New York Times, reporting on a meeting that took place last month between Tim Cook and other tech executives and FBI Director James Comey Jr., Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and other national security officials:
“With all due respect,” Mr. Cook told those around the table, including Mr. Obama’s counterterrorism chief and the heads of the National Security Agency and the Department of Homeland Security, “I think there has been a lack of leadership in the White House on this.”
Denis R. McDonough, the president’s chief of staff, took exception and said so. Law enforcement officials described him as stung by what they called Mr. Cook’s “rant,” although tech executives in the room insisted that Apple’s chief executive was respectful.
Either way, what started as a cordial two-hour discussion about combating Islamic extremism ended with the White House and Mr. Cook agreeing to disagree — foreshadowing a bitter battle between a president long enamored of Apple products and Silicon Valley and a tech titan who has spoken enthusiastically of Mr. Obama.
This divide might have been inevitable, but this looks like a core moment when the discussion moved from amiable to adversarial.
That wasn’t smart of Cook. He chose a moment of emotional gratification over diplomacy. Sometimes, it’s what you say and not just how you say it that changes the game. Big mistake, it sounds like.
Unless you were there (hint: you weren’t – and neither was the author of this piece), you have no idea what happened. Your comment is based on an unverified assumption about the meeting taken from quotes from LEO sources, who never met an article in the Bill of Rights they could stand.
Further, this administration and the abominable one which preceded it have CONSISTENTLY attacked civil liberties and fought to reduce privacy and security for individuals. What Bruce Scheier refers to as “asymmetry of power” has tremendously expanded over the past 15 years. This is not Tim Cook’s fault, and if you think his standing up to McDonough made the slightest difference in the government’s consistent stand against the individual, you’re misled. McDonough may have been “stung”, but it’s only because he views himself as above the populace and is used to subservience.
Every time Tim Cook opens his mouth, the more respect he gets from me and a lot of other people.
The government expects everyone to be obsequious toadies to their whims and wishes for their jobs to be easier. How dare someone stand up to them. Time to assassinate their character!
Somehow I suspect the adversarial take was Comey’s before and during this meeting. Cook seems to me someone to take a very long time to rile, and I bet there is a lot more to this story leading up to Cook’s outburst — if you can even call it that. Comey is an authoritarian slime we haven’t seen the likes of since J. Edgar Hoover (without evidence — yet? — of the secretive power plays).
I appears as if Tim called it like it is. Something most others would have been fearful of doing. We knew this was going to be an issue and Obama has had 6+ years to at least kick off something to address it. He hasn’t.
It is very clear that it was the government that was undiplomatic, and diplomacy is actually in their job description. Tim Cook is a private citizen and has a right to be unhappy about what has gone on.
It is odd that the Obama administration is trying to make the President’s iPad crackable. He receives CIA briefings on it. But I guess they think that they have a layer of physical security that private citizens don’t have. Same as how the Supreme Court says you have a right to carry a gun into a classroom but you can’t have one within 500 meters of the Supreme Court.
But Comey also doesn’t know what decade it is, so he doesn’t realize how transparent today’s media makes him.