decisive stand on this issue and not play neutral. I see the backdoor access to the iPhone to be similar as a search warrant. The Supreme Court and Apple need to work together to develop a strict protocol when to allow police or the FBI to have access to someone’s smartphone. It needs to be stringent to assure that this warrant will not be casually used by the police or the FBI.