US Senator Al Franken has sent an open letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook regarding the privacy implications of the Touch ID technology introduced in the iPhone 5S.

A couple of years ago Senator Franken demanded answers from Apple over the logging of device locations. At the time there was a lot of push back against Senator Franken, dismissing his concerns as being ill-informed and technologically illiterate. “Location Gate” was a bug. Don’t worry about it. For those of us who know how software works, yeah, it was pretty obvious that what was happening wasn’t what was intended. Honestly? When writing software what happens not being what we intended is the default state.

Given the revelations of how much access the American government has into our online communications Senator Franken doesn’t sound so stupid now, does he?

When your job is to represent the people I’d argue that the best thing you could do is to actually represent the people.

Nobody likes what the NSA has been doing. Apple has just introduced a new device, that’s destined to be incredibly popular, and it’s core feature is identification by what a layman may as well describe as a very personally invasive magic.

Asking questions and getting answers on behalf of the people is the essence of democratic governance.

We nerds may already know the answers but most people don’t. They deserve to know. More over they deserve to have it explained in the most understandable and approachable terms.