Steve Bannon, U.S President Trump’s former chief strategist, says that the president is going to “drop the hammer” on getting Apple to work with authorities after Trump suggested in a tweet that Apple should unlock password-protected iPhones used by the Islamic terrorits who killed three people at the Pensacola, Florida Naval Air Station late last year.
Matthew J. Belvedere for CNBC:
“If I were the guys at Apple, I would pay attention to President Trump’s tweets,” Bannon said in a “Squawk Box” interview on CNBC “I would treat his tweets like a papal bull.”
We are helping Apple all of the time on TRADE and so many other issues, and yet they refuse to unlock phones used by killers, drug dealers and other violent criminal elements. They will have to step up to the plate and help our great Country, NOW! MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 14, 2020
On Monday, Attorney General William Barr said Apple had not provided “substantive assistance” in unlocking the shooter’s two iPhones.
MacDailyNews Take: FYI, Bannon et al.: The FBI doesn’t need Apple to unlock the Pensacola terrorist’s iPhones.
Furthermore, Apple correctly disputed Barr’s assessment that the company failed to provide “substantive assistance” in unlocking the password-protected iPhones used by the Islamic terrorist at the Pensacola Navy base:
“We reject the characterization that Apple has not provided substantive assistance in the Pensacola investigation. Our responses to their many requests since the attack have been timely, thorough and are ongoing… [We] produced a wide variety of information associated with the investigation [and provided] gigabytes of information [including] iCloud backups, account information and transactional data for multiple accounts,” Apple said in a statement late Monday and continued:
We have always maintained there is no such thing as a backdoor just for the good guys. Backdoors can also be exploited by those who threaten our national security and the data security of our customers. Today, law enforcement has access to more data than ever before in history, so Americans do not have to choose between weakening encryption and solving investigations. We feel strongly encryption is vital to protecting our country and our users’ data. — Apple Inc.
So, as we wrote yesterday, The U.S. government isn’t as interested in what’s on the terrorist’s iPhones as it is in somehow trying to force Apple to provide a repeatable method to unlock iPhones. The duplicitous U.S. government wants into every iPhone for whatever reason, valid or otherwise. That’s their goal. It’s obvious that the U.S. government’s full court press is on now from officials far and wide, whether they’re informed or not. We expect Apple to stand firm, weather the onslaught, and, ultimately, if need be, take this issue to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. – Benjamin Franklin