Battle of the Titans: Uncle Sam versus Apple

[...] when I began reading CEO Tim Cook’s open letter outlining the reasons why the most valuable corporation in the world would not submit to a judge’s order that Apple help break the encryption on a terrorist’s iPhone, I was ready to believe that Apple was putting its brand before public safety.

The FBI believes that the San Bernardino County Public Health Department-owned work iPhone of Syed Rizwan Farook — who with his wife Tashfeen Malik killed 14 people on Dec. 2 — may contain important information about other terrorists.

Prosecutors want Apple to override its technology that wipes out phone data after 10 unsuccessful attempts to enter a pass code in order to see what’s in Farook’s phone.

While critics of national intelligence surveillance like to rail against National Security Agency bulk data collection, this story is not about sweeping surveillance, It is about a judge’s warrant for the phone of a known terrorist and mass murderer.

In practical terms, Sanchez argued, the Justice Department wants to risk iPhone security protocols on a bet that Farook hid data in a device he did not bother to destroy.

Cook wrote that if the government forces Apple to bypass its security codes, then “The encryption can be defeated by anyone with that knowledge.”

If the government can order a tech company to write a hacking program, can the government force other people to do investigators’ chores as well?

Cook, Sanchez and Gellis fear that if the government succeeds in using the All Writs Act of 1789 to force Apple to undo its security measures, there’s no way the Department of Justice stops with Farook’s work phone.

In 2007, the government imprisoned videographer Josh Wolf for seven months based on the incorrect belief that Wolf had video that might reveal the identity of a protester who seriously injured a San Francisco police officer.

For one thing, “These are all senior government lawyers who want to get jobs with Apple” when they leave the government.

Thursday officials executed a search warrant on Farook’s brother’s home.

Gellis told me that once Apple admits its pass codes wear no clothes, entrepreneurs and hostile foreign governments will try to create their own back door into the iPhone.