Last December, a married couple opened fire at a holiday party at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino. The shooters, Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, killed 14 people and injured 22, most of them county employees. The aftermath of this tragic and distressful attack at first raised questions related to the Second Amendment (more specifically, questions about gun regulations and background checks.) However, a far more recent debate, which could determine the future of digital privacy in the United States, arose from the San Bernardino attack — a debate about encryption.
After the attack, officials managed to retrieve Farook’s locked iPhone, which is in fact so well encrypted that the FBI’s only way of gaining access to the iPhone’s contents is through Apple. An encrypted device cannot be deciphered without the key, one known only to Apple. The FBI’s only solution, then, would be to force Apple to create a “backdoor” that would open the device. The need to access this data comes as a part of the search for more information regarding the perpetrators and their possible ties to terrorist organizations.
By Feb. 16, a federal judge ordered Apple to give investigators access to encrypted data on the iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino shooters, assistance the computer giant "declined to provide voluntarily.” According to prosecutors, “Apple has the exclusive technical means which would assist the government in completing its search, but has declined to provide that assistance voluntarily." The Justice Department and many prosecutors managed to get this type of ruling by turning to the All Writs Act, a 226-year-old law that would require Apple, or any other phone manufacturer issued a writ, to help decrypt a phone.
Apple CEO Tim Cook issued a customer letter in which he laid out his fears. He argued the use of the All Writs Act by the DOJ is and would set a dangerous precedent. According to Cook, “If the government can use the All Writs Act to make it easier to unlock your iPhone, it would have the power to reach into anyone’s device to capture their data.”
Cook is right. The government reiterates the fact that they only need to access this phone in this special situation, a childish and absurd claim to make. The creation of a “backdoor technique” for encrypted data would apply to all devices. This means that once created, the technique could be used over and over again, on any number of devices. It could be even extended, as Cook claims.
The dangerous precedent Cook presents is also true. If Apple allows the government to access encrypted data of one of its devices, it could extend this breach of privacy and demand that they breach and access as they please other private data within your iPhone, such as your messages, your health records or financial data, your location or your phone’s microphone or camera.
Other arguments include security concerns. Some argue national security should sometimes justify incursions toward certain individual rights, including privacy. However, privacy is one of our nation’s main defenses against attacks, especially hacking. As security technologist Bruce Schneier argues: “Give the F.B.I. the ability to hack into a cell phone today, and tomorrow you'll hear reports that a criminal group used that same ability to hack into our power grid.”
The dilemma within this entire brawl is evident: either create a “backdoor” through which the government can access encrypted data to find more information about crimes and their perpetrators and risk individual rights to privacy, or limit the government’s search process in criminal investigations while protecting individual rights to privacy. In this situation, the government can’t have the best of both worlds.
Apple and other technology companies should maintain and promote this privacy-advocate posture in order to protect their customers from coercive breaches towards individual privacy. One cannot trade privacy for security when the two are deeply intertwined. If the FBI is allowed to force Apple to weaken its iPhone’s encryption by installing a “backdoor,” it will establish a dangerous precedent which will weaken individual rights to privacy and increase the government’s coercion and surveillance over our personal lives.
Carlos Lopez is an Opinion columnist for The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at c.lopez@cavalierdaily.com.
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