Tim Cook has not been afraid to confront the government on issues he considers morally important.

Laura Sydell

Categorized in : Important Government Issues

The FBI wants Apple to write software code to help it break into the iPhone. Apple doesn't want to say this. Andrew Crocker, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, or EFF, a digital civil rights group, says the government can't make you say what you don't believe. He looks to a Supreme Court case that began in New Hampshire.

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Looking back at Tim Cook's public appearances in the last few years makes the standoff with the government look almost inevitable.

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The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed, and software has been treated as a form of speech ever since. So if software code is speech, Apple says the First Amendment also means the government can't tell Apple what to say.

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[Eric]Goldman [a professor at Santa Clara University School of Law] says back in the 1990s, courts began to confront the question of whether software code is a form of speech. Goldman says the answer to that question came in a case called Bernstein v. U.S. Department of Justice. Student Daniel Bernstein who created an encryption software called Snuffle. He wanted to put it on the Internet. The government tried to prevent him, using a law meant to stop the export of firearms and munitions. Goldman says the student argued his code was a form of speech.

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The relevant part of the First Amendment here prohibits the making of any law, quote, "abridging the freedom of speech." And it's pretty well-established that speech comes in many forms.

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In many ways, Apple CEO Tim Cook has been saying that and more for many years. He's said you don't have to choose between doing good and doing well. But only a few dozen people were lined up outside the Apple Store in San Francisco. That's nothing compared to the hundreds and thousands that line up for new products. Cook is taking a gamble here.

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Under [Tim] Cook, Apple has a new product line with the Apple Watch, but it hasn't generated the kind of excitement that the iPod, iPhone or iPad did. Still, Cook can't be called a failure. Under his leadership, the company released a larger version of the iPhone to record sales.

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Even under Apple founder Steve Jobs, the company did emphasize values. Remember the Think Different ad campaign that used pictures of the Dalai Lama, Amelia Earhart, Mahatma Gandhi? But Jobs focused on the integrity of Apple's products.

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Under [Tim] Cook's leadership, Apple is now using 100 percent renewable energy in the U.S. and China, and it's worked to improve conditions at its manufacturing plants in China.

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The Washington Post speaking out against state legislation that he believed would let businesses deny services to gay, lesbian and transgender people. [Tim] Cook himself came out as gay in the pages of Bloomberg Businessweek.

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Apple doesn't have to write code, which equals speech, when it doesn't agree with what the government wants to do. And it's not that the government can't make you do anything you don't want to do.

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