Will Tim Cook’s privacy stance win or lose customers for Apple?

Apple believes that the government is asking the company to Apple to hack its own users and undermine decades of security advancements that protect its customers and make users less safe.

But the outcome of Apple’s standoff with the federal government over encryption could reverberate across the world, giving authoritarian governments reason to expand surveillance and challenging the US tech industry’s ability to compete globally, technology experts and lawmakers say. The FBI has demanded that Apple should develop a new iOS version which can help law enforcement bypass the security mechanism on iOS devices. “If the precedent is this, that they deliver the phone to Apple and Apple does it, I think that’s a pretty good precedent that can’t be done en masse on the next thousand iPhones”.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Google CEO Sundar Pichai also spoke out in defense of Apple.

“I think we can walk and chew gum at the same time”, Cruz quipped, explaining that it should be possible to balance national security needs – in this case, accessing the communications of a terror suspect – and maintaining the privacy of other Apple users.

Justice Department officials had even considered filing court papers against Apple a month earlier, only to hold off in the hope of gaining more cooperation.

The Obama administration has told China it has major concerns about its new counterterrorism law, a somewhat vague piece of legislation that may require US companies to hand over encryption keys and provide backdoor access to their computer systems.

The company’s executive said that the Justice Department’s request was so unprecedented that no other country – specifically mentioning China – had asked for similar access.

True, customer trust is essential to Apple’s business model and Cook’s stance likely helps Apple’s business, despite Donald Trump’s call for a boycott. Now they aren’t saying that but that’s going to be the end result if the Federal Bureau of Investigation wins this.

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has so far remained notably absent from the debate, but the company’s chief information security officer warned that the actions of government investigators represented a “slippery slope”.

Filling these requests was tedious for Apple. In working out why two people murdered 14 others, the U.S. government is willing to risk the digital safety and privacy of a decent proportion of the world’s mobile phone users.

A quick read might lead you to think that Pichai was endorsing Apple’s stand. Indeed, his comments earned headlines such as, “Google CEO Stands Firm With Apple”.

“Boycott Apple until such time as they give that information”, he boomed at a town-gall event ahead of the South Carolina GOP primary.

Finally, Lockheimer was asked about Edward Snowden’s comments.

Chinese companies have also met resistance in the United States. We must not allow this unsafe precedent to be set.