Tim Cook Speaks on Encryption and Privacy ⇥ techcrunch.com

Matthew Panzarino, TechCrunch:

“We believe the customer should be in control of their own information. You might like these so-called free services, but we don’t think they’re worth having your email, your search history and now even your family photos data mined and sold off for god knows what advertising purpose. And we think some day, customers will see this for what it is.”

[…]

It’s a masterful stroke of speechifying. As I’ve mentioned before, by taking this stance (which I do not believe to be disingenuous, their profit centers support it), Apple has put all other cloud companies in the unfortunate position of digging themselves out of a moral communications hole to prove their altruism when it comes to user data.

I’m not saying that Cook is correct in brutalizing the motives of companies like Google or Facebook — but it does craft a strong portrait — because Apple is safer and ‘not interested’ in your data casts a cloud (ahem) of doubt over pretty much every other company in its league.