American business executive Tim Cook is the Apple Inc chief executive officer. (Photo : Reuters/Robert Galbraith)
In a recent interview aired on CBS, Apple CEO Tim Cook backed his company's firm stand on user privacy, saying there should be no middle ground between privacy and national defense. Cook is advocating against providing intelligence agencies with backdoor access to encrypted information on his company's products.
This comes out as a backlash to the British government's plan of proposing an Investigatory Powers Bill in the house of commons. The bill would necessitate tech companies to provide access of personal encrypted data such as text chats to the government.
Apple is of a view that the proposed bill can expose the private data of millions of law-abiding citizens. Speaking at the show "60 Minutes," Cook said, "If the government lays a proper warrant on us today, then we will give the specific information that is requested because we have to by law. In the case of encrypted information, we don't have it to give."
Apple has already sent its concerns to the bill committee along with a few proposed suggestions. The bill would mandate Apple to share access of iMessage with the government. The iMessage service by Apple comes with end-to-end encryption. By giving the access, the service will certainly become weaker in terms of privacy and security, for all the users.
In the interview, Cooks also said, "It's because if there's a way to get in, then somebody will find the way in," he said. "There have been people that suggest that we should have a back door. But the reality is if you put a back door in, that back door's for everybody, for good guys and bad guys."
Furthermore, the proposed bill will also permit the government to snoop into computers all around the world with the help of companies like Apple. Interestingly, Apple is not the only one raising concern over the proposed bill that was introduced in November. Many internet service providers have also warned that the bill would ask them to store users' entire year browsing info, which could put user privacy and security at stake.
