CON
March 16, 2016
While privacy has always been a major tenet of the American belief system, it has no place in the Apple-FBI court battle. Somehow, a case that should only have been about password access to a single phone used by a San Bernardino terrorist took a turn to the fictitious and became engulfed in all sorts of fallacies. No one’s privacy is in jeopardy because of the mandate that Apple is refusing to comply with, and no one’s privacy will be so in the future.
The issue has been grossly overblown by media outlets and Apple supporters. While no one knows if any key information on ISIS is actually stored on the phone (there may not be anything of use), but developing the technology needed to gain access is also no dramatic endeavor. Apple openly admits it can write this software, and this is not the first time the government is compelling a tech company to provide software that has not been written. In Tuesday’s congressional hearing, prosecutors cited a case in which an unnamed company was mandated to produce an unencrypted version of encrypted information on a defendant’s computer.
The only thing the government is after is getting past the phone’s passcode barrier—no more, no less. Apple PR and inaccurate reporting are to thank for this distortion. The case has nothing to do with encryption, whatever Apple supporters think that means; encryption, the converting of information to a coded format, is mentioned over and over in Tim Cook’s open letter to consumers but is not even introduced in the mandate written by U.S. Magistrate Judge Sheri Pym. This fight is about the simple act of getting past the lock screen on a single phone, not about giving the government unprecedented degrees of large-scale access to personal data.
But, more importantly, people need to understand that granting access to the dead terrorist’s phone does not compromise the security of anyone else’s private information. The FBI has made it clear that the intellectual property that goes into creating a “backdoor” into the terrorist’s phone is Apple’s and Apple’s alone; law-enforcement doesn’t want to see the software and will have nothing to do with it. Yes, this is not the only phone that the FBI wants to break into, and, yes, a victory in court would probably set a precedent in favor of the government for other similar cases in the future, but, really, who cares?
The hassle lies with the government and Apple in having to deal with additional investigations, search warrants, and court orders—not with the American people. Unless you also gun down 14 people in the name of ISIS and land yourself in a criminal investigation, you have no reason to fret, because the FBI is not after your phone. The bottom line? It is foolish to conclude that American citizens’ phones—your phone—will somehow be torn apart, their contents exposed, as a result of a pro-government ruling.
Only after considering these facts can we see that there really is no sacrifice that goes into unlocking the terrorist’s iPhone; the ‘surrender-your-privacy-in-exchange-for-national-security’ line is thus obsolete and wholly misleading. With this said, Apple’s refusal to lend a helping hand to the FBI really has no basis other than, of course, that it doesn’t want to. If the tech company is as much an advocate of American values as it purports itself to be, it will heed the court’s mandate. Otherwise, it makes itself a champion of terrorists.
