Apple, Google, Facebook, etc. should obey court orders and cooperate with FBI, etc.

This is not even a close call. Apple Computers, maker of closed proprietary systems, is fighting a legitimate court order to help the FBI gain access to an iPhone used by a terrorist in the killing of 14 co-workers in San Bernadino, CA. Apple CEO Tim Cook is making statements that sound like he's running for office or drafting an ivory tower academic paper for his PhD. Cook should just run for office. Nobody elected Tim Cook or Google co-founder Larry Page or Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Who the heck are they to be setting national policy on this?

It's clear none of those big three wants to be the first to behave responsibly and risk an hysterical backlash by its customers. So they are deluding themselves into protecting some vague pointless sense of privacy, the thing that prevents proper medical research that could substantially benefit all of us by using all our data instead of conducting these pathetic short term trials of at most a couple of thousand people. We all know someone who has needlessly died of cancer.

A couple of years ago Apple intentionally changed its operating systems to make its products invulnerable and to deny access to legitimate investigators with a court order. Neither our homes nor ourselves have such immunity. Apple has aided and abetted the enemy, giving it a tool that it did not have before. After 9/11 we read about digital messages hidden in images. Now terrorists don't need anything so esoteric. They can simply use Apple products. Maybe Apple should make that its next marketing campaign. Our stuff is so impenetrable that all the terrorists now use it.

If terrorism is too much for you to handle, think about a simple domestic kidnapping, let's say an eight year old girl. The FBI is called in and needs access to info on an iPhone. The Feds quickly get a court order but Apple fights it, defending that vague privacy thing.

And what do people want to keep private? If you ask them they don't know but they want it. If you think about it, it's so that they can cheat. What do people cheat about: money and sex. So we all have to be at additional risk so that some of us can hide how they are cheating on money and sex? That's ridiculous.

Tim Cook, tear down this wall.