Steven Petrow:

That was last week, when the standoff between the FBI and Apple seemed much more about principle than practice to me. That’s when I thought I’d write a column on whether this legal fight matters to regular folk — people like my mother, a retired social worker; my best friend, who works in retail; or even my 20-year-old niece in college. That was before I found out — in a chillingly personal way — just why it does matter. To all of us.

This story would be funny if it wasn’t so disturbing. Not because he was hacked — that’s what you get for not protecting yourself on a public WiFi network — but rather because Petrow was going to write about a complex topic without even coming close to understanding it. He is just one journalist, but I suspect it is far more common for those writing about this Apple-FBI fight to not truly understand what is at stake, and instead just pretend that they know right from wrong here.

It should be up to each of us to decide what to make public, and what to keep private, he continued. For me, I felt as though the stranger on the plane had robbed me of my privacy—as was explicitly his intent. He took the decision of what to share out of my hands. He went in through the back door of the Gogo connection.

So much for the oft touted “but I have nothing to hide” line. I’d like to buy this so called “hacker” a drink for his public service.