So there was the Rev. Jesse Jackson the other day in, of all places, an Apple stockholder meeting with CEO Tim Cook–who received a standing ovation–presiding. Cook has defended Apple’s epic clash with the FBI and is challenging a court order that would help the feds unlock the encrypted iPhone used by murdering terrorists in San Bernardino. It’s the constitutional-existential issue of our times.
Jackson applauded Cook’s leadership and offered an historic, if inappropriate, analogy. “I recall the FBI wiretapping Dr. (Martin Luther) King in the civil rights movement,” noted Jackson. “We cannot go down this path again. Some of us do remember the days of J. Edgar Hoover and McCarthy and Nixon and enemies lists.”
However the Apple/national security/privacy rights/China market scenario ultimately shakes out, this much should be abundantly clear. The sleazy, paranoid, domestic-politics world of Hoover, Joe McCarthy and Richard Nixon is nothing like the world of international terror networks and technology.