Angus King Quotes

On the social media front, governments may attempt to monitor and repress citizens’ postings or discredit incriminating reports with misinformation, but such efforts buck technological trends that are empowering consumers, such as strong encryption.

Since Snowden went public, companies such as Apple and Google - two of the world's most valuable companies - have incorporated much greater encryption into their products and have also been at pains to show that they will not go along with U.S. government demands to access their encrypted products.

I haven't seen - I haven't heard the arguments that would make that case. And I haven't seen a proposal yet that satisfies the objections. The problem is, you create a key like this, and it can't - it's hard to say that it's going to be hidden. And then it becomes used both by our government in multiple cases, but also it could get out as far as hackers are concerned or other countries.

Paradoxically, in its quest to make Americans more secure, the NSA has made American communications less secure; it has undermined the safety of the entire internet.

The solution to government surveillance is to encrypt everything.

Despite being in public life, I value my own privacy immensely and would be as concerned as anyone else if I thought my mobile phone records could be easily available to officials across government.

Man, I don't want to have nothing to do with computers. I don't want the government in my business.

In the early 1980s, I wrote a book called 'The Complete Guide to Financial Privacy.' If I would write that book today, it would be a pamphlet. There is precious little privacy left.

Privacy is not an option, and it shouldn't be the price we accept for just getting on the Internet.

We have never really had absolute privacy with our records or our electronic communications - government agencies have always been able to gain access with appropriate court orders.

There are two kinds of cryptography in this world: cryptography that will stop your kid sister from reading your files, and cryptography that will stop major governments from reading your files.

Many of our customers have serious concerns about government surveillance of the Internet. We share their concerns.

The NSA has thrown Silicon Valley under the bus.

This is not a case about one isolated iPhone. Rather, this case is about the Department of Justice and the FBI seeking through the courts a dangerous power that Congress and the American people have withheld: the ability to force companies like Apple to undermine the basic security and privacy interests of hundreds of millions of individuals around the globe. The government demands that Apple create a back door to defeat the encryption on the iPhone, making its user’s most confidential and personal information vulnerable to hackers, identify thieves, hostile foreign agents, and unwarranted government surveillance.

Efforts to constrain encryption through forms of extraordinary access will inevitably introduce vulnerabilities into the security of consumer products in ways that are likely to have adverse long-term effects on the security, privacy, and civil liberties of citizens.

Apple and Google want to create encryption for which they could not provide you the key. Their business model will not survive if the American government has a special relationship with them that requires them to surrender this kind of information.

Really, what the government is asking Apple to do is to make every individual who uses an iPhone susceptible to hacking by bad people, foreign governments, and anyone who wants.

Once you put in backdoors, once you allow a government to intercept anything they want, you have to give it to other governments around the world. Once you do that, there is no privacy; there is no security. There is no protection for democracy.

Do we want a back door in an iPhone where the government can go in to track movements if they have probable cause? I know the director of the FBI and local law enforcement want that capability.

While the Census Bureau already has a legal obligation to keep people's information confidential, we all know that in an age of cyber attacks and computer hacking that ensuring people's privacy can be difficult.

There is an obvious truth here that must be spoken. The truth is that Assad, Russia, and Iran have no interest in peace.

Apple chief executive Tim Cook is such a respected figure that it's easy to overlook the basic problem with his argument about encryption: Cook is asserting that a private company and the interests of its customers should prevail over the public's interest as expressed by our courts.

David Cameron has already said, and I have said, that a Conservative government would be giving the security agencies and law enforcement agencies the powers that they need to ensure that they are keeping up to date as people communicate with data.

To be sure, anonymity online has it uses and is very important. Governments hoover up people's telephone and e-mail records without oversight, and companies track astonishingly granular personal information.

WhatsApp has a consistent history - from zero encryption at its inception to a succession of security issues strangely suitable for surveillance purposes.