Tim Cook hits back at 'chilling' order for iPhone 'backdoor' - CNET

Encryption is a huge source of tension between tech companies and law enforcement. Companies including Apple, Google and WhatsApp protect the privacy of their customers by encrypting data, often in a way that even the companies themselves cannot unscramble. Although that lets unscrupulous users such as criminals or terrorists communicate without govement surveillance, tech companies justify such security measures by insisting that it's impossible to allow law enforcement to crack encryption without opening the door for criminals to do the same.

The FBI's plan would bypass security functions that limit how many times you can enter an incorrect password. Currently, an iPhone wipes itself if the wrong password is entered 10 times in a row. With that feature disabled, investigators could enter password after password until they hit on the correct one.

The FBI is trying to access an iPhone 5C used by one of the perpetrators of the December 2015 terrorist attack in San Beardino that left 14 people dead and 22 injured. Cook says Apple engineers have been working with the FBI since the attack and have "offered our best ideas on a number of investigative options at their disposal."

But now the US wants Apple to create software -- what Cook calls a new version of the iOS mobile software that powers the iPhone -- that would disable the auto-erase feature. While the order specifies the software should be coded to the specific iPhone in question, Cook doesn't see it stopping there.

"Once created, the technique could be used over and over again, on any number of devices," he said. Cook described such software as "the equivalent of a master key, capable of opening hundreds of millions of locks."

If Apple is forced to circumvent its own security, this would mark a watershed moment in the ongoing negotiation among govement, the private sector and consumers on the subject of security, privacy and surveillance.

"The question is whether companies should be compelled to design their technology for future investigations so that evidence is available, and that's what Apple and other companies have been resisting," Marc Rotenberg, a privacy advocate who leads the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said Wednesday in an interview with NPR.

"The national security conces are real," Rotenberg said. "The question is, how best to address them...if by addressing the national security conces, you make US Inteet users and iPhone customers more vulnerable to criminal attack or to national security vulnerabilities, you actually haven't solved the problem. You've created a new problem and this is the reason that so many technology experts and privacy experts have said to the govement: 'We're not unsympathetic to the conce, but we actually believe that if you weaken communications technology, you leave US Inteet users more exposed.'"

National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden tweeted that the face-off between Apple and the FBI is the "most important tech case in a decade." He also suggested that Google, maker of the Android software that runs many of the world's phones, should stand up to the govement.

This is the most important tech case in a decade. Silence means @google picked a side, but it's not the public's. https://t.co/mi5irJcr25

— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) February 17, 2016

Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

As for Cook, he described the use of the All Writs Act of 1789 to call for these measures as an "overreach" by the US govement even as he said Apple has "no sympathy for terrorists."

"We are challenging the FBI's demands with the deepest respect for American democracy and a love of our country," Cook concluded. "While we believe the FBI's intentions are good, it would be wrong for the govement to force us to build a backdoor into our products. And ultimately, we fear that this demand would undermine the very freedoms and liberty our govement is meant to protect."