“We build secure products to keep your information safe and we give law enforcement access to data based on valid legal orders”.
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Apple has reportedly provided this type of assistance many times before. Beck wrote in a Facebook post Thursday. “It will enable malicious hackers, foreign governments, terrorists, thieves and stalkers to use our data against us”.
Googlei, Facebook, Twitter and others in the tech community joined the debate, largely supporting Cook’s position.
Contrary to the United States government line, Apple’s resistance to helping it hack the San Bernardino shooter’s phone isn’t about privacy for mass murderers, and isn’t about one phone. The Obama administration says it’s a simple and narrow request.
The order against Apple is novel because it compels the company to create a new forensic tool to use, not just turn over information in Apple’s possession, Pfefferkorn said. The larger issue at hand for most tech companies is this: if Apple complies and lets the Federal Bureau of Investigation in, what’s to stop governments from demanding more access, software for surveillance, etc? Cisco Systems and other tech companies saw their Chinese orders plunge after revelations of unofficial data gathering on individuals by federal authorities.
Apple could especially benefit in the enormous China market, Feland said, where the company is in fierce competition with Xiaomi and Huawei, two Chinese cell phone manufacturers.
Apple’s main competitors, Google and Microsoft, both have different levels of encryption implemented on mobile devices.
Wozniak said today that his former business partner “would have gone for the privacy” if faced by the same dilemma as current CEO Tim Cook. It would be a piece of software, controlled by Apple and customized for a single device that is subject to a lawful search.
Some of the U.S. lawmakers and Republican front-runner Donald Trump consider Apple’s staunch refusal as a serious roadblock in the fight against domestic terrorism.
The federal request “is very strategic on their part, to be sure” said Robert Cattanach, a former Justice Department lawyer who handles cyber-security cases for the Dorsey & Whitney law firm. The opinion was later withdrawn so the full court could rehear the case, but that rehearing was canceled and the appeal declared moot after the government revised its export controls.
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In the letter, Cook explained that, despite the FBI’s good intentions, anyone who knows how to bypass an encrypted system could hack into any number of phones, gathering personal information from iPhone users, which is an estimated 94 million people as of March 2015, according to a report from Consumer Intelligence Research Partners. The petition reads, “Halt efforts that compel Apple and other device makers to create a “backdoor” for the Government to access citizens data”.
