Apple and the FBI are embroiled in a heated legal battle over something found in the pockets of millions of Americans: an iPhone.
FBI officials wish to investigate the contents of the phone belonging to Syed Rizwan Farook, one of the two shooters who attacked the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, Calif., in December. The shooters killed 14 people before police killed them in a shootout.
While investigating the shooting, the FBI obtained Farook’s iPhone 5c. It was a company phone owned by Farook’s employer, San Bernardino County.
The FBI says it already has access to the most recent backup of Farook’s iCloud account. However, that account stopped updating a month and a half before the attack, which gives the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California reason to believe that there is something valuable on the actual phone.
“This indicates to the FBI that Farook may have disabled the automatic iCloud backup function to hide evidence, and demonstrates that there may be relevant, critical communications and data around the time of the shooting that has thus far not been accessed, may reside solely on the SUBJECT DEVICE, and cannot be accessed by any other means known to either the government or Apple,” the Attorney’s Office wrote in a court filing.
Investigators have a warrant to search the phone, as well as permission from San Bernardino County. The problem is that the phone is passcode protected, and the FBI does not know what that passcode is. It cannot just guess the passcode, as the phone’s security system is designed to erase its contents after 10 failed entry attempts. The software also creates a mandatory delay between entering passcodes after a number of failed attempts, and it prevents the passcode from being entered by a computer.
That is where Apple comes in — or so the FBI would like.
Apple is denying the FBI’s request to create software that would override the iPhone’s security system. The tech-company is making its refusal on two grounds: first, that there is no such software for Apple to give the government, and second, that writing that software would be the same as hacking its own technology.
Apple also argues that creating this security-bypassing software poses a security risk for all iPhone customers.
The FBI argues that it only wants Apple to break into one phone, Farook’s phone, not phones all over the world.
Apple CEO Tim Cook does not buy this argument.
“The government suggests this tool could only be used once, on one phone,” he wrote in an open letter. “But that’s simply not true. Once created, the technique could be used over and over again, on any number of devices.”
Since Apple will not cooperate willingly, the FBI is using the justice system to try to get the company to comply. A federal judge issued an order compelling Apple to help the FBI on Feb. 16. The company has filed its opposition to this order, bringing the case to court.
The FBI is trying to force Apple to comply by citing the All Writs Act, part of the Judiciary Act of 1789. The law states that courts “may issue all writs necessary or appropriate in aid of their respective jurisdictions and agreeable to the usages and principles of law.” In essence, the FBI wants the courts to force Apple to create the software.
Apple argues using the All Writs Act in such a way, to push a manufacturer to develop a system for breaking into a phone designed to be impossible to unlock, would be unprecedented.
“If the government can use the All Writs Act to make it easier to unlock your iPhone, it would have the power to reach into anyone’s device to capture their data,” Cook said in his open letter.
Cook has emphasized the importance of privacy during his tenure as Apple’s CEO.
“Some of our most personal data is on the phone: our financial data, our health information, our conversations with our friends and family and coworkers,” he told NPR in October 2015.
“We do think that people want us to help them keep their lives private.”
