Tim Cook's Message to the White House: Get Behind Real Encryption With No 'Backdoors'

The Apple CEO has become an outspoken defender of privacy rights.

At a meeting of tech leaders organized by the White House last week, Apple CEO Tim Cook called on the Obama administration to come out in support of real encryption with no loopholes. As The Intercept reports,

The White House should come out and say "no backdoors," Cook said. That would mean overruling repeated requests from FBI Director James Comey and other administration officials that tech companies build some sort of special access for law enforcement into otherwise unbreakable encryption. Technologists agree that any such measure could be exploited by others.

But Attorney General Loretta Lynch responded to Cook by speaking of the "balance" necessary between privacy and national security — a balance that continues to be debated within the administration.

Cook has become an outspoken defender of privacy rights, making a case that the feds shouldn't interfere with encryption on CBS' 60 Minutes in December. "There have been people that suggest that we should have a backdoor," he told interviewer Charlie Rose. "But the reality is if you put a backdoor in, that backdoor's for everybody, for good guys and bad guys."

Related: Check out Reason TV's instructional video, "How to Chat Anonymously Online: