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A smart thermostat that you can control from your iPhone is nice, but if you’re a fan of Siri then HomeKit-compatibly is a must. The ecobee3 Wi-Fi thermostat can be controlled using Siri on your iPhone, iPad, or Apple Watch, and it uses remote sensors to determine temperature and presence around your home to be smarter about automating your HVAC system. Overall, the thermostat itself is rather slick and the software experience behind it holds up well. If you’re curious about HomeKit and in the market for a smart thermostat, the ecobee3 just might be the best option yet …

As with any new thermostat, smart or not, there’s a hardware installation process required at setup. You’re mileage may vary depending on conditions and experience, but using a combination of the setup instructions and the geniuses of YouTube, we got our ecobee3 up and running in under an hour. Wiring configuration will vary and this is where it can get complicated, but assuming your setup is already standard and you follow instructions carefully, you likely won’t need the pros to do the job. Once you replace your previous thermostat for ecobee3, the real fun begins.

At a distance, ecobee3 displays just the current inside temperature prominently above an icon for the local weather condition next to the current outside temperature. When ecobee3 detects your presence, the display animates to reveal an on-screen target temperature slider, current relative humidity, menu button, full weather report, and quick changes button. Heating and cooling are distinguished by orange and blue bars.

While the main view shows you the current outside temperature, you can actually get a detailed weather report right on the ecobee3. This includes a temperature forecast for the next several hours. It’s a small thing and already available on my other devices, but it makes ecobee3 feel smarter knowing and presenting the outside weather next to the inside temperature. You’ll also find a full menu of settings for your temperature preferences and managing ecobee3, but most of these tasks are just easier from the iPhone, iPad, or the web when available.

The ecobee3 unit itself has a built-in sensor for detecting presence and current temperature, but you can optionally place additional sensors around your house to more accurately monitor and manage temperature. My kit came bundled with three sensors, bringing the total number to four including the unit.

I’ve placed a sensor in my bedroom, living room, and office, and have the ecobee3 located in the center of the home in the hallway. These detect both temperature and presence, making ecobee3 more intelligent when using the system to cool or warm your home.

You can buy additional ecobee3 Remote Sensors in 2 packs for $79.

As a smart thermostat, you can already control ecobee3 remotely from your iPhone or iPad from the iOS app, but turning on HomeKit enables Siri control and a lot of automation capabilities. Being able to change the temperature and make my home and office cooler or warmer without interrupting my work or watching a TV show is super convenient with the app alone, but being able to use Siri makes it super fast.

Siri works from the iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch for changing the target temperature or asking where the current temperature is around the house. You can also set target temperatures as triggers and scenes with other HomeKit-compatible accessories. For example, saying “Netflix and chill” to Siri could mean locking the door, dimming the lights, and setting the temperature to be cooler in the summer.

ecobee3 lets you set your system to heating, cooling, or automate between both based on target temperatures. Back in December when I first setup ecobee3, configuring HomeKit disabled Auto Mode which lets you set target cool and heat temperatures, which was an interesting limitation.

But just last week the iPhone app prompted me to the message above, noting that HomeKit now works with Auto Mode. What would have been a knock just a week earlier turned into a positive that reminded me that smart thermostats only get smarter over time.

For Apple Watch owners, ecobee has a nice watchOS 2 app that lets you monitor temperatures and tweak settings. You need to use Siri to set a specific temperature, but the Apple Watch app lets you view the current target temperature as well as what temperature each sensor including the ecobee3’s currently reads. Force Touching within the app brings up options to turn your system’s fan on or off, or manually set ecobee3 to Home or Away mode.

There’s also a watch face complication, or widget, which tells you what mode ecobee3 is in as well as current target temperature. For fans of glances, the app has a card that you can swipe up to access from the watch face to view current temperature, target temperature, and mode. The watch app is nice, especially for viewing temperature readers from various rooms, but Siri control from the Apple Watch is my favorite part.

The ecobee iPhone app actually looks almost identical to the user interface on the actual thermostat, which is nice because it creates a familiar experience on the unit and on your iPhone. The animations on the iPhone app are noticeably laggy, though, which I hope improves in the future.

For the ecobee iPad app, the same user interface is cleverly spread across of grid that requires fewer menus and more features. It feels futuristic and just plain cool controlling and managing the ecobee3 from the modular view on a tablet.

Whether you’re using the thermostat, iPhone app, or iPad app, ecobee3 has some handy intelligence behind it. For example, you can set target temperatures for when you’re at home and away then using the motion sensors to track presence.

The ecobee system also has alert and reminder options for extreme temperature and humidity levels and maintenance reminders. We changed the air filter at our house when we installed ecobee3, then turned on the three-month reminder to change the filter in the future (which I tend to be terrible about remembering).

For me, the ecobee3 thermostat’s appeal is mostly in controlling remotely using Siri and the mobile apps, but the ecobee app also offers insights into system usage over time in the Home IQ section. The iPad app offers some data here, but the web interface shows even more.

According to ecobee, my Home Energy Efficiency rating puts me in the top 20% of homes in my state and I should work on lowering my runtimes. During the month of January (my first full month with ecobee), Home IQ says I’ve saved 13 hours of runtime and $4.80 based on my equipment’s runtime and local electricity rates. This should be fun to game over time.

Finally, there’s the web interface that you can access from ecobee’s website where you can remotely control the temperature, manage settings, view sensor data, and everything else you can access from the iOS apps. The screenshot above captured in Safari features a nearly identical layout to the ecobee iPad app. This makes accessing and controlling the thermostat from anywhere a familiar experience which I like a lot.

Overall, I’ve really enjoyed using the ecobee3 since December and can easily recommend it as a quality HomeKit accessory. Siri control for turning on the heat from my desk is super convenient, especially using the Apple Watch, and using the iPhone app to change the temperature has almost entirely replaced walking over to the thermostat.

I also really enjoy seeing the local outside weather next to the current inside temperature, viewing temperatures by room with multiple sensors is helpful, and I appreciate that the user interface is similar from the thermostat to the iPhone app to the iPad version to the website. Round thermostats like the Nest (no HomeKit, reviewed) and new Honeywell Lyric (HomeKit) can’t quite pull this off.

Lastly, ecobee’s ability to adjust temperature based on my preferences for when I’m home and away or awake and asleep is really helpful in saving energy. I’m still optimizing my preferences after the first month but also finding new features like the ability to schedule vacation temperature levels in advanced.

Being deep in the Apple ecosystem means HomeKit and Siri control enable a lot of the ecobee3 experience, but in general the software and intelligence make it a quality competitor in the smart thermostat space on its own.

Aside from HomeKit and Siri, ecobee3 is getting smarter with new connections like the recently added Amazon Echo for voice control. You can grab the ecobee3 Smarter Wi-Fi Thermostat with Remote Sensor (2nd Generation) from $243, or the 3 Sensor Bundle I have from $318.

Filed under: HomeKit, Reviews Tagged: ecobee, Ecobee3, ecobee3 Smart Thermostat, homekit, Siri, smart appliances, smart home, Thermostat, Wi-Fi thermostat

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A new We the People petition has been created urging the White House to “halt efforts that compel Apple and other device makers to create a “backdoor” for the Government to access citizens data” (via MacReports). 

The petition comes as Apple CEO Tim Cook this week penned an open letter detailing why the company is resisting a demand from the FBI to unlock a device belonging to a suspect in the high profile San Bernardino shooter case.

The United States government has demanded that Apple take an unprecedented step which threatens the security of its customers…The FBI, is demanding that Apple build a “backdoor” to bypass digital locks protecting consumer information on Apple’s popular iPhones…We the undersigned, oppose this order, which has implications far beyond the legal case at hand.

The controversy and Cook’s letter followed complaints from the FBI that it couldn’t crack Apple’s encryption on the iPhone and Apple’s refusal to assist the courts and agency in doing so.

In his open letter, Cook defended Apple’s long running stance of not providing access to personal data to government under any circumstances and said that complying with the FBI’s request would be “‘an unprecedented step which threatens the security of our customers.” Cook continued:

The implications of the government’s demands are chilling. If the government can use the All Writs Act to make it easier to unlock your iPhone, it would have the power to reach into anyone’s device to capture their data. The government could extend this breach of privacy and demand that Apple build surveillance software to intercept your messages, access your health records or financial data, track your location, or even access your phone’s microphone or camera without your knowledge.

