It's too bad the debate here has turned into a huge Apple vs Google thing when it's really a story about not letting the government strip away people's privacy and ability to properly encrypt their data.
Like really, we get it you might not like iOS or OSX, but it's not about that right now.
It's too bad the debate here has turned into a huge Apple vs Google thing when it's really a story about not letting the government strip away people's privacy and ability to properly encrypt their data.
But these issues are not independent. Full end-to-end encryption is not acceptable to Google in the short term, since it would mean that they have to store or transmit data that they cannot profile.
This has two consequences: 1. end-to-end encryption is less important to Google and they'll be less inclined to fight governments' attempts to strip away the right to do end-to-end encryption; 2. having data unencrypted data at rest[1] makes it easier for government agencies to request and use that data.
[1] The whole 'data encrypted at rest' thing seems to be doublespeak to me. Their storage backends may only see encrypted data, so it may protect against storage server theft, but as long as they also hold the encryption keys it's only marginal security against hacks and the government, and no protection against the cloud providers themselves.
Like really, we get it you might not like iOS or OSX, but it's not about that right now.