Data privacy and security is becoming an overwhelmingly important problem in this digital age. Target, a major retailer, had credit card data stolen from 40 million accounts in 2013. Now, in 2016, the government is asking Apple to open a backdoor to their phones so the FBI can access a terrorist’s cell phone. So without a doubt, it’s an important issue.
Is it just to ask Apple to make their platform intrinsically less secure? Would that open up Apple users to a credit card hack on the order of Target’s crisis?
Some argue that the firmware the FBI is asking for would only be for use by the US Government. Which is a fair point to make. However, the mere existence of such a tool would make the software platform less secure in my opinion.
James Comey, the Director of the FBI, had a lot to say on the topic. He agrees that encryption is important, stating: “The development and robust adoption of strong encryption is a key tool to secure commerce and trade, safeguard private information, promote free expression and association, and strengthen cyber security.” He also says that he thinks it’s important to safeguard privacy for the American people, regardless of the communication medium. However, he ultimately thinks that there should be a third party judge who should determine when those rights to privacy have been given up by the party in question. Of course, the shooting in San Bernardino qualifies.
I have no issue with the FBI asking for access to the shooter’s phone. What I do have an issue with, is forcing Apple to develop software to invalidate the security of their users and their products.
Three writers from The Guardian also covered the story. They quote Julian Sanchez, a surveillance law expert at the libertarian-leaning Cato Institute in Washington, who stated: “The law operates on precedent, so the fundamental question here isn’t whether the FBI gets access to this particular phone, it’s whether a catch-all law from 1789 can be used to effectively conscript technology companies into producing hacking tools and spyware for the government.”
I think it is important to clarify that this is not a fight over just one event. This is a fight over setting a precedent, as Sanchez noted, and a fight over creating tools with extreme power for misuse.
One of the most abhorrent circumstances surrounding this event is that there is little legislation that was written with these kinds of technologies in mind. We are daily racing to create better encryption methods, and we are racing against very intelligent people working to break down the latest release of that encryption. The legal system can’t keep up, and the people in power to legislate are hardly educated on the technologies to the extent which they could make a properly informed decision.
So if we can’t answer very specific questions regarding encryption methodologies and requested backdoors, can we turn somewhere for more general insight into previous laws, that we might attempt to infer the spirit of the law? Perhaps we should turn to the Supreme Court.
As the late Justice Antonin Scalia once said, “There is nothing new in the realization that the Constitution sometimes insulates the criminality of a few in order to protect the privacy of us all.”
zachimholte 