President Barack Obama, center, waves to members of the audience after answering question from Evan Smith, left, CEO / Editor in Chief of The Texas Tribune, at the South by Southwest Festival (SXSW) at the Center for Performing Arts in Austin, Texas, Friday, March 11, 2016.
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Apple, one of the world’s largest technology companies, is challenging the U.S. government’s request that it help the Federal Bureau of Investigation access data on a mobile phone used in the San Bernardino, California, attack that killed 14 people.
Obama’s keynote also addressed how government and the tech industry can efficiently work together for their mutual benefit. “If technologically it is possible to make an impenetrable device or system where the encryption is so strong that there is no key, there’s no door at all, then how do we apprehend the child pornographer, how do we solve or disrupt a terrorist plot?”
“My conclusion so far is that you can not take an absolutist view on this”, Obama said.
Others have said that if Apple can protect its own source code and its own signature keys on new software, why should we believe that a single piece of software created to break into one phone cannot also be protected. “And that can’t be the right answer”, he said.
While he could not comment on the FBI’s tussle with Apple over the tech firm’s refusal to release data held on an iPhone, the president discussed the tensions that highlight the dispute between privacy and security.
On the broader issue of privacy rights, Obama, who trained as a constitutional lawyer, said he tended to lean more on protecting civil liberties but said USA citizens need to be prepared to make concessions on their privacy for the sake of security, the way they endure airport screenings or DUI checkpoints. But Apple has refused, and says that to do what the government is asking would set a bad precedent.
Speaking to the tech-focused crowd on the first day of the tech-portion of the conference, “SXSW Interactive”, he said that Americans should have their privacy, but that there needs to be an understanding of when the government should intervene.
“We want to create a pipeline where there’s a continuous flow of talent that’s helping shape the government”, he said.
Part of the reason the government doesn’t appear to provide a “satisfactory solution” is because it has to take on the “hardest problems”, argued the president, who added that the “toughest problems are government problems so you’re never going to get 100 per cent satisfaction the way you might get that flawless coffee ” .
Asked about Texas’ historically low voter turnout, Obama said the state’s leadership was partly to blame, singling out Texas’ policy that prohibits online voter registration.
He said these programs have already worked to improve services for veterans, streamline the FAFSA and redesign the website of the Small Business Administration.
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Over the years, South by Southwest has hosted the heavyweights of the music, film and digital worlds – everyone from Prince to the crowned prince of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg.
