[Infowarrior] - Apple's FBI Battle Is About the Gadgets We Haven't Even Thought of Yet

[Richard Forno]

Apple's FBI Battle Is About the Gadgets We Haven't Even Thought of Yet

By Evan Dashevsky Features Editor
	• By Evan Dashevsky
	• February 22, 2016

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2499828,00.asp
 
Edward Snowden didn't reveal anything we didn't already know. At least, he didn't reveal anything that privacy advocates or the global intelligence community weren't already keenly aware of.  

What Snowden did do was become the public face of digital privacy advocacy backed by a trove of Orwellian PowerPoint slides.  (It also didn't hurt that he's disarmingly eloquent and possesses boy-next-door good looks which just ooze aw shucks all over the place.)

Snowden brought issues of near-unfettered digital surveillance front and center. And people got angry about the loss of their privacy! Or rather, people in the techblogosphere got pretty pissed off about it. The public, for their part, were only so-so outraged by the prospect of mass surveillance.

In truth, most people just don't feel like they have any real need to fear surveillance. In fact, people have repeatedly shown that they value convenience far more than privacy.

While the polls routinely reflect the public's overall meh-ness regarding government snooping (among U.S. citizens, at least), security issues they do care about inevitably arise when the government mandates backdoor vulnerabilities be hardwired into a technological ecosystem. While these backdoors are ostensibly constructed for "nobody but us" to get through (a concept that even has its own shorthand: NOBUS), history has shown that they will be discovered and utilized by hackers and other bad guys.

And that leads us to Apple CEO Tim Cook's recent dust-up with the FBI.

Cook has taken a startlingly bold stance for privacy in defiance of a judge's order to help the government break into the iPhone of one of the San Bernardino shooters. On its face, this fight appears to be a purely (and admirably) principled stand by the planet's largest publicly traded company. While Silicon Valley has lined up in support of Apple, the reaction from politicians and government officials has been overwhelmingly negative (occasionally bordering on absurdly dramatic). Meanwhile, support from the public—who this defiance is presumably in service of—has been painfully tepid.

While there is no doubt some core principles influencing Cook's defiance, I can't help but think that there's a business-minded agenda in the mix as well. Similar to the way that executives at Facebook and Google are unquestionably earnest in their desire to connect billions in developing countries to the Internet, there also just happens to be an opportunity to make a buck if they are the ones who do the connecting.  

It would have been exceeding easy for Apple to capitulate to the judge's orders and help the government break into the phone ("sorry, our hands were tied!"), and therefore help infiltrate an unquestionably brutal and threatening fanatical organization. That decision might have drawn some condemnation from privacy advocates, but most people would have remained blissfully unaware that it ever happened.

However, when Cook decided to fight the order in a very public way, it helped Apple become synonymous with privacy and security (which might stand in contrast to the rival Android ecosystem and its many, many security issues), not to mention willful non-compliance with authorities. Cynicism might dictate that this non-compliance is all about Apple wanting to sell more iPhones in the increasingly important, if quasi-totalitarian, Chinese market (or anywhere outside the U.S. for that matter). And that may be part of it, though Apple denies it. But I think it actually has to do with the products that Apple is preparing for the decade(s) to come.

Machines are becoming far more personal. They're getting smaller and lighter; they are with us all day. In a relative blink of history, computers went from taking up entire rooms to being a thing we wrap around our wrists.

And they're taking on more tasks all the time; increasingly personal tasks at that. They are handling our financial transactions, monitoring our bodies, and even conversing with us using real language. They are taking over the ways we interact our vehicles, and soon enough will take complete control of them.

The line between software and meatware will only continue to blur. I have little reason to doubt that the scorching hot wearables space will—in the not crazy future—give way to implantables. That may seem like a sci-fi step too far for many, but mark my words, this is a thing that will happen. If we don't see a commercially available implantable electronic device by 2026, reach out to me, I'll owe you a coke.

The transition isn't too hard to imagine. If there was a way for a tiny device to provide a steady stream of visual and audio (and possibly haptic) stimulation that was accessible hands-free at all times, wouldn't you want it? Sound crazy? Look around your local Starbucks and see how just about everybody has their faces buried in their phones—the fact that they have to actually hold it up with their hands is only an engineering barrier that has yet to be overcome.

If getting a tiny device attached to your person was as routine and safe as getting one's ears pierced, a good part of the population would gladly sign up. When I hear doubts that this transition could ever happen (some within the very offices here at PCMag), I am reminded of conversations I had with my parents in the late 1990s when I was scolded (yes scolded!) for a needless and exuberant purchase of my first "cellular phone." You already have a phone at home and work, do you really need to have a phone on you at all times? Fast forward to today and I am routinely contacted (by cell phone) to help these same parents with their smartphone issues.

Technology evolves, and people evolve with it. The future promises that technology is gonna get all up in your business.

One thing to keep in mind with the coming storm of tech-all-up-in-your-business business is that consumers will only adopt these increasingly intimate devices if they feel secure. This is something that tech luminaries such as Mr. Cook are surely cognizant.

The first time someone is injured when a self-driving car is commandeered by a bored hacker in Ukraine, people will stop using that brand of self-driving car. The same goes for the first time someone breaks into the fitness tracker being monitored by your doctor; the supposedly secure wireless payment platform; or yes, the implantable device you can't easily remove.

Hackers and bad players have always been with the Internet. As technology drags both our minds and bodies further into The Matrix, consumers will only want to do business with companies that take the security of our most intimate selves very seriously.


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It's better to burn out than fade away.