Look, this isn’t personal with you, so I hope you don’t take it that way.
My issue isn’t Tim Cook.
I dislike the liberal crap he stands for even disregarding his homosexuality. But that has absolutely nothing to do with the issue of access to personal data. If you want to stand against him on the subject of allowing access to personal data of Americans for the government because you feel the necessity to stand against him because of his homosexuality, that is your business, but I think you are wrong and shortsighted to do so. He is not the issue.
The issue is the concept of going against the basic tenet of the Founders which understood that government should be limited because it is in human nature to be corrupt, and government should be constructed so that men cannot be tempted by that which they could be persuaded to abuse by not giving them the power to do so. You do that by expressly telling the government what it CAN do and they are required to comply with that. Giving government the ability to legally to do whatever is NOT expressly granted by the Constitution is a recipe for tyranny, and we have been seeing it for some time.
Keeping the government from having the unfettered access (AND MAKE NO MISTAKE-GIVING THEM ACCESS IS INDEED UNFETTERED.) is NOT suicide. Giving the government to decide who will be monitored and who will not IS SUICIDE.
Giving the government to power to unilaterally decide WHO is a child molester worthy of monitoring makes it a certainty that there will be a time when someone will become a child molester not because they are one, but because someone in power decided they needed to be.
It might not be you, right away, and it might not be child molesting you are arrested for. But at some point, you can be made into whatever is needed. If you haven’t, I suggest you read “The Gulag Archipelago”, because that is where giving the government the power to have access to your privacy leads.
Excellent response; but if I may pile on a few more points
Consider, not long ago, if I went for a jog, any information about my jog ceased to exist when I got home. Not any longer. My route, my pace and even my heart rate at various stages along the path are now a part of a permanent log. If I have an irregular rhythm suggesting a pending heart attack, that data is now stored. Along with my banking transactions, personal texts, my medical prescriptions, my blood glucose levels, my meals and snacks, my contacts, along with my business meetings and who I talked with.
My phone is the repository of a tremendous amount of personal data, that has no bearing on any criminal investigation. Even under a criminal investigation there is a limit as to what can be gathered.
Now with other phones, there is no pretension of privacy. Apple makes the claim that they protect their customers privacy, and I chose a apple for this reason. I decide what level of privacy I want.
I do not allow a Government functionary to tell me how much privacy he will allow me to have.