Trump thinks Apple owes him your privacy

A worrisome twist in Apple's longstanding fight with federal law enforcement

President Trump.
(Image credit: Illustrated | Nastco/iStock, Mark Wilson/Getty Images, -slav-/iStock)

Ever the transactionalist, President Trump believes Apple should compromise hundreds of millions of people's privacy because he has allowed the company to avoid some tariffs in his senseless trade war. "We are helping Apple all of the time on TRADE and so many other issues, and yet they refuse to unlock phones used by killers, drug dealers, and other violent criminal elements," he tweeted Tuesday night. "They will have to step up to the plate and help our great Country, NOW!"

This attempted quid pro quo — whether it's better labeled blackmail or bribery, I'm not sure — adds a new twist to Apple's longstanding privacy fight with federal law enforcement. Optimistically, it may be read as desperation, a sign that more traditional means of legal coercion will continue to fail to force Apple to build the encryption "backdoor" the government wants. More worrisome is the interpretation that Washington will do whatever it takes to force Apple (and other, less privacy-committed companies) to do its bidding, forging ahead to a new frontier in digital surveillance.

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.