The tug of war game between Apple Inc. and the FBI continued Sunday as FBI Director James Comey said forcing Apple to help unlock the iPhone of one of the San Bernardino shooters is “no big deal.”
“We simply want the chance, with a search warrant, to try to guess the terrorist’s passcode without the phone essentially self-destructing and without it taking a decade to guess correctly. That’s it,” Comey said. “We don’t want to break anyone’s encryption or set a master key loose on the land.”
A federal judge ordered Apple last week to help investigators gain access to the encrypted data on an iPhone 5c that belonged to Syed Rizwan Farook, who along with his wife, killed 14 people in the San Bernardino that took place on December 2, 2015.
According to Apple, not even they can decrypt the encrypted data living on the iPhone. What investigators want the company to do is to help them figure out the password to Farook’s phone so that it can be unlocked.
Apple’s fear is that if they create a separate iOS instance for this cause, this would sabotage the entire point of encryption and endanger the privacy of millions of its customers.
“I hope folks will take a deep breath and stop saying the world is ending, but instead use that breath to talk to each other,” Comey said.
Apples’s attorney Ted Olsen predicted that the FBI’s request would “Pandora’s box” and compromise the privacy of millions of Apple customers.
“There’s no limit to what the government could require Apple to do if it succeeds this way,” Olson told host George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s “This Week.” But Apple “has to draw the line at re-creating code, changing its iPhone, putting its engineers and creative talents to destroy the iPhone as it exists,” Olson said.
What are your thoughts on the subject? And how do you feel the actions of both parties could have on any future mobile marketing ventures?
