Apple CEO Predicts ‘Dire Consequences’ For Privacy if Snooper’s Charter is Passed

The UK government’s Investigatory Powers Bill allows the police, and officials to record each person’s web activity for a 12 month period. Additionally, internet service providers are required by law to assist the state and break through any encryption. Technically, this could make it illegal for Apple to sell their products in the UK due to their handset encryption methods. Apple’s CEO weighed in on the bill and told The Telegraph:

“We believe very strongly in end-to-end encryption and no back doors,”

“We don’t think people want us to read their messages. We don’t feel we have the right to read their emails.”

“Any back door is a back door for everyone. Everybody wants to crack down on terrorists. Everybody wants to be secure. The question is how. Opening a back door can have very dire consequences.”

Tim Cook also discussed the latest TalkTalk data breach and proclaimed:

“It’s not the case that encryption is a rare thing that only two or three rich companies own and you can regulate them in some way. Encryption is widely available. It may make someone feel good for a moment but it’s not really of benefit. If you halt or weaken encryption, the people that you hurt are not the folks that want to do bad things. It’s the good people. The other people know where to go.”

Consumers rightfully do not trust huge corporations or governments to keep their data secure. History shows us that breaches are commonplace, and the huge amount of sensitive data from this bill could have catastrophic consequences. Furthermore, the voyeurism, and police state monitoring can only be described as disgraceful.