Backdoors

Crypto wars, continued: The FBI has asked Apple to build a new version of its iOS software so it can be installed on an iPhone recovered during its investigation of the San Bernadino terror attack, and company president Tim Cook has posted this letter to his customers, explaining why Apple is refusing to do so. He writes, in part:

The government is asking Apple to hack our own users and undermine decades of security advancements that protect our customers—including tens of millions of American citizens—from sophisticated hackers and cybercriminals. The same engineers who built strong encryption into the iPhone to protect our users would, ironically, be ordered to weaken those protections and make our users less safe. We can find no precedent for an American company being forced to expose its customers to a greater risk of attack. Opposing this order is not something we take lightly. We feel we must speak up in the face of what we see as an overreach by the U.S. government.

Editorial comment: Leaving aside the arguments over strong encryption (which we generally support) and backdoors (which we oppose), it’s worth noting two things about Cook’s action. First, unlike other tech companies battling the government, Apple so far hasn’t used its platform power to astro-turf its lobbying. And second, in this case, it’s taking a principled position that may hurt its bottom line if political pressure grows. Not bad. (Now, about all those U.S. taxes you’ve avoided paying, Tim…)

Tech and politics: Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign is seeing a surge in online donations, Tom Hamburger reports for the Washington Post. It now claims 750,000 individual donors, while the Bernie Sanders campaigns says it has 1.5 million. (The 2008 Barack Obama campaign hit 1 million donors at the end of February of that cycle.) Clinton’s digital strategist, Teddy Goff, told Hamburger, “The Sanders team is doing a terrific job, and they are ahead of us in small donors. Our argument is that we are both doing a pretty good job. This is not a zero-sum game. The democracy is stronger when large numbers of people give small donations. We have 750,000 donors; Bernie has even more. That’s a great sign for the party.”

Some Silicon Valley moguls are rooting for billionaire Mike Bloomberg to run for President, Nellie Bowles reports for The Guardian, though her evidence is somewhat thin.

The top trending question on Jeb Bush from Google searches in South Carolina, where he just campaigned with his brother George W., is “Is Jeb Bush related to George W. Bush?” reports John Amato for Crooks & Liars.

Yes, JebBush.com redirects to Donald Trump’s website.

This is civic tech: The NetGain partnership of the Ford, MacArthur, Knight, Open Society, and Mozilla Foundations has announced a combined $18 million in grants to “strengthen the emerging field of public interest technology.”

At the same time, the partnership released a new report from Freedman Consulting, titled “A Pivotal Moment: Developing a New Generation of Technologists for the Public interest.”

Google Ideas, Google’s think tank, is expanding to become a “technology incubator” called Jigsaw, focused on tackling “the toughest geopolitical challenges, from countering violent extremism to thwarting online censorship to mitigating the threats associated with digital attacks,” writes Google chairman Eric Schmidt, on Facebook. Jared Cohen will serve as Jigsaw’s president.

Al Jazeera’s Teo Kermeliotis reports on the launch of Hoaxmap, “an online platform that allows people to separate fact from fiction by debunking false rumors about supposed crimes committed by refugees.”

Your moment of zen: Alexander Hamilton and Kylo Ren battle-rap on YouTube, courtesy of the US Rebel Alliance.