Why would a branch of the US government demand a back door into one of the most widely used pieces of consumer technology, at almost exactly the same time that a second branch voluntarily relinquishes just such a back door into another?
That is what happened this week, as the security of two of the defining personal computing platforms of the past 40 years — Microsoft’s Windows and Apple’s iPhone — came under scrutiny. The mixed messages from Washington show the headway the tech industry has made in reaching a new accommodation with national security and law enforcement agencies over access to their equipment and services — but also how far they still have to go.
It is nearly seven years since leaks by Edward Snowden detonated a bomb under the complacent relationship between the tech industry and the national security establishment. The Snowden revelations exposed what appeared to be willingness by some US companies to systematically subvert their own customers' privacy and security to comply with secret national security requests.