“Can the FBI force a company like Apple to extract data from a customer’s smartphone?” Brandon Bailey reports for The Associated Press. “In the fight over an iPhone used by an extremist killer in San Bernardino, some legal experts say Congress has never explicitly granted that power. And now a federal judge agrees in a similar case.”
“In a New York drug case that echoes the much higher-profile San Bernardino dispute, U.S. Magistrate James Orenstein has ruled the government doesn’t have authority to make Apple pull information off a suspect’s iPhone. The judge said in his ruling that Congress has already considered, but rejected, extending the government’s authority in this fashion,” Bailey reports. “Orenstein cited the history of a 20-year-old federal law — one that requires phone companies to assist police in conducting court-authorized wiretaps. Congress has resisted attempts over the years to extend that authority to tech companies like Apple, according to experts who have studied the law, known as the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, or CALEA.”
“Federal prosecutors have argued that a much older law known as the All Writs Act allows courts to compel private parties to assist law enforcement. But Orenstein said that shouldn’t apply when, in his words, ‘Congress has considered legislation that would achieve the same result but has not adopted it,'” Bailey reports. “Even before Orenstein’s ruling, some legal experts said in recent weeks that the history of CALEA suggests that authorities are overreaching in the San Bernardino case.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Oppose government overreach no matter how many lies they tell or heartstrings they attempt to tug.
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