Apple's Privacy Officer Jane Horvath Uses CES Appearance to Defend Company Stance on Encryption and Software Backdoors

Apple's chief privacy officer attended a discussion panel at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on Tuesday to debate the state of consumer privacy, marking the first time in 28 years that Apple has been at CES in an official capacity.

apple ces 2020

Apple's privacy officer at CES 2020 panel (Image: Parker Ortolani)

Jane Horvath, Apple's senior director for global privacy, joined an all-female panel consisting of representatives from Facebook, Procter & Gamble and the Federal Trade Commission. During the discussion, Horvath defended Apple's use of encryption to protect customer data on mobile devices.

"Our phones are relatively small and they get lost and stolen," Horvath said. "If we're going to be able to rely on our health data and finance data on our devices, we need to make sure that if you misplace that device, you're not losing your sensitive data."

Apple has held a consistent position regarding its use of encryption, even if that means it has limited ability to help law enforcement access data on devices involved in criminal investigations.

Just this week, the FBI asked Apple to help unlock two iPhones that investigators believe were owned by Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani, who carried out a mass shooting at a Naval Air Station in Florida last month. Apple said that it had already given the FBI all of the data in its possession.

Apple's response suggests it will maintain the same stance it took in 2016, when the FBI demanded that Apple provide a so-called "backdoor" into iPhones, following the December 2015 shooter incidents in San Bernardino. Apple refused, and the FBI eventually backed down after it found an alternate way to access the data on the iPhone.

Horvath took the same tack by saying that Apple has a team working around the clock to respond to requests from law enforcement, but that building backdoors into software to give law enforcement access to private data is something she doesn't support.

"Building backdoors into encryption is not the way we are going to solve those issues," Horvath said.

Horvath went on to talk up Apple's "privacy by design" technologies like differential privacy, user randomization in native apps and services, the on-device facial recognition in the Photos app, and minimal data retrieval for Siri. Horvath also confirmed that Apple scans for child sexual abuse content uploaded to iCloud. "We are utilizing some technologies to help screen for child sexual abuse material," she said.

Horvath became Apple's chief privacy officer in September 2011. Prior to her work at Apple, Horvath was global privacy counsel at Google and chief privacy counsel at the Department of Justice.

Note: Due to the political nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Political News forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.

Popular Stories

New Things Your iPhone Can Do in iOS 18

20 New Things Your iPhone Can Do in iOS 18.2

Monday December 16, 2024 8:55 am PST by
Apple released iOS 18.2 in the second week of December, bringing the second round of Apple Intelligence features to iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 16 models. This update brings several major advancements to Apple's AI integration, including completely new image generation tools and a range of Visual Intelligence-based enhancements. Apple has added a handful of new non-AI related feature controls as...
iPhone 17 Slim Feature Single Camera 2 Redux

Top 5 Apple Products to Look Forward to in 2025

Friday December 20, 2024 2:22 pm PST by
It's looking like 2025 is going to be an important year for Apple, with the company planning to revamp the iPhone, push further into smart home products, and improve Apple Intelligence. There are tons of new products rumored for 2025, including new iPhones, M4 Macs, a smart home command center, and much more. We've highlighted the top five Apple products that will have the biggest impact in...
Generic iOS 18 Feature Real Mock

iOS 18.2.1 Update Coming Soon for iPhone

Saturday December 21, 2024 4:45 pm PST by
Apple appears to be internally testing iOS 18.2.1 for the iPhone, based on evidence of the software update in our website's analytic logs this week. The logs have accurately revealed many iOS versions before they were released. iOS 18.2.1 should be a minor update that fixes bugs and/or addresses security vulnerabilities, but it is unclear which specific issues might be resolved. The update...
iphone 16 apple intelligence

Apple Drops Plans for iPhone Hardware Subscription Service

Wednesday December 18, 2024 11:39 am PST by
Apple is no longer planning to launch a hardware subscription service that would let customers "subscribe" to get a new iPhone each year, reports Bloomberg's Mark Gurman. Gurman first shared rumors about Apple's work on a hardware subscription service back in 2022, and at the time, he said that Apple wanted to develop a simple system that would allow customers to pay a monthly fee to gain...
Generic iOS 19 Feature Mock Light

iOS 19 Rumored to Be Compatible With These iPhones

Sunday December 22, 2024 8:09 am PST by
iOS 19 will not drop support for any iPhone models, according to French website iPhoneSoft.fr. The report cites a source within Apple. The report said that iOS 19 will be compatible with any iPhone that is capable of running iOS 18, which would mean the following models: iPhone 16 iPhone 16 Plus iPhone 16 Pro iPhone 16 Pro Max iPhone 15 iPhone 15 Plus iPhone 15 Pro ...
mac pro creativity

