After sung vespers, and just before going in to dinner last night at the Benedictine monastery in Norcia, a young man stopped me in the space outside the refectory, extended his hand, and said, “Rod, it’s Justin.”
I didn’t remember him from last time.
Bill Gates’ eagerness for Apple to allow the FBI to install backdoor software on its iPhone devices may stem from the fact that in 1999 Microsoft allowed the NSA to build a backdoor into all Windows software: A careless mistake by Microsoft programmers has revealed that special access codes prepared by the US National Security Agency have been secretly built into Windows. The NSA access system is built into every version of the Windows operating system now in use, except early releases of Windows 95 (and its predecessors).
A leaked White House memo reveals that the NSA already have a tool that allows them to bypass security on iPhone devices and access private user data. The current media frenzy about Apple’s stance on user privacy is likely to be a deliberately orchestrated distraction from the fact that the government already routinely accesses private information from Apple and Microsoft products.
Unlike Monday's global PMI deterioration (which sent markets around the globe soaring), there was little in terms of macroeconomic data overnight (German IFO earlier missed on expectations and business climate but beat on current assessment) so the "market made the news." These came most from the USDJPY which has continued to fall, sliding to 111.85 overnight, and dragging the Nikkei to a -0.4% drop.
Bill Gates has urged Apple to grant the U.S. government permission to have backdoor access to their iPhone devices, saying that he agrees with the FBI’s demand to Apple to unlock the phone of one of the San Bernardino perpetrators. “This is a specific case where the government is asking for access to information. They are not asking for some general thing, they are asking for a particular case,” Gates told the Financial Times.