Apple vs. the Feds: a Case of Overblown Rhetoric?


Apple’s refusal to cooperate with the FBI to help unlock the phone of terrorist Syed Rizwan Farook calls to mind the old Jack Benny line “Your money or your life.” Apple’s rhetorical argument seems to rest on a similar stark choice: “Your privacy or your life.” 

But that doesn’t represent what’s really at stake in the developing court battle between the global technology giant and the U.S. government.

It begins (and ends) with the need to protect ourselves from terrorists who are increasingly able to use technology as a weapon against us. 

U.S.  Attorney Eileen M. Decker made the case against Apple very clear: The company’s lack of cooperation is hindering the FBI investigation into the terrorist attack by Farook and his wife Tashfeen Malik in San Bernardino, California on December 2, 2015, which left  14 people dead and shattered the lives of numerous families.

Apple’s refusal to cooperate is based partly on the claim that helping the FBI will open the floodgates to the wholesale invasion of the privacy of all cellphone users. 

That’s a false claim.

 Despite numerous misleading reports on social media, the FBI, as the 40-page motion by Decker makes clear, does not want Apple to break the encryption on the iPhone used by Farook.  The agency simply wants Apple to alter the System Information File—the software that runs on the device to prevent the phone from erasing personal data after 10 failed password attempts. 

 The FBI is also asking Apple to automate the process of attempting passcode combinations.  Most importantly, the court documents make it clear that the FBI will allow Apple technicians to work on the phone in such a manner that the software solution will be limited to this case and this phone.

 And to underline the point, it would be impossible to apply that temporary solution to future devices such as the new AndroidL mobile operating system. As BBC technology writer Joe Miller reported,  Apple made the conscious choice in 2014 to encrypt the software on its iOS8 phones by default, thus preventing the company from accessing its own devices, and thus avoiding the kind of ethical dilemmas it  claims to be facing today.  

 In a  February 16 “Message to Our Customers,”  Apple CEO Tim Cook declared that Apple is basing its decision to fight the federal court order requiring Apple to bypass the encryption on Farook’s phone on the grounds that allowing the authorities to bypass the encryption protections will threaten the privacy of all Apple product users.

 Cook concedes that the FBI did not ask Apple to install this backdoor software on every single Apple device in the U.S. or the world. Although Cook professes his respect for the FBI, the hyperbole ramps up as the letter progresses.  It begins with the heading, “Threat to data security,” and proceeds to say the order will “put our personal safety at risk,” and that it “threatens the security of our customers.”

Cook concludes with the warning that Apple is “being forced to expose its customers to a greater risk of attack.”

Apple apparently places the potential harm to customer privacy, such as identity theft and fraud, on the same level as terrorist attacks on Americans.

 Is it reasonable for Apple to choose to protect a terrorist’s text messages rather than the life of U.S. citizens?  

Apple is a private company which answers to its shareholders. But the government must answer to the public.  Even though their decisions are not always popular, our elected authorities and our courts have the responsibility of identifying where to draw the line between privacy and national security.

And in this case, national security wins the argument. 

Apple has wildly overblown the potential fallout from compliance with the court’s decision.  Rather than acknowledge that the court has placed strict limits on authorities’ one-time use of the decryption tool, Apple is spreading fear.

The company claims that the end result will be a demand by the government for surveillance software that will “intercept your messages, access your health records or financial data, track your location, or even access your phone’s microphone or camera without your knowledge.”  

That’s not what is contemplated, and Apple knows that.

 Let’s be clear: What the FBI is asking for is reasonable. It is a way to crack the four-digit passcode for one particular phone. Apple will be able to control (or destroy) the program created to accomplish that task. 

That’s hardly the first step in a wholesale invasion of privacy.


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