Apple Launched the Controversial 'Trashcan' Mac Pro 11 Years Ago Today

Thursday December 19, 2024 7:00 pm PST by
Apple launched the controversial "trashcan" Mac Pro eleven years ago today, introducing one of its most criticized designs that persisted through a period of widespread discontentment with the Mac lineup. The redesign took the Mac Pro in an entirely new direction, spearheaded by a polished aluminum cylindrical design that became unofficially dubbed the "trashcan" in the Mac community. All of ...
apple tv 4k yellow bg feature

New Apple TV Rumored to Launch Next Year With These Features

Tuesday December 17, 2024 9:02 am PST by
The current Apple TV 4K was released more than two years ago, so the streaming device is becoming due for a hardware upgrade soon. Fortunately, it was recently rumored that a new Apple TV will launch at some point next year. Below, we recap rumors about the next-generation Apple TV. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman last week reported that Apple has been working on its own combined Wi-Fi and...
blackmagic vision pro

Blackmagic Debuts $30K 3D Camera for Capturing Video for Vision Pro

Monday December 16, 2024 4:17 pm PST by
Blackmagic today announced that its URSA Cine Immersive camera is now available for pre-order, with deliveries set to start late in the first quarter of 2025. Blackmagic says that this is the world's first commercial camera system designed to capture 3D content for the Vision Pro. The URSA Cine Immersive camera was first introduced in June, but it has not been available for purchase until...
Google Nest Hub 2

New 'HomePod' With 7-Inch Display, A18 Chip, and More Reportedly Launching Next Year

Saturday December 21, 2024 2:03 pm PST by
Apple plans to release a new "HomePod" with a 7-inch LCD display, an A18 chip, and Apple Intelligence support in 2025, according to DigiTimes. Google's Nest Hub It is unclear how much the screen-equipped HomePod would cost, but Apple is seemingly aiming for a reasonable price. In a paywalled report this week, the supply chain publication said Apple has selected China-based manufacturer Tianma ...

Top Rated Comments

DoctorTech Avatar
65 months ago
To every politician who "demands" a backdoor into electronic devices, I want to know who will go to jail when (not if) that backdoor is hacked by a criminal or misused by a government. I really don't care how "noble" your intentions are, if backdoors are built into electronic devices they WILL be abused and misused and if history teaches us anything, it is that NOBODY will be held responsible for the damage caused. To paraphrase PJ O'Rourke, installing a backdoor for the government is "like giving whiskey and car keys to a teenage boy, no matter how much they beg, no matter how much they promise they will be careful, don't do it."
Score: 27 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Kabeyun Avatar
65 months ago
In spite of some frustrations with the Apple ecosystem, their privacy positions are why I will never go anywhere else for the foreseeable future. Privacy is one of the defining issues of our time, and all of Apple’s other other good stuff is gravy.
Score: 22 Votes (Like | Disagree)
BigBoy2018 Avatar
65 months ago
Having a secure phone is very important imo.

But, as has been said before, if you really care about privacy, quit sharing every damn stupid detail of your life on facebook etc.

People want all sorts of attention these days, as long as it's good.
Score: 7 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Sasparilla Avatar
65 months ago
Nice to see. The Government (investigative / hacking side) consistently tries to use cherry picked cases to get their back door's put into our smartphones. As we have seen previously with NSA zero day details (unofficial back doors), these have gotten leaked or hacked and put in the wild....there is no secure back door.
Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)
nt5672 Avatar
65 months ago

Curious how Apple's "stance" doesn't apply in other countries like China. I guess it's not profitable to use privacy protection as a marketing tool there like it is here in the USA.
As expected. Apple has to follow the laws of the country they sell into. China has no privacy laws, no child protection laws, etc. If Apple is going to be allowed to sell into China they need to follow China's laws. Period.

Just don't corrupt the devices to be sold into the US so the the same device is sold in both countries.

Now if China's laws are not what they should be, then the people of China need to rise up and change them. It is not the responsibility of American's to attempt to change China's or any other country's laws.
Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Kabeyun Avatar
65 months ago

Protecting our privacy at the cost of innovation

I'm VERY worried Apple is slowly going to become like BlackBerry did/has in terms of privacy and security, as they clinged onto that mythos so much innovation and progression to better products/services crawled to a halt!
Complaining that Apple doesn’t innovate is getting as worn around here as emoji and it-wrong jokes. Someone needs to explain to me how Apple is glaringly behind other smartphone manufacturers. And don’t bother with microSD or bezels; if that’s how y’all define innovation, and not A-series SOCs, W/H BT chips, FaceID, iPhone 11 Pro camera system (all with glowing reviews by impartial experts), etc. etc. etc., then I suggest you raise your bar. In this age, Apple’s privacy posture alone has been innovative. Want bending displays instead? LMAO!
Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)