Tim Cook is My Hero!

* Islamic fanatics shoot up 14 innocent civilians in San Bernardino

* Cops kill all the Islamic fanatics

* FBI seizes a (now decomposing) Islamic fanatic’s iPhone

* FBI is hapless to determine the contents of Islamic fanatic’s encrypted iPhone

* FBI petitions Apple to provide “back door” into Islamic fanatic’s encrypted iPhone

* Tim Cook tells FBI “No, thank you.” & publishes a letter to customers explaining why.

* I (platonically) fall in love with Tim Cook.

This is obviously an oversimplification, but I think it pretty much covers the high points. I’ve (platonically) fallen for Tim Cook because of the extremely brave stance he’s taken in defense of Apple’s customers’ right to communicate without fear of Big Brother sticking its nose into our private lives. Sentiments of those who take a view contrary to Mr. Cook’s are the same ones that gave us the “Patriot Act” and the NSA’s warrant-less collection of every phone call made by everyone in America. As a side, could there possibly be a more Orwellian name for a piece of legislation than “Patriot Act”? I can’t think of anything less patriotic than my government eaves-dropping on private communications or detaining (jailing) people without due process. I believe in doing everything possible to ensure our country’s security up to but NOT including using the Constitution for a doormat. Even if laws like this are written with the best of intentions (they almost always are), the consequences of granting bureaucrats that sort of wide-ranging power inevitably leads to abuse. It’s hard to deny law enforcement the tools they say they need when your country was recently attacked by Islamic fanatics.  It’s also very tempting to write onerous legislation when you envision it applying to those same Islamic fanatics and forgetting said legislation applies to everyone. It’s also tempting to write legislation intended for use by benevolent law enforcement officials and forget that benevolence is not universal. The result is multiple agencies spending billions of taxpayer dollars on immense communications interception, analysis and archiving facilities, many of which overlap or are outright redundant. Hence, whistleblowers like Edward Snowden are all that stand between law-abiding citizens and power-hungry bureaucrats. While I am absolutely convinced 99% of law enforcement personnel are honest and well-intentioned, the remaining 1% who may stretch the law and/or blatantly abuse their positions still number in the thousands. Maybe the tens of thousands. All of our country’s telecommunications companies have been pressured or otherwise co-opted into turning over the phone records of every customer.

But it seems even all that is not enough to satisfy our government’s thirst for power.

When Apple released iOS 8 it introduced complete end-to-end encryption. The contents of iPhones became unreachable for everyone without a password, even Apple. Android followed suit shortly thereafter. I remember the shrieks of terror from the law enforcement community. Those shrieks fell mostly on deaf ears. It was a time when the world was shocked and infuriated by the revelations of Edward Snowden. A large portion of Americans were feeling like the NSA had just been caught peeking through their bathroom window, so as much as the law enforcement community hated the virtually un-crackable encryption of smartphones, they realized the political climate at the time wasn’t conducive to fighting it. That all changed when the bodies piled up in San Bernardino. The FBI now believes it has a valid reason and a sympathetic political climate to make an assault on our right to privacy. Look at it like this. Say this Islamic fanatic's iPhone is a doorlock. The maker of the doorlock is Apple. The FBI is having no luck picking the doorlock. So now the FBI is going to the manufacturer of the doorlock asking them to change the way they make every doorlock to include a master key, then give the master key to them.

Tim Cook is the only person standing in their way. May God bless him for that.