Tedd Olson, a partner at Gibson, Dunn, and Crutcher, a primary outside counsel in Apple’s battle with the FBI, spoke with Bloomberg Business about the hearings and comments made by the ex-head of the NSA. A fascinating take. Click the link, watch the video. As you’d expect, Olson is very well spoken, but he cuts to the center of these issues. Worth watching.

From the article accompanying the video:

“There isn’t a middle ground that I know of” to force Apple to “redesign its iPhone,” Olson, a lawyer for the company, told Bloomberg Television’s Emily Chang in an interview Wednesday morning. “The Constitution does not allow the government to conscript private companies to invent products or to change the products that they have invented.”

And:

Olson said that Congress should act to clarify a technology company’s responsibilities to law enforcement in such circumstances, and that piecemeal decisions by the courts will only lead to a muddle. He challenged a proposal by U.S Attorney General Loretta Lynch that the judiciary weigh each case one at a time, warning that “you might have one court going one way and another court going another way,” but didn’t specify what legislation he had in mind for a broader resolution of the matter.

My 2 cents: This issue should be resolved by clarifying legislation from Congress, a law that makes it clear that Apple can not be conscripted to build a back door or passcode bypass mechanism for the government or anyone else.