Recently the transcripts of an Apple attorney addressing a judge in New York became public and shed light on the companies concerns for privacy. According to the Reuters article, Apple said it has the technical ability to help with roughly 10% of the devices on the market today. Most of these are older iPods and iPads that haven’t been updated to the latest iOS versions (0r simply cannot be). Additionally, the attorney told the court that Apple assisting law enforcement without any push-back could tarnish the brand name and damage consumer trust. Both points that Apple nailed right on the head: Intelligent consumers aren’t going to feel warm and fuzzy about government spying, nor the companies who make it easier for them.

Since the Paris attacks in 2015, law enforcement has been up in arms repeatedly over encryption. The FBI and local police angencies are screaming at companies like Google and Apple, while some small-time legislators try to pass bum bills demanding back doors on devices. All the while we hear the two most common themes: Protecting us from “Terrorists” and “pedophiles”.

There is only one major problem with both of these theories: Terrorists, like the ones in the Paris attacks, didn’t even use a secure medium, the entire attack was coordinated over SMS. Additionally, there seems to be limited data (that I could find) that shows pedophiles are big into ecryption. In fact, most child predators use darknet services (such as Tor) to access pages that supply their content, but seem to have relatively poor comprehension of security beyond that. The FBI should have a good understanding of that, considering they recently ran child porn websites to honeypot several viewers/distributors. Oddly enough, in the course of their investigation they didn’t seem to have any problems with encryption beyond accessing the darknet servers, or they simply omitted it.

What smells more foul to me is the NSA, the organization tasked with national defense, seems least interested in encryption because, as they famously said, “We kill people off metadata”. In fact, the largest screams are coming from organizations at the local level and the FBI, who primarily work on domestic crime and terrorism. These organizations seem more appalled by having to use due process than anything else. There have been repeated cases where officers have gone through peoples phones during arrests, confiscating them for videotaping them, and even taking them during traffic stops. To me, they seem to be screaming about having to play fair rather than being concerned with safety.

This is all why it is so important that companies start standing up. What Apple has done in its recent months has demonstrated a desire to be loyal to their consumers first and nation second. To some, this may sound backwards but it is the right way for any free market enterprise to work. Many more companies should be taking note of their approach on these matters and start saying no to Big Brother as a whole.

For their parts, Google and Microsoft have both stepped up to the plate a little. Even so, they’ve done nowhere near enough to benefit consumers. Take Microsoft 10’s encryption, which can be turned on by default for new machines. Microsoft allows users to make a private recovery key but then silently uploads it to the users cloud drive, completely negating the benefits of encryption to begin with. For Googles part, they now have device encryption by default on new devices but still crawl your data to position advertisements to you. In fact, there is probably fewer more invasive and creepy services than Google’s own.

Apple is taking on a very dirty fight but it is one that has to be fought by corporations. They can either cave to the overreach of government or fight back in a way that puts shady three-letter-word organizations in the light of day. The FBI and local law enforcement may start attracting scrutiny if they keep trucking companies into court over petty issues like low-level meth busts.

It seems more important than ever now that 56% of American’s feel there is nothing wrong with government domestic spying. This number almost feels made up in a country that values “freedom” so much that 26 children shot dead in school isn’t enough for government intervention on rights… Yet we are okay with every move, every step, and every bit of data we send being watched? That’s Orwellian in a way even he couldn’t have asked for writing 1982. If American’s want to claim and profess their love of freedom and resistance to tyranny, that desire must be innate and apply to every aspect of government overreach. Americans should watch companies like Apple and start demanding more act like them, rather than just shrugging at the prospect of a prying Big Brother whose “saving our kids” and “fighting the terrorists”…. By reading our e-mails and seeing our text messages…