The skirmish between Apple and the FBI is quickly escalating to a battle royal, a fight to the finish over lofty principles and national values, involving not just this company and this bureau but all of Silicon Valley and the entire realm of U.S. intelligence gathering.
Certainly the two combatants are presenting the case in these terms, Apple and its supporters declaring that the future of encryption and privacy rides on the outcome, the FBI (as well as the National Security Agency and several police chiefs) claiming that well-trod paths to capturing criminals and terrorists will be closed off if the computer giant gets its way.
Both sides are overstating the stakes; both sides are making disingenuous arguments. Yet I think Tim Cook, Apple’s swaggering or courageous chief executive, has miscalculated. The dispute he’s chosen to challenge in the courts—which seems destined for appeal all the way to the Supreme Court—is a weak test case, from his vantage. And in the unlikely event the justices hand him a victory, he’s likely to trigger a political fight that he and every ideal he stands for will probably lose.
The gist of the case is that the FBI wants full access to the iPhone 5C used by Syed Farook, one of the San Bernardino, California, shooters. The bureau isn’t asking Apple to unlock the phone. Owing to its software, which allows users to set their own security code, Apple’s engineers can’t unlock it even if they wanted to. In a clever workaround, the FBI has asked Apple to override the feature that wipes out all of the phone’s data after someone enters an incorrect passcode 10 times. With that obstacle lifted, the FBI (or some other government agency) could use “brute force” methods—applying software that can generate thousands of alphanumeric guesses per second—to break the code.
Apple refused to cooperate with the FBI, so the bureau took it to court, where a magistrate judge ordered the company to comply. On Tuesday, Cook wrote an open letter to customers, arguing that the government’s campaign has gone too far. By ordering Apple to write new software that makes one of its own systems vulnerable, the government is making all Apple systems, everywhere, vulnerable. Someone could duplicate the software. “In the wrong hands,” Cook wrote in his open letter, “this software—which does not exist today—would have the potential to unlock any iPhone in someone’s physical possession.”
FBI officials have countered that they are not asking for Apple to carve out a “back door” into all Apple phones. Their request would affect only this one phone. If Apple took precautions in applying the software, it wouldn’t necessarily leak out.
To read more.....Slate
No comments:
Post a Comment