>And Apple would suffer no bad publicity for its cowardice because… ? Cowardice? Judging by the public reaction to case Snowden, I'd be willing to bet it would

>And Apple would suffer no bad publicity for its cowardice because… ? Cowardice? Judging by the public reaction to case Snowden, I'd be willing to bet it would be considered patriotic. Regarding Apple's privacy policy (http://www.apple.com/privacy/ http://www.apple.com/privacy/) Gruber references and says that >Finally, I want to be absolutely clear that we have never worked with any government agency from any country to create a backdoor in any of our products or services. We have also never allowed access to our servers. And we never will. To play the devil's advocate of paranoia: What else they would say, anyway? Privacy statements are cheap. My understanding is that refusing to cooperate with US government would break a couple of laws (constitutional or not). You can prove it only after the fact - turning down the government request you consider inappropriate (if such thing ever is sent), and facing the legal consequences. To turn the paranoia lever off, I agree that after certain point "but I don't believe what they say" sounds unreasonable. However, I have no idea where the limit between unreasonable paranoia and healthy suspicion goes. Personally I don't use Apple products not because of privacy or panopticon considerations, but because I'm broke and can't afford new toys (not certainly Apple ones).