Obama administration: We’re only demanding Apple hack just one iPhone

“A court order demanding that Apple Inc. help the U.S. government break into the iPhone of one of the San Bernardino shooters opens a new chapter in the legal, political and technological fight pitting law enforcement against civil liberties advocates and major tech companies,” Jim Finkle and Dan Levine report for Reuters. “The government argues that the phone is a crucial piece of evidence in investigating one of the worst attacks in the United States by people who sympathized with Islamist militants. But privacy groups warn that forcing companies to crack their own encryption threatened not just the privacy of customers but potentially citizens of any country.”

“A federal judge in Los Angeles on Tuesday ordered Apple to provide “reasonable technical assistance” to investigators seeking to unlock the data on an iPhone 5C that had been used by Rizwan Farook, who along with his wife, Tashfeen Malik, killed 14 people and wounded 22 others on Dec. 2 in San Bernardino, California,” Finkle and Levine report. “White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the Department of Justice was asking Apple for access to just one device, a central part of the government’s argument. ‘They are not asking Apple to redesign its product or to create a new backdoor to one of their products,” Earnest told reporters at the daily briefing. He said the case was about federal investigators learning “as much as they can about this one case” and “the president certainly believes that is an important national priority.'”

“Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook said Tuesday’s court order threatened the security of its customers and had ‘implications far beyond the legal case at hand,'” Finkle and Levine report. “If the federal judge, Magistrate Sheri Pym, rejects Apple’s arguments, the company can appeal her order to the district court, and then up the chain to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco and ultimately the U.S. Supreme Court.”

“‘The 9th Circuit is known to be pro-privacy. “The government ultimately will have an uphill fight,’ said Robert Cattanach, a former Justice Department lawyer who advises companies on cyber security issues,” Finkle and Levine report. “Dan Guido, an expert in hacking operating systems, said… that only Apple can provide that software because the phones will only install updates that are digitally signed with a secret cryptographic key. ‘That key is one of the most valuable pieces of data the entire company owns,’ he said. ‘Someone with that key can change all the data on all the iPhones.'”

Read more in the full article here.

MacDailyNews Take: It’s not just one phone. Any random idiot should be able to grasp that simple fact. If they don’t seem to get it, look for ulterior motive(s).

There have been people that suggest that we should have a back door. But the reality is if you put a back door in, that back door’s for everybody, for good guys and bad guys. — Apple CEO Tim Cook, December 2015

Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. – Benjamin Franklin, Historical Review of Pennsylvania, 1759

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