Since Cook’s letter, several organizations have voiced support for Apple including statements issued by The Electronic Frontier Foundation, American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Amnesty International.

And while it certainly would be possible for Apple to bypass the iPhone’s security — either with a master key of sorts like the FBI wants or through other methods — our own poll shows that an overwhelming amount of you — around 86% of 17,000 and counting votes — support Apple and do not support any type of method of government access to data on iOS.

But so far, at the time of publishing, the We the People petition only has under 100 signatures. Another 99,900 to go before March 18th in order to get the White House’s attention and the required response. You can sign it here.

Filed under: iOS Devices Tagged: Apple, encrpytion, iPhone, privacy, White House

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Filed under: Tips and Tricks Tagged: 9to5Toys, Amazon, app deals, Best Buy, D-Link iOS Water Sensor, Daily Deals, free apps, Gold Box, iPhone car mount, Retina MacBook Pro

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Thanks to JW Player’s new tvOS app framework, Tasting Table was able to successfully build and submit an Apple TV app for review in less than 24 hours. JW Player’s new beta open-source product allows content makers on its platform to utilize what they already have created to build a fully branded Apple TV app.

Tasting Table is the first company to use JW Player’s new app framework to build out their own Apple TV app. Boasting a library of more than 250 food and drink related videos, and producing new videos every month, Tasting Table will be able to bring their viewing experience directly to their 8 million member’s couches.

"Video has always been a mainstay of our content strategy, but with the creation of our in-house Content Studio and our recent push this past November to produce even more video, we knew we wanted to get our new content to an even broader audience. JW Player was already helping us seamlessly stream video to our website, so when it came time to identify a technology provider to help us build an app for Apple TV, it was the natural choice." - Rohit Gupta, Director of Product at TastingTable.com

Customers on the JW Player platform will be able to utilize the content they already have to fully populate the app using any already created playlists. Video titles, descriptions and hero images are all captured from the video feed’s metadata and applied directly into the app. One of best parts about using JW’s open-source option is that it’s free for all users on the platform. Customers who want to integrate HLS (HTTP Live Streaming) within their app can do so by adding external URLs within the JW Player dashboard.

JW Player made sure that any existing customers were able to truly customize and make the app look and match their established brands. Customer can use their own image assets to change the look of the app and take the customization further by editing the framework’s source code. Data collected from video playback within the tvOS apps are reported back to the customer’s JW Player Dashboard.

The Tasting Table app is now available for free in the Apple TV App Store. JW Player’s framework for the Apple TV can be found on GitHub.

Filed under: Apple TV, Apps Tagged: Apple TV, developers, Development, framework, JW Player, Tasting Table, tvOS

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Honeywell’s new Lyric Round thermostat originally announced back at CES in January and until now up for preorder only is today officially on sale and in-stock for all.

Currently shipping from the company’s website for $249, the Honeywell Lyric Round is thought to be one of the smart, wi-fi connected thermostats this year that might ultimately give Google’s Nest thermostat a run for its money. It’s Honeywell’s second generation of the product, but its the first in its line to officially support Apple’s HomeKit home automation platform. That means its the first to offer control via Siri voice commands, something that Nest and other competitors are still a hold outs on as Google pushes its own competitive home automation platform.

The Honeywell Lyric Round works with a companion iOS app that allows manual control of the thermostat, but the product’s main pitch is that it will learn your habits overtime and hopefully help you keep track of energy consumption and adjust accordingly to improve your habits. Honeywell gives the rundown on features of the second-gen Lyric Round including Apple Watch and HomeKit:

• Apple HomeKit and Apple Watch^® – easily and securely control the Lyric thermostat using Siri, set up special actions, connect to other HomeKit-enabled products in the home via the Lyric app, and even make changes and check multiple thermostats using Apple Watch.
• Customizable Geofencing – consumers can create a custom geofence map and distance, enabling the Lyric thermostat to deliver “comfort when you’re home, savings when you’re away” with even greater accuracy.
• Smart Alerts – the Lyric thermostat can send reminders about filter changes, warn of extreme temperatures and humidity inside the home, and more.
• Intelligent Comfort Control – to make sure 72 degrees feels like 72 degrees, the Lyric thermostat considers temperature and humidity to maintain comfort, and can also work with your system to adjust in-home humidity levels.
• Custom Shortcuts – create a dynamic heating/cooling schedule, and set up recurring event triggers with a single touch of the thermostat or app.

