“On February 18th, Senator Lindsey Graham had this to say about the FBI v. Apple court battle. ‘Our nation is at war and this iPhone was used to kill Americans. We need to protect our homeland, not terrorists. To Tim Cook and Apple, cooperate with the FBI,'” Tim Cushing reports for TechDirt. “As surprised as we were to learn it was an iPhone that killed 14 people in San Bernardino, rather than the attackers and the weapons they wielded, Graham had yet another surprise in store for us.”
Cushing reports, “Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who last December called on Silicon Valley to stop selling encrypted devices, expressed serious concern on Wednesday about the precedent the Department of Justice would set if it successfully compels Apple to break iPhone security features. ‘I was all with you until I actually started getting briefed by the people in the Intel Community,’ Graham told Attorney General Loretta Lynch during an oversight hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee. ‘I will say that I’m a person that’s been moved by the arguments about the precedent we set and the damage we might be doing to our own national security.'”
“This is what happens when legislators stop following their gut instincts on subjects they know little about and actually seek input from those who do know what’s involved and what’s at stake,” Cushing writes. “Graham — without speaking to ‘people in the Intel Community’ — originally presented terrorism as Apple’s problem. With the benefit of technically-adept hindsight, Graham is now seeing this for what it is: a push for a dangerous precedent that won’t end with this one iPhone and Apple.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Welcome aboard the Freedom Express, Mr. Graham. All aboard!
SEE ALSO:
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Apple CEO Tim Cook lashes out at Obama administration over encryption, bemoans White House lack of leadership – January 13, 2016
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Obama administration demands master encryption keys from firms in order to conduct electronic surveillance against Internet users – July 24, 2013