He also quoted a monitored phone call on which a known criminal said Apple’s strong encryption on iPhones is “a gift from God”.
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Other American tech giants, such as Microsoft, Google, Twitter, Facebook and Yahoo!, have expressed support for Apple, having themselves been on the receiving end of pressure from US law enforcement.
The FBI is trying to access the iPhone of Syed Farook, who intimidated the United States nation by gunning down 14 people with his wife at California in December.
Apple meanwhile has filed its formal objection in the case.
It argues that the lower court did not have the authority to force Apple to do that.
Microsoft Vice President Brad Smith, appearing in Congress on Thursday, said, “We do not believe that courts should seek to resolve issues of 21st-century technology with law that was written in the era of the adding machine”.
So far, Apple has refused to unlock the phone.
According to Reuters, Apple also maintains that it can not be subjected to the All Writs Act of 1789 because it is not a utility.
Apple described the order as “unprecedented” and with “no support of the law”.
“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 motion filed by Apple reads. Earlier this week, Apple’s Tim Cook said that the Federal Bureau of Investigation should have approached it before doing such an action.
Apple has been asked by the federal government to unlock an iPhone but the company does not want to do so.
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“Apple has said the request amounts to asking a company to hack its own device and would undermine digital security more broadly”, notes Reuters. “We would never write it. We have never written it – and that is what is at stake here”, he said. “But the government knows these statements are not true”, Apple’s legal eagles, led by former U.S. solicitor general Theodore Olson, wrote, pointing to numerous government requests already on the table, “some of which are pending in other courts”. The complex and evolving nature of mobile phone software will limit how broadly the case can be applied, Comey said during a US House of Representatives Intelligence Committee hearing examining worldwide threats. Where would you stand if Apple challenged the order because it argued that compliance would “undeniably create a back door” to every iPhone and violate privacy? If there’s another thing they love, it’s sacrificing privacy in the hopes of improving security.
