The FBI wants Apple’s help unlocking phones of the Saudi Air Force trainee who killed three people; they shouldn’t get it, writes Stephen L Carter
The FBI wants Apple’s help unlocking two phones of the Saudi Air Force trainee who killed three people; they shouldn’t get itJane Horvath, senior director of global privacy at Apple, speaks at a panel discussion at CES 2020 in Las Vega on January 7 2020. Apple's top privacy executive defended the company’s use of encryption after recent clashes with law enforcement and politicians over access to information locked on iPhones.
Most of Big Tech weighed in on Apple’s side. Before the company’s appeal could be heard, however, the FBI surprised everybody with the announcement that it had unlocked Farook’s phone.The department of justice’s inspector-general later found that the FBI had not exhausted all possibilities before taking Apple to court.
Presumably, in-house communications have been better this time around. Even so, one can understand why the FBI is back to asking Apple for help. Back in 2016, techies agreed that whatever trick the department of justice used would work only once. Apple would find out how the unnamed vendor broke the encryption, and close that vulnerability in the next generation of phones.
Here’s one reason: the company does not currently have a means of breaking into a locked phone. Forced to develop one, Apple would most likely create a software update that, once sent to the device, would allow the phone to be unlocked through some means other than a password . Even if the value of the encryption to the buyer is only one half of 1% of the price of the phone, the loss to Apple is $700m. If, on the other hand, you think the value of the security component is greater than 1% — very much my own suspicion — well, you can do the arithmetic.
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