Apple says it plans to fight back against a court order forcing the company to help law enforcement gain access to the iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino shooters.
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Apple CEO Tim Cook wrote a letter in which he claimed that Apple would be refusing the court order to bypass encryption on the San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone.
Farook apparently turned off the phone’s iCloud remote storage function about six weeks before the December 2 shooting at the Inland Regional Center that killed 14 and wounded 22, a government memorandum said.
Apple says the feds can’t guarantee the program wouldn’t be used beyond the current case. He called the implications of the government’s demands “chilling”.
But hours later, in a statement by its chief executive, Timothy D. Cook, Apple announced its refusal to comply.
This July 27, 2014, photo provided by U.S. Customs and Border Protection shows Tashfeen Malik, left, and Syed Farook, as they passed through O’Hare International Airport in Chicago. The same software would also let the government enter passcodes electronically, eliminating both the tedium of manual entry and the enforced delays the iPhone system imposes after a few wrong guesses.
In 2015, the Silicon Valley company told a federal judge in NY that it was “impossible” for it to unlock Apple devices that run an operating system of iOS 8 or higher.
“We have no sympathy for terrorists”, it said, adding it did not oppose the order lightly.
The Obama administration and police officers around the country say no, and their precedent is the past. Apple CEO Tim Cook posted a letter on the company’s website Tuesday, vowing to fight the judge’s order.
The company can appeal the court order to the district court and, ultimately, the US Supreme Court. “We believe we must speak right up in the face of that which we see as an overreach by the United States authorities”. “[The] government has asked us for something we simply do not have, and something we consider too unsafe to create”.
Apple’s concern is that once a master key exists it would be able to unlock any device in someone’s possession, and it could then be used by hackers, criminals and governments.
Cook’s response set the scene for a legal battle between Apple and the federal government, tipped to have ramifications on national security and digital privacy legislation.
“If the government can use the All Writs Act to make it easier to unlock your iPhone, it would have the power to reach into anyone’s device to capture their data”, it said.
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“Apple has the exclusive technical means which would assist the government in completing its search, but has declined to provide that assistance voluntarily”, prosecutors said.
