&gt; Cook is, in fact, trying to pretend like this represents a cryptographic back door, when it plainly absolutely does not.<p>He&#x27;s not saying that.  He&#x27;s saying, yes there&#x27;s a back door, and no we don&#x27;t want to open it for you because once we do, everyone will have a chance to open the door, including possibly your neighbor or a foreign government who wants to snoop on US embassy employees.<p>What politicians do not understand is you can&#x27;t outlaw encryption.  You can&#x27;t tell math to stop working.  It just does.  If they did understand that they would not pursue using the AWA with Apple.  They would instead have more open discussions with Apple.<p>But our politicians keep thinking there must be some way around this, and there isn&#x27;t.  The sooner they get it into their heads that terrorists will simply choose a new device, the better, because<p>(1) In their attempt to shore up technology, the current administration is going to do more damage to the US tech industry.  They already helped destroy Yahoo<p>and<p>(2) Law enforcement needs to find a way to keep people safe other than relying on back doors to seemingly secure devices.  There are no doubt terrorists using secure communications now that the NSA cannot access, and no amount of begging or pleading from the DOJ is going to change the fact that math is not governable by humans.