In an ongoing case that is surely going to become a landmark issue concerning how we live today, satirist and comedian John Oliver laid down his views concerning Apple vs. FBI. If you don’t know what this is referring to, in short, a demand by the FBI that Apple hacks one of its own iPhones to retrieve information relating to the San Bernardino terrorist attack.

Oliver, in his usual inimitable way of playing a kind of idiot savant, makes a few things clear. One of those is that the FBI has a point, and perhaps encryption “fundamental to all our lives” could be used to guard nefarious or dangerous activities. Secondly, that the public’s privacy is important, but at the same time Apple is struggling to keep our privacy out of the hands of hackers. Thirdly, it’s not that hard to hack an iPhone given that you have the ability and money to purchase a password cracker on ebay. (Note: too many attempts and the phone’s data is erased, such as the phone in question).

A snippet Oliver uses is the FBI’s Director James Come who tells us, “Technology has become the tool of choice for some very dangerous people,” explaining that the law is not as savvy as tech creators, leading to weak spots regarding public safety. Not surprisingly we see people like Donald Trump weighing in heavily on the FBI’s side – “I just thought of it, boycott Apple (Crowd: whoop, whoop)”, while left-liberal standing Oliver intelligently addresses some of the grayer area.

Apple is not perfect, really?

The phone is encrypted, ostensibly, so that even Apple would have to create a special formula to crack the phone. A formula the FBI wants, but according to the New York Police Department, would not use again. Rightly, Oliver lambastes the same NYPD spokesperson for saying, “You could rip up that formula and throw it in the fire” once it has been used, as if codes are typed on pieces of un-copied paper …

The problem is: the precedent, which Apple and other tech companies have talked about at length. Open this phone and what next? Oliver’s conclusion, more serious than comedic, after showing us a rather creepy Apple commercial, is, “Ads like those, obscure the real truth about Apple, which is, beneath their shiny, rose-gold surface, they, like any other software company are incredibly susceptible to hackers who are constantly finding flaws in their security features.”

And even if, says Oliver, Apple were to give the FBI a way into that phone, or any other Apple phone, users can always encrypt data many other ways.  “People who want encryption, will always be able to find it,”  says Oliver. Letting the government in this time is something of an invasion of privacy, relating to more than just the incident at hand, but a sign of things to come, the precedent so many people are talking about. Not to mention that by forcing Apple to do this it will only create more ways to encrypt data.

In the end Oliver takes Apple’s side in the face of the dangers of encryption, and finishes with a hilarious, and fictional, commercial from Apple on why ‘Apple is not Perfect’.

Photo credit: Christiaan Colen via Flickr