Maybe you're right – I am quite a paranoid person.

I guess I just don't understand how this wasn't flagged as a concern when the feature was being worked on? How is it possible that Apple's engineering team built a backdoor like this without it raising serious security concerns? And if concerns were raised why was this not adequately pen tested prior to release?

I'm not sure what's worse from a reputational perspective... A company that prides itself on privacy but can't get something as basic as a firewall right, or a company that knows how to write secure software but occasionally puts backdoors in them for intelligence agencies?

I've always thought that Apple would do well to have someone on staff to give the things they make the "Hacker News" treatment.

I'd posit that if that were true, they'd probably never have made it to even a $2bn company, never mind $2tn. HN is - for Apple's intents and purposes - an insignificantly tiny bunch of people they're 95% not really interested in as customers.

I volunteer as tribute.

> laugh test.

This seems a little rudely dismissive. GP's skepticism sounds totally reasonable and healthy to me.

Given the history such paranoia might be reasonable(healthy too), but I can't assert such incompetence with a straight face.

Ultimately, there's little difference between incompetence and malevolence when acting in this level. Incompetence might actually be slightly worse.

The malevolent act on their best interest which is often predictable and limited. The incompetent simply give away data to every random badguy under the sun.