A federal judge in California ordered Apple to exploit a security weakness for the iPhone to help law enforcement investigate the San Bernardino terrorist attack. The company is refusing to provide a piece of software that would effectively allow federal investigators to bypass the strong security that Apple implemented in 2014.
Bloomberg View columnists Eli Lake and Megan McArdle discuss.
McArdle: Right now, it’s impossible to brute-force a passcode by simply trying combination after combination, because there’s a feature that will wipe the data after 10 unsuccessful tries. The judge has ordered Apple to create a piece of software that will raise that limit high enough for investigators in the San Bernardino shooting to keep trying until they unlock the iPhone belonging to San Bernardino County, which one of the shooters used.
On one hand, the Constitution is not a suicide pact. On the other hand, I see several major issues here. The first is that such a back door, once created, is probably not going to stay with the U.S. government. China, for example, is probably going to demand a similar bypass, which could easily be used to persecute dissidents. Second, we have an interest in privacy from our own government, which this damages. And third, they are arguing for this under a very expansive reading of the All Writs Act, a law dating to 1789. The government’s interpretation would represent a very dramatic expansion of its search power, and as citizens, we should all be concerned about that. For the full article click here
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