I'm only suggesting that Apple and others could have taken a stand in favor of privacy much earlier, and that their decision to do so now likely has more to do with their bottom line than any genuine concern for public welfare. BTW, hi Rob! You know me from the PPUA :)
Hi! =). Apple is free to design products as they wish, right? If their products still have security issues, the tech community will call them out on that. I bet the public will pay more attention to such critiques on Apple's security now too.
My understanding is people who are serious about security do not currently depend on Apple. Those folks use open source software and build it themselves. That said, I'm still interested in defending Apple's position (and not necessarily Apple) because I want our government to understand how to maintain public safety. Relying on access to people's phones, going forward, is not the right way to do that. You could argue that I am advocating privacy, but I'd say I am more in support of security.
Definitely, the US government can ban or backdoor every commercial encryption product on the planet, and those that are serious about security will still be using GPG, Tor, Linux/BSD, etc.
