
Blackberry CEO says Apple has gone to a “dark place” with pro-privacy stance - tosh
http://arstechnica.co.uk/tech-policy/2015/12/blackberry-ceo-says-apple-has-gone-to-dark-place-with-pro-privacy-stance/
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mikestew
"However, our privacy commitment does not extend to criminals"

Here, let me fix that for you, Chen: "our privacy commitment does not extend
to _the accused_ ". No trial has yet taken place in the described
circumstances, so the owner of the phone isn't a criminal just yet.

But overall it sounds like Chen is trying to have it both ways ("no government
backdoors"), while not entirely pissing off the government so as to cling to
the thin hope that some government contracts might come their way and keep
them afloat.

------
Zooper
What's a blackberry again?

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PhantomGremlin
The most hilarious comment in the article is Chen's claim that

    
    
       "criminals would simply write
       their own encryption apps"
    

Yeah, good luck with that. I bet people at NSA, FSB, GCHQ et al. are literally
ROTFL at how well that would turn out.

~~~
quadrature
Could you elaborate on the point you're trying to make ?.

~~~
mikestew
I think the implication might be that one doesn't ever write their own
encryption. Well, duh, but there are plenty of libraries out there that have
been vetted and are easy to pull into your project. I mean, plenty of us do
that every day, I don't see why a criminal organization can't do the same and
have a relatively secure app. What, you think they have some caricature from a
mobster movie whip something up in VBScript using ROT-13?

~~~
colanderman
"Criminals" don't even need to _write_ their own, just use some pre-existing
encryption tool (e.g. PGP/GPG) with their own pre-shared private keys. By
separating the transport service from the encryption tool, you eliminate the
most direct route for an NSA backdoor, and change their problem from one of
pressuring communication providers for keys to one of obtaining access to an
individual's private keys or breaking the encryption algo. At least that
should be _marginally_ more difficult for the NSA to achieve, given that
pressuring most companies to install backdoors seems to require approximately
zero effort.

(Yes, this requires some level of sophistication among criminals, but many
criminals _are_ part of a larger, somewhat sophisticated organization.)

------
npsimons
Note to self: never, ever buy or use a Blackberry.

