The FBI said the program it seeks could be tailored to work only on the iPhone 5c used by shooter Syed Rizwan Farook. “If this order is permitted to stand, it will only be a matter of days before some other prosecutor, in some other important case, before some other judge, seeks a similar order using this case as precedent”.
Advertisement
“Here, by contrast, the government has failed to demonstrate that the requested order was absolutely necessary to effectuate the search warrant, including that it exhausted all other avenues for recovering information”, the company’s lawyers write in their motion to vacate the court’s order.
The FBI’s battle with Apple over an encrypted iPhone has inspired a legal alliance in Silicon Valley.
Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey said at a different hearing that the government isn’t looking to send a message, but acknowledged that the case may set a precedent.
“If the government can order Apple to create such a piece of software, it could be ordered for anyone else as well”.
“They’ve never thought before that they might be forced by the government to break into its own products and reverse security procedures”, said Jonathan Zdziarski, a security researcher who has proposed about a dozen solutions to the problem to Apple. Farook and his wife shot to death 14 workers before the couple was killed by police.
Apple has been cooperating with the investigation into the 2015 terrorist attack in San Bernardino, California until now, but the company recently ended up facing an order that it felt was unreasonable: to create a special version of iOS that would allow the government to brute-force one of the shooter’s iPhones.
In Apple’s conflict with the USA over a locked iPhone, Apple will not shoulder the entire brand risk itself: Tech powers including Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Twitter are all lining up to support Apple in court.
The Cupertino, California-based company said Thursday in its formal opposition to the order that it would have broad repercussions and “inflict significant harm – to civil liberties, society and national security – and would pre-empt decisions that should be left to the will of the people through laws passed by Congress and signed by the president”.
The Supreme Court has previously found that the All Writs Act can be used to force a company’s cooperation, provided that the company was not “far removed” from the case in question.
When asked if the government would use the ability to unlock phones to “spy on iPhone users”, 55 percent said they agreed, 28 percent disagreed and the rest said they were not sure.
Mike Kostrzewa, a 69-year-old retiree from Fairfax, Virginia, said he believed Apple should comply with the court order. He disputed the governments contention that the impact of the demand is limited. But at some point, Apple reached a point where it was not willing to “offer the relief the government was asking for”.
In its filing, the company called developing the software an undue burden that would involve as many as 10 company engineers and employees, working for as long as a month. “And the device security that Apple has worked so tirelessly to achieve will be unwound without so much as a congressional vote”.
Neuenschwander says that the installation of GovtOS onto Farook’s iPhone will “need to be done at an Apple facility.” .
Advertisement
Cook said this case was about the future.
