Apple’s Dilemma: Balancing Privacy and Safety Responsibilities

Harvard Business Review February 13, 2024

How should Apple CEO Tim Cook manage the tension between iPhone customers’ privacy and public safety?

In 2015, Apple debuted the iPhone 6S, which employed a default encryption system preventing both Apple and government authorities from accessing data stored on the device. Then, in 2016, a federal judge ordered Apple to provide technical assistance to unlock the iPhone used by one of the mass shooters in San Bernardino, California. Apple refused to comply.

Years later, as the COVID-19 pandemic swept across the globe in 2020, Apple and Google partnered to develop a contact tracing application that would collect information about users infected with the disease and notify those who they had been in contact with. The app would keep information...

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