4 ms·

FBI only needs Apple signing keys. And as lavabit showed - they can compel Apple to produce them. Apple are a big company - they cannot be trusted by default.

FBI only needs Apple signing keys. And as lavabit showed - they can compel Apple to produce them. Apple are a big company - they cannot be trusted by default. And banks right now make their money in two ways - gambling with the money of the rich and using all kind of creative late fees to prey on the poor. Neither of those requires uber secure pocket ATM.

adventured 11y ago
That's incorrect. The major US banks today do not primarily make their money from either gambling with the wealth of rich people, or from low income banking. Not even remotely close. The second largest business for Wells Fargo - America's most valuable bank - for example, is wholesale banking from businesses with at least $20m in sales, where they get about 35%-40% of their profit. You'll find that an extremely small percentage of profit is derived from 'the poor' in Wells Fargo's business (the same holds true for Citi, BofA and JP Morgan). Their community banking segment, which targets the median and higher, is their prime profit center, contributing about 60% of their profit. You don't earn $23 billion per year in profit on late fees from the poor, very few of whom have accounts with Wells Fargo to begin with. One very quick look at the largest financial services companies that do target the relatively poor, reveals how little profit there is in that segment compared to what the big banks do. It doesn't scratch the surface for a company the size of Wells Fargo.
- forgotpwtomain 11y ago
  > That's incorrect. The major US banks today do not primarily make their money from either gambling with the wealth of rich people, or from low income banking. Not even remotely close. For US banks - 42.3 billion collected in account fees over 12 months, 32.5 billion of which were over-draft fees. So yeah, quite a bit of it they do.* [0] time.com/money/4071290/bank-overdraft-charges-fees/

adventured 11y ago

That's incorrect. The major US banks today do not primarily make their money from either gambling with the wealth of rich people, or from low income banking. Not even remotely close. The second largest business for Wells Fargo - America's most valuable bank - for example, is wholesale banking from businesses with at least $20m in sales, where they get about 35%-40% of their profit. You'll find that an extremely small percentage of profit is derived from 'the poor' in Wells Fargo's business (the same holds true for Citi, BofA and JP Morgan). Their community banking segment, which targets the median and higher, is their prime profit center, contributing about 60% of their profit. You don't earn $23 billion per year in profit on late fees from the poor, very few of whom have accounts with Wells Fargo to begin with. One very quick look at the largest financial services companies that do target the relatively poor, reveals how little profit there is in that segment compared to what the big banks do. It doesn't scratch the surface for a company the size of Wells Fargo.

forgotpwtomain 11y ago
> That's incorrect. The major US banks today do not primarily make their money from either gambling with the wealth of rich people, or from low income banking. Not even remotely close. For US banks - 42.3 billion collected in account fees over 12 months, 32.5 billion of which were over-draft fees. So yeah, quite a bit of it they do.* [0] time.com/money/4071290/bank-overdraft-charges-fees/