To the Editor:
Re “Apple Battle Strikes Nerve” (news analysis, front page, March 14): Privacy? People post personal details of their daily life to Facebook, Twitter and YouTube; our Internet searches are tracked and sold; the government tracks the senders and recipients of email; it can ask libraries for a list of books we’ve checked out; we are watched by an ever-increasing array of surveillance cameras; with a judge’s warrant, the police can track our movements, tap our phones, even come into our homes and rummage through every drawer. Yet when the F.B.I., with a warrant, asks to look into the phone of a dead terrorist, Apple puts up a furious row.
The fact that Apple has won over much of the public—the same public that seems perfectly happy to have its daily activity, interests, opinions and contacts accessible to all the world—as well as most privacy advocates, who seem to have done little to stem the increasing corporate invasion of privacy, makes Apple’s efforts to block access to Syed Farook’s phone look like the marketing exercise that the Justice Department claims it is. And like most of Apple’s marketing campaigns, it is a highly successful one. We have become a nation of sheep, and Silicon Valley is our shepherd.
SAMUEL REIFLER
Rhinebeck, N.Y.
