Edward Snowden Praises Apple’s “Pioneering” Work in Privacy

Despite being the most popular computing company in the world, it’s rare that anyone has a good word to say about Apple, so it’s refreshing to hear Edward Snowden, the man who leaked how the NSA was spying on the world, praise the company for its work on user privacy, especially considering Apple were explicitly mentioned in documents leaked by Snowden in June 2013 as one of many companies that allowed US intelligence services backdoors into user accounts.

In an editorial Snowden wrote for The New York Times, entitled “The World Says No to Surveillance”, he compliments Apple for changing tack and protecting its users’ privacy.

Snowden wrote:

Beyond the frontiers of law, progress has come even more quickly. Technologists have worked tirelessly to re-engineer the security of the devices that surround us, along with the language of the Internet itself. Secret flaws in critical infrastructure that had been exploited by governments to facilitate mass surveillance have been detected and corrected. Basic technical safeguards such as encryption—once considered esoteric and unnecessary—are now enabled by default in the products of pioneering companies like Apple, ensuring that even if your phone is stolen, your private life remains private. Such structural technological changes can ensure access to basic privacies beyond borders, insulating ordinary citizens from the arbitrary passage of anti-privacy laws, such as those now descending upon Russia.

Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, has been very vocal on the subject of user privacy since taking over the role from the late Steve Jobs, saying during a speech recently that “weakening encryption, or taking it away, harms good people that are using it for the right reasons.”

Thank you The Mac Observer for providing us with this information.

Image courtesy of The Guardian.