Fight over gunman’s locked iPhone could have big impact

Associated Press

washington

An extraordinary legal fight is brewing with major privacy implications for millions of cellphone users after a federal magistrate ordered Apple Inc. to help the FBI hack into an iPhone used by the gunman in the San Bernardino mass shootings.

The clash brings to a head a long-simmering debate between technology companies insistent on protecting digital privacy and law-enforcement agencies concerned about losing their ability to recover evidence or eavesdrop on the communications of terrorists or criminals.

On Wednesday, the White House quickly disputed the contention by Apple’s chief executive officer, Tim Cook, that the Obama administration is seeking to force the software company to build a “backdoor” to bypass digital locks protecting consumer information on Apple’s popular iPhones.

The early arguments set the stage for what likely will be a protracted policy and public-relations fight in the courts, on Capitol Hill, on the Internet and elsewhere.

“They are not asking Apple to redesign its product or to create a new backdoor to one of their products,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said. “They’re simply asking for something that would have an impact on this one device.”

Within hours of the judge’s order Tuesday telling Apple to aid the FBI with special software in the case, Cook promised a court challenge. He said the software the FBI would need to unlock the gunman’s work-issued iPhone 5C would be “too dangerous to create” and “undeniably” a backdoor.

Cook compared it to a master key, capable of opening hundreds of millions of locks, and said there was no way to keep the technique secret once it was developed.

“Once the information is known, or a way to bypass the code is revealed, the encryption can be defeated by anyone with that knowledge,” Cook said.

At the center of the debate is the private information carried on nearly 900 million iPhones sold worldwide: photographs, videos, chat messages, health records and more.

The ruling by U.S. Magistrate Judge Sheri Pym represents a significant victory for the Justice Department, which last year decided not to pursue a legislative fix to address encryption but has now scored a win instead in the courts.