Like Your Privacy? Then Get Behind Apple in Its Battle to Save It (from @Truthdig): The FBI is pressuring the tech giant to create a “back door” to gain access to everything on the iPhone of one of the San Bernardino terrorists. Supposedly it would be a one-time-only thing. Don’t believe it.
- 2016/02/20
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Apple CEO Tim Cook found himself this week as the country’s leading bulwark against the FBI and the Obama administration’s continuing efforts to weaken Americans’ constitutional protections and civil liberties.
Cook is fighting a federal magistrate judge’s order that would force Apple to create software to bypass the iPhone’s security features and give the FBI access to people’s phones and everything on them. On Tuesday he wrote a letter to all Apple users explaining the company’s position and promising to keep up the fight.
Here’s what’s at stake. The FBI is investigating December’s terrorist attack in San Bernardino, Calif., in which Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife killed 14 people. (The couple then died in a battle with police.) The agency wants to gain access to the iPhone used by gunman Farook. But it contends that the only way to do so is to force Apple to create a “back door” that would allow the FBI to access the phone’s information remotely. The FBI insists that this is a one-off—the only time such a request would be made. That is ridiculous on its face. Another court already has demanded the same access, in a narcotics case. And it’s not even just about these two cases. It’s about civil liberties and the right to privacy that every American expects.
The FBI argues that it is not asking for a back door, that it wants access only to Farook’s phone. This is absurd. As Cook wrote to Apple users, “The government suggests this tool could only be used once, on one phone. But that’s simply not true. Once created, the technique could be used over and over again, on any number of devices. In the physical world, it would be the equivalent of a master key, capable of opening hundreds of millions of locks—from restaurants and banks to stores and homes. No reasonable person would find that acceptable.”
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