All your data belongs to the US
With Apple taking
a tough stance, and the FBI adamant, the massacre at San Bernardino in California has yet again re-opened the debate on national security and the right to privacy
Abeer Kapoor
Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife Tashfeen Malik died in a shootout four hours after they opened fire at a training workshop of the County Public Health Department in San Bernardino, California. They had murdered 14 people and injured 22 of the 80 that sat in attendance. As they fled in a black Lexus SUV to certain death, they would have been unaware that their iPhone would occupy centre stage in the raging debate on the right to privacy.
In the aftermath of the mass shooting, as the country recovered from the horror of the massacre, President Barack Obama declared the December 2 carnage as an act of terror. The Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) immediately launched a counter-terrorism investigation. As they established the couples links to various extremist cells and found that it was the internet that had led to their radicalisation, the iPhone belonging to Farook posed an obstacle to the investigators. It was an official phone belonging to the San Bernardino Health Department, where Farook worked. The rights of accessing the phone were transferred to the FBI, but, subsequently, there emerged a problem, the phone was encrypted: it was locked.
Passkeys and passwords help protect us from hackers, conmen and thieves. They also protect us from the government, ensuring that our data is our own and no one elses. There is always an option to secure our data, and in most cases it is strongly recommended to do so. Farook did exactly that: he protected his data.
Apple Inc, the manufacturer of the iPhone, offers encryption on each of the devices that it designs. There are two layers of protection, what Apple calls the security enclave, a mix of both software and hardware security that protects the data of the user through encryption, and a built-in kill switch: If the passkey is entered incorrectly ten times the data in the phone would be lost. In a senate hearing, FBI Director James Comey told a Senate panel that the bureau was still unable to unlock the phone. The encryption measures installed by Apple (the kill switch), according to him, were a major hurdle in the governments investigation.
The DOJ and the FBI approached the courts and this is where things get murky.
It is no secret that everybody wants data. It is what businesses are built upon. Big data helps in security, development, business and any other activity that people want to do. Tech companies possess troves of data, which the government has their eyes on. Silicon Valley has been fighting for more stringent privacy and security laws, while the government wants to weaken these very same laws to gain access to that data pie. In June 2015, Information Technology Industry Council (ITI) and the Software Information Industry Association petitioned Obama to not to pursue any policy or proposal that would require or encourage companies to weaken these technologies, including the weakening of encryption or creating encryption work-arounds.
On February 16, Sheri Pym, a district judge in California, ordered Apple to assist the FBI by creating a software bundle that would enable the bureau to hack into the iPhone. It is important to understand that the court has asked the tech giant to comply not through a summon but under the All Writ Act of 1789. This sets a precedent for other companies in the future to be called upon and asked to give up their technology secrets.
The FBI asked Apple to create a backdoor that can only be used for Farooks phone. The DOJ has claimed that it is only Apple that has the technical means to open the device. Now, backed by the order, they are strong-arming the company to do their bidding. The company has outrightly refused to do so, saying that if they were to do something like this it would be applicable on all phones produced by them. The company says that if they do create this access key it will not only be for one phone, but could be used for all phones. This means, under the direction of the courts and the authorities, the company would end up sabotaging its own products.
Hardnew
