“I don’t think I can by virtue of expertise, or should, by virtue of my role”, he said.
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“The San Bernardino litigation is not about us trying to send a message or establish some precedent”, Comey told the House Intelligence Committee. A judge in Brooklyn has yet to rule in a similar but separate case.
In a filing Thursday, Apple argued the court order violated its constitutional rights under the First and Fifth Amendments.
Comey said that Apple had been “very cooperative” but reached a point where is was not willing to “offer the relief the government was asking for”. The court order, which was made under the All Writs Act, is narrowly targeted, the department says. “The world will not end but it will be a different world than where we are today and where we were in 2014”.
So I can not help be skeptical that, instead of a narrow focus to get phone companies to help the government in discrete terrorism investigations where probable cause exists, it’s actually their admitted mindset of wanting to create ever bigger haystacks, by vacuuming up more and more communication data, that fuels the government’s drive to defeat communication privacy. “Maybe it doesn’t. But we can’t look the survivors in the eye, or ourselves in the mirror, if we don’t follow this lead”. Other than some grilling about the torture he had approved of, nearly none of the hard questions I suggested in this New York Times opinion piece for Judiciary Committee senators were asked of Comey during his Senate confirmation hearings.
“The government asks this Court to command Apple to write software that will neutralize safety features that Apple has built into the iPhone in response to consumer privacy concerns”, that would include proprietary encryption methods by Apple.
On a call with reporters, an Apple executive said the company didn’t know for sure how long it would take, noting it had never done anything like this before. Apple is refusing to comply. But these officials also said they were uncomfortable relying on the All Writs Act, not because they think it’s an illegitimate law, but because Apple can mount a compelling case-mainly in the court of public opinion-that that law is being applied here with potentially unsafe consequences.
“It’s going to require negotiations and conversation”, he said. The government demands that Apple create a back door to defeat the encryption on the iPhone, making its users’ most confidential and personal information vulnerable to hackers, identity thieves, hostile foreign agents, and unwarranted government surveillance. Core to Apple’s argument against writing a new version of its operating system is that, by complying, it will make its customers less secure.
Apple has begun working on security enhancements that would make it impossible for the company to unlock newer iPhones in the manner being requested now, which means that even if the Justice Department prevails in its current battle, authorities could need to find another technical solution in the future.
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(Comey) “So that if the FBI’s trying to guess the pass code to the phone, it doesn’t automatically delete the contents essentially after the tenth try”.
