Apple FBI Row: 7 Crucial Insights

By siliconindia | Tuesday, 08 March 2016, 07:24 Hrs

BENGALURU: 2015 San Bernardino Attack, the second deadliest mass shooting in California after more than three decades. The ‘homegrown violent extremists’ as tagged by FBI, married couple Syed Rizwan Farooq and Tashfeen Malik were killed in a shootout with police after they opened fire San Bernardino County Department of Public Health training event and holiday party, of about 80 employees. To pursue further investigations the FBI required access to Farooq’s iOS 9 enabled iPhone 5C. Despite the court order that FBI held, Apple refused to comply. Debates about the Apple Inc conflict with FBI continue to spiral around. Here are 10 interesting facts that we’ve pinned down from Wired.com coverage of the controversy and other sources.

A Message to Our Customers

On February 16^th, in a long letter to consumers, CEO Tim Cook explains the company’s decision. Below are a couple of arguments he puts forward.

“The FBI wants us to make a new version of the iPhone operating system, circumventing several important security features, and install it on an iPhone recovered during the investigation,” says Cook. “In the wrong hands, this software—which does not exist today—would have the potential to unlock any iPhone in someone’s physical possession. The FBI may use different words to describe this tool, but make no mistake: Building a version of iOS that bypasses security in this way would undeniably create a backdoor. ”

The True Picture

Apple, in several past cases has complied with court orders to ‘unlock’ phones. But, this time, as Wired.com mentions, FBI wants Apple to create a special version of its operating system- that essentially eliminates the brute-forcing protections, and install it on the San Bernardino phone. It wants Apple to design this crippled software to be loaded into memory instead of on disk so that the data on the phone remains forensically sound and won’t be altered.

The All Writs Act

It is a part of the 1789 Judiciary Act- 87 years before Alexander Gram Bell invented the telephone, which the government invoked persuading Apple to comply with the demands of the FBI. It gives federal court the power to issue writs to compel third parties to help execute a court order. Interestingly a famous encryption case known as Bernstein v. US Department of Justice established long ago that code is speech and is protected by the First Amendment. Apple argues that if code is speech, then the government is compelling the company to say something it doesn’t want to by forcing it to cooperate in cracking the phone’s password.

For and Against the Motion

Whistle blower Edward Snowden expressed his stance against FBI via twitter, Google CEO Sundar Pichai also tweeted support while The Electronic Frontier Foundation has vowed to back Apple in its legal fight. Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerburg expressed his support for Apple at the Mobile World Congress in Spain. Wired Magazine reported that a recent Pew Research poll found that 51 percent of Americans think Apple “Should unlock the iPhone to assist the ongoing FBI investigation,” while 38 percent say Apple should not. (The rest had no opinion.)

The Impact

The final outcome would send ripples across policies of tech companies and other mobile manufacturers. Apple holds a certain reputation for prioritizing security of its user’s data. It is evident that the company adopts a different approach from its competitor Google, whose primary source of revenue is from ads which apparently requires bots to read private messages. Apple’s public relations with its large customer base outside the US would also be affected if it had complied with the court order. Notably, the stock value of the company had increased by more than one and a half percent when the market closed during the following week. Apple also hired a lead developer of Open Whisper System, a company whose messaging app Signal is regarded as one of the most secure and encrypted apps, it is one of the apps endorsed by Edward Snowden.

What’s Next?

March 3^rd was the due date for anyone outside the case to file remarks to the court. The magistrate-judge will weigh those briefs when deciding on the case. The case would determine the future of the delicate balance between privacy and security. Here are some important dates ahead in the timeline of this sensitive issue, as reported by CNN.

March 10: Opportunity for government to respond to Apple

March 15: Apple’s final reply after assessing the Government’s response.

March 22: Attorneys for Apple (AAPL, Tech30) and the government will appear in a District Court in Riverside, California at 1 p.m. PT. They will both argue their cases to a magistrate-judge, who will rule shortly after. The losing party will likely appeal to have the case heard by a District Court judge. The case could be appealed all the way to the Supreme Court.

It could all have been avoided.

On 20^th February, The San Bernardino County tweeted, “The County was working cooperatively with the FBI when it reset the iCloud password at the FBI's request.” The reset took away any chance the two entities had, to acquire the information on the shooter’s device without needing some kind of backdoor access. Fingers could be pointed at the FBI for initiating the row. The question remains, was it an intentional act by the ‘government entity’ to forge an excuse and get Apple to build a ‘permanent, anytime any device’ access to iPhones?