[ianmiers]

What happens if someone tries to coerce Apple into writing backdoor code? Engineers at Apple could resist, resign, slow roll the design and engineering process. They could leak it and it would get killed. Things would have to get very very bad for that kind of pressure to work.

On the other hand, once Apple has written a backdoor enthusiastically themselves, it's a lot easier to force someone to change how it can be used. The changes are small and compliance can be immediately verified and refusal punished. To take it to its logical extreme: you cannot really fire or execute people who delay something (especially if you lake the expertise to tell how long it should take). But you can fire or execute people who refuse to flip a switch.

This technology deeply erodes Apple and its engineers' ability to resist future pressure. And the important bit here is there adversary isn't all powerful. It can coerce you to do things in secret, but its power isn't unlimited. See what happened with yahoo.[0]

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-yahoo-nsa-exclusive/exclu...