You can grab the new Lyric Round thermostat with HomeKit ($249) from Honeywell’s website now.

Filed under: iOS Tagged: Apple, availability, CES, homekit, Honeywell, iPhone, Lyric, order, preorder, Shipping, Thermostat

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Volvo is today announcing the launch of its latest vehicle, the V90 Estate, which also happens to be the company’s latest with support for Apple’s in-dash iPhone CarPlay feature.

The car is Volvo’s third for its premium 90 series and for that reason is being referred to as a sibling of the S90 sedan and XC90 SUV models that the company previously unveiled (and which also include support for CarPlay). In its press release, the company notes that means the new V90 Estate, like the XC90 and S90 before it, is “built on the company’s specially-designed and fully modular Scalable Product Architecture (SPA).”

“The modern premium estate is all about the intriguing combination of a luxurious experience with the functional origins of the estates silhouette. The sophisticated ambience of our new Volvo Interiors is combined with a great cargo space, providing the right kind of functionality – whether through connectivity or cargo and storage solutions,” said Thomas Ingenlath senior vice president for design at Volvo Cars.

The new V90 delivers cutting-edge Pilot Assist semi-autonomous drive technology, the most advanced standard safety package on the market, with large animal detection and run-off road mitigation, and class-leading connectivity including smartphone integration with Apple CarPlay.

The vehicle has full support for Apple’s CarPlay on the V90 Estate’s in-dash system using a connected iPhone. Volvo says the in-dash system on the V90 Estate is the same as in the S90, which includes a 9-inch touchscreen display as pictured above. And here’s a look at the exterior on the V90 Estate:

Volvo first announced support for CarPlay on its 2016 XC90 SUV last year that it later delivered to owners of the vehicle through a software update back in December. Here’s a look at the feature in action in the vehicle:

Earlier this year Apple for the first time offered up an official list of CarPlay partners by year and model via a new webpage, but it has yet to update it to note the new Volvo V90 Estate launching today.

Filed under: CarPlay Tagged: Apple, CarPlay, dash, iPhone, launch, pictures, press release, release, V90 estate, Volvo

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Discussing the FBI case with a friend yesterday, one distinction that seems worth addressing is the difference between a backdoor into iPhones – which is what law enforcement agencies have so far been calling for – and what we might term a master key, which is what the FBI is calling for in this particular case.

Law enforcement agencies have so far been calling for Apple to abandon its use of strong encryption. Technically, they want Apple to build in a backdoor route into that encryption for use by law enforcement agencies, but that’s the same thing: strong encryption with a built-in flaw is not strong encryption. It’s only a matter of time before hackers find and exploit it.

What the FBI is asking in the San Bernardino case is quite different. Instead of asking Apple to weaken the encryption, they want it to weaken the lock guarding access to the phone by removing the auto-wipe and time-delay functions. That would leave the phone vulnerable to a brute-force attack.

And, the FBI assures us, it isn’t asking Apple to do this for all iPhones, just this one specific device. It’s a very different scenario, and one that sounds superficially harmless …

Again, I emphasise that I fully sympathize with the FBI’s intentions in the San Bernardino case. If there are other terrorists out there waiting to launch similar attacks, we want to know about them. If this iPhone could lead to those possible terrorists, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to agree to this one request.

The problem, however, is that it is never ‘just this once.’ Any time we give up one of our civil liberties in a good cause, the legal precedent is set. There will be a second exception, and a third and … Effectively, if we permit just a single exception to a Constitutional right, we give up that right forever.

Some are arguing that there are sufficient safeguards in this case such that we don’t need to worry. Only Apple would hold the key, and it would only use it when presented with a court order. The FBI and other agencies would have no ability to carry out warrantless searches, and it would likely only seek court orders in the most serious of cases.

