The U.S. Justice Department is looking at court orders forcing Apple Inc (AAPL.O) to help investigators extract data from iPhones in about a dozen undisclosed cases across the country, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing sources. Complying with such a request would constitute a fundamental violation of customer trust, and publicly compromising the integrity of its devices was simply a non-starter for the tech giant.
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Speaking at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona Monday, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he was “sympathetic” to Apple’s battle and said he doesn’t believe “building backdoors is the way to go”, according to The New York Times.
In a separate interview with BBC, Gates said the debate comes down to whether governments should have access to data that could be used to protect citizens.
The media ran with quotes from a Financial Times interview to report that Microsoft founder Bill Gates is taking the FBI’s side in the case.
The FBI wants Apple to unlock the iPhone of Syed Rizwan Farook who killed 14 people in December previous year.
Encryption is a method of securing files via a set of random keys that the software sets initially to decrypt information as it’s accessed.
“It is no different than … should anybody ever have been able to tell the phone company to get information … should anybody be able to get at bank records”, the Microsoft founder told the Financial Times.
Brad Smith, Microsoft’s president and chief legal officer, tweeted a link to a statement from Reform Government Surveillance, which is a coalition of tech companies, including Microsoft, which monitors government surveillance issues. “They have asked us to build a backdoor to the iPhone”.
I think the issue that’s being missed here is that the courts ordering Apple to unlock the phone isn’t the disgusting precedent some people are saying it would be, Apple unlocking it without a fight would be.
FBI Director James Comey has described his agency’s request as “limited”.
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“We owe them a thorough and professional investigation under law”. Moreover, Apple’s CEO Tim Cook released another open letter yesterday, where he thanked the employees of his company for creating the security measures which he believes to be keeping the country’s values intact, simultaneously calling for the order to be dropped by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
