President Barack Obama talked tech at the SXSW 2016 conference in Austin on Friday, touching on encryption and calling on technology industries to continue to tackle the Digital Divide. Video is available here of his comments.

Given Apple’s current battle with the FBI over unlocking access to phones for law enforcement purposes, it was no surprise that the topic of encryption came up. The president didn’t go into detail on the Apple controversy specifically, but he did address the issue more broadly.

“What folks who are on the encryption side will argue is any key whatsoever, even if it starts off as just being directed at one device could end up being used on every device,” Obama observes. “It is, I think, technically true, but I think it can be overstated.”

He concluded that “an absolutist view” was not the proper approach. “So if your argument is strong encryption, no matter what, and we can and should, in fact, create black boxes, then that I think does not strike the kind of balance that we have lived with for 200, 300 years,” he says.

The president cautioned that if supporters on both sides of the issue refuse to budge, the situation could grow worse.

“Because what will happen is if everybody goes to their respective corners and the tech community says, you know what, either we have strong, perfect encryption, or else it’s Big Brother and an Orwellian world — what you’ll find is that after something really bad happens, the politics of this will swing and it will become sloppy and rushed, and it will go through Congress in ways that have not been thought through,” he warns.

“And then you really will have dangers to our civil liberties because we will have not done — the people who understand this best and who care most about privacy and civil liberties have sort of disengaged or taken a position that is not sustainable for the general public as a whole over time.”

Obama also focused on the Digital Divide, pointing out that in Texas (where the tech event is being held), access to the Internet continues to be a big problem for some groups of people — especially for low-income households. “We know we have this massive Digital Divide in this country – in Texas and elsewhere. Shouldn’t the government before we start providing all the civic engagement through the digital space, make sure that everybody is in the digital space first?” he asks.

The president said that embedded in the Recovery Act were investments in broadband and WiFi programs to help address this issue. He also pointed to programs to connect classrooms with high-speed Internet as well as public housing, rural and low-income communities.

“Private industry has really stepped up,” Obama says. “One of the great tricks to all of this is making sure that whatever government is doing is then supplemented with and enhanced by a private sector and a nonprofit sector that are ready to step up,” Obama says.