Again, however, we need to look beyond what is being asked for in the short term to what is likely to follow. In this particular case, the FBI wants Apple to unlock the phone. (Technically, Apple would remove the safeguards and the FBI would unlock the phone, but that’s a semantic argument.) Apple continues to hold the key.

But it is an extremely short distance from there to arguing that there will be some very time-critical cases where the delay involved in knocking on Apple’s door is too damaging. The classic ‘time-bomber in custody’ scenario. That the FBI needs to hold the key to prevent delay. It still wouldn’t do so without a court order, so where’s the harm? It would simply be cutting out the middleman.

So soon, the FBI would hold the key. Then other law enforcement agencies. In time, that key would be held in every police precinct house. We would then be trusting more than a million people with access to that key to abide by the rules. Government agencies don’t always have the best of track-records in doing that.

Ok, you could argue, but where’s the harm? This is the ‘nothing to hide’ argument. That if we’re all law-abiding people, why should we fear the government snooping in our phones? As I’ve argued before, however, that’s a silly argument. If you take that line, then you could equally argue that everyone should be fitted with a GPS chip embedded in their skin to track their movements, and we should have blanket CCTV coverage on every street and in every building.

And lots of people have perfectly legitimate things to hide, from a partner sending intimate photos to cheer up a soldier serving overseas to journalists with contact details for confidential sources.

But even if we would trust our government with that much power, it isn’t just one government we have to consider. The USA almost certainly has agreements with friendly governments to share certain technologies, and the iPhone master key could well join the list. History shows that a country considered an ally today may well be an enemy tomorrow.

Even if you were prepared to risk that, there is no getting away from the fact that terrorists may be evil, but they are generally not stupid. In the San Bernardino case, it appears the shooters destroyed their own phones and hard drives, and the FBI is somehow hoping they might still have left incriminating evidence on a work phone. Do we doubt that they had the wit to use a strong passcode too? Terrorists and major criminals use burner phones to plan their attacks, not their own iPhones, registered in their own names and using their own Apple IDs.

So the arguments I made before this all happened haven’t changed. We would still be asked to sacrifice our right to privacy. We would still have no control over who ends up with the ability to access our devices. And it would still achieve nothing worthwhile.

Filed under: Opinion Tagged: Apple, backdoor, Encryption, master key, privacy, Security

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Apple is today rolling out another new way to buy an iPhone at an Apple Store, a combination of its existing iPhone Upgrade Program and trade-in offers. Right now, on the normal iPhone Upgrade Program, customers can pay about $32 a month for a brand new iPhone 6s on a two-year agreement with an annual trade-in option.

What the ‘Trade Up With Installments’ offers is a reduction of that monthly fee, in exchange for a trade-in of your existing smartphone. For example, you can trade in your current iPhone 6 to get a new iPhone 6s with a 2-year payment plan of $15/mo. What’s interesting is that you can trade in an Android device, not just iPhones — Apple will give up to $300 in trade-in value for Android handsets.

Exact pricing varies based on the age of the device being traded in and the new phone you are looking to buy. Moving from one iPhone generation to another works out to a monthly price of about $15 for 24 months, but moving from an iPhone 4 to a 128 GB iPhone 6s Plus will result in a $35.37 monthly bill, via USA Today.

You can trade in an iPhone dating back as far back to the iPhone 4. You’ll pay somewhere in the neighborhood of $15 a month for each step up in model, with the interest-free term again lasting for 24 months.

For example, if you step up from an iPhone 4 to an iPhone 5S, you’ll pay $14.58 a month for 24 months. If you move from an iPhone 6 to a 6S, the monthly tab is $14.54. To take the most extreme example, to move from the iPhone 4 to the largest-capacity (128 GB) iPhone 6S Plus, you’ll pay $35.37 a month.

Effectively, the new program is an interest-free loan with credit handled by Citizens Bank. It’s an alternative option to the existing iPhone Upgrade Program and trade-in Apple Store credit opportunities the company offers at its stores. On Apple’s most recent earnings call, Tim Cook said that 60% of the install base prior to iPhone 6 has still yet to upgrade … this new plan seems like a targeted move on incentivizing some of this existing user base to upgrade.

For now, the Trade Up With Installments plan is only available at Apple Retail Stores in the United States. In most cases, buying an iPhone outright is still the cheapest way of buying a new device in the long run, but many iOS customers are unable (or simply do not want) to pay >$650 as a lump sum at once. Hence, Apple and carriers now offer a plethora of interest-free-loan smartphone payment plans just like this one.

Filed under: AAPL Company, iOS Devices Tagged: Apple, buying an iPhone, carrier, ihpoen subsidy, iOS, iPhone, iPhone 6s, payment plan

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HomeKit-certified devices are the slickest way to control your technology, but if you have any dumb technology powered by AA batteries, you can now remotely switch it on and off using your iPhone.

The Tethercell AA Smart Battery Adapter is a really simple idea. Replace one of the device’s AA batteries with this adapter, which takes a smaller AAA battery, and you can then switch it on and off from an app on your iPhone.

It’s Bluetooth LE rather than Wi-Fi, so range will be limited (the company claims 50-60 feet), but if the device is close enough, it’s a cheap and easy way to add remote control functionality. It’s compatible with all iPhones from the 4S onward.

The adapter costs $20 for two from Amazon.

Via BGR

Filed under: iOS Devices Tagged: AA battery, AAA battery, Bluetooth, Bluetooth LE, Home automation, smart AA battery, smart home

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It’s no surprise that 95% of U.S. consumers share up to six passwords with other people when you consider that this includes WiFi passwords for home Internet connections and sharing Netflix passwords with family members, but a survey by LastPass showed that 59% also re-use the same passwords for multiple sites. Put the two facts together and people could potentially be allowing access to rather more than they intended.

The younger you are, the more likely you are to share passwords with a friends: 40% of 18-29 year olds do so, dropping to 15% for those aged 30-44 and 6% at 45-59. Only just over a quarter bother to reset a password after they’ve shared it with someone else.

While the company’s motivation is to promote the emergency access and password-sharing features it introduced last month, it does provide a nudge to ensure you’re not using your WiFi password for anything sensitive.

Filed under: iOS Devices

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Skype told us a month ago that it would soon be rolling out group video calling to both iOS and Android devices, and the company has today advised that the rollout is now underway.

Today, we’ve started rolling out group video calling on iPhone, iPad and Android phones and tablets in Western Europe and North America and we expect to have completed our roll-out to these markets over the next week or so. We plan to be fully available worldwide in March

This brings the mobile experience in line with that already available on the desktop.

The UI lets you choose between a grid view of all those in the call, and a focus view that automatically switches to the person speaking. Alternatively, if you only really care about one person in the call, you can use a ‘pin’ feature to stick with your view of them.

Via Engadget

Filed under: Apps Tagged: Skype, Skype for iOS, Skype for iPad, Skype for iPhone, Skype group video

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A Bloomberg profile of Apple’s ‘chief chipmaker’ – SVP of hardware technologies Johny Srouji – talks about how the iPad Pro was launched behind schedule, and almost ended up being less powerful than the iPhone 6s.

The original plan was to introduce the iPad Pro with Apple’s tablet chip, the A8X, the same processor that powered the iPad Air 2, introduced in 2014. But delaying until fall meant that the Pro would make its debut alongside the iPhone 6s, which was going to use a newer, faster phone chip called the A9 […]

The iPad Pro would look feeble next to the iPhone 6s. So Srouji put his engineers on a crash program to move up the rollout of a new tablet processor, the A9X, by half a year.

While the piece predictably doesn’t reveal much we didn’t already know, it does contain one surprising fun fact about the original iPhone …

Srouji said that because the original iPhone had to piece together existing components from a range of suppliers, it couldn’t be as powerful as the company had hoped, with a low-powered processor, no front camera, connectivity limited to 2G and poor battery life. One of those components?

Elements from a Samsung chip used in DVD players.

It was disappointment in what could be achieved using existing components, said Srouji, that led Steve Jobs to conclude that Apple needed to design its own chips.

Steve came to the conclusion that the only way for Apple to really differentiate and deliver something truly unique and truly great, you have to own your own silicon. You have to control and own it.

The whole piece makes for an interesting background read.

Filed under: AAPL Company, iOS Devices Tagged: Apple Inc, Chips, iPad, iPad Pro, iPhone, iPhone 6s, Johny Srouji, Samsung, Steve Jobs

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Civil rights organizations have expressed strong support for Apple’s resistance to a court order instructing it to create special firmware that would allow the FBI to break into an iPhone – with tech companies doing the same, albeit in a weaker fashion.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) posted a statement in which it said that it applauded Apple for standing up for the rights of its customers, and would be making its views known to the court.

Essentially, the government is asking Apple to create a master key so that it can open a single phone. And once that master key is created, we’re certain that our government will ask for it again and again, for other phones, and turn this power against any software or device that has the audacity to offer strong security […]

EFF applauds Apple for standing up for real security and the rights of its customers. We have been fighting to protect encryption, and stop backdoors, for over 20 years. That’s why EFF plans to file an amicus brief in support of Apple’s position.

The Verge notes similar support from both the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Amnesty International …

ACLU staff attorney Alex Abdo said that the court order was unconstitutional, and Apple deserved praise for its stance.

This is an unprecedented, unwise, and unlawful move by the government. The Constitution does not permit the government to force companies to hack into their customers’ devices. […] Apple deserves praise for standing up for its right to offer secure devices to all of its customers.

Amnesty’s Deputy Director of Global Issues Sherif Elsayed-Ali echoed the widespread view that the case would set a dangerous precedent.

Apple is right to fight back in this case: the FBI’s request, which would in practice require Apple to rewrite its operating system to weaken security protections, would set a very dangerous precedent. Such backdoors undermine everyone’s security and threaten our right to privacy.

Unsurprisingly, Edward Snowden also tweeted his support for Apple, describing it as “the most important tech case in a decade” and quoting a NYT piece that argued that if the US government was allowed to access iPhones, the Chinese government would demand the same.

I noted yesterday that other tech giants had remained quiet, but a number of them have since voiced their support for Apple’s stance – though as we noted on 9to5google, not always in the most unequivocal of terms.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai posted a series of five tweets in which he said the case could set “a troubling precedent.”

Important post by @tim_cook. Forcing companies to enable hacking could compromise users’ privacy. We know that law enforcement and intelligence agencies face significant challenges in protecting the public against crime and terrorism. We build secure products to keep your information safe and we give law enforcement access to data based on valid legal orders. But that’s wholly different than requiring companies to enable hacking of customer devices & data. Could be a troubling precedent. Looking forward to a thoughtful and open discussion on this important issue.

Microsoft chose not to issue a statement directly, but instead quoted a statement on the Reform Government Surveillance website, an organization of which the company is a member.

Reform Government Surveillance companies believe it is extremely important to deter terrorists and criminals and to help law enforcement by processing legal orders for information in order to keep us all safe. But technology companies should not be required to build in backdoors to the technologies that keep their users’ information secure. RGS companies remain committed to providing law enforcement with the help it needs while protecting the security of their customers and their customers’ information.

WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum, however, used stronger language in a Facebook post in support of Apple.

I have always admired Tim Cook for his stance on privacy and Apple’s efforts to protect user data and couldn’t agree more with everything said in their Customer Letter today. We must not allow this dangerous precedent to be set. Today our freedom and our liberty is at stake.

A clear majority of 9to5Mac readers also support Apple’s stance. Some 86% of you said that Apple should maintain its current position, while 11% felt the company should cooperate with the FBI and 3% were indifferent. This is down from the 93% support expressed prior to the San Bernardino shootings and subsequent court order, but this is not surprising – we of course always feel sympathy for the victims and loved ones of specific attacks. But, as the old saying has it, hard cases make for bad law.

Filed under: AAPL Company Tagged: AAPL, ACLU, all writs act, American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International, Apple Inc, California, court order, edward snowden, EFF, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Encryption, FBI, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Google, iPhone, Microsoft, privacy, San Bernardino, Security, Tim Cook, WhatsApp

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