{"id":71516,"date":"2016-02-28T12:44:07","date_gmt":"2016-02-28T17:44:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=71516"},"modified":"2016-02-28T12:44:07","modified_gmt":"2016-02-28T17:44:07","slug":"apple-fbi-seeks-dangerous-power-in-fight-over-phone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2016\/02\/28\/apple-fbi-seeks-dangerous-power-in-fight-over-phone\/","title":{"rendered":"Apple: FBI seeks \u2018dangerous power\u2019 in fight over phone"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Tech<\/a>
Tech company giant Apple (ShutterStock image)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

WASHINGTON \u2013 In its first salvo in a court fight that pits digital privacy rights against national security, Apple Inc. asked a federal magistrate to reverse her order forcing the company to help the FBI hack into a locked iPhone.<\/p>\n

The Thursday filing \u2013 a day before its formal objection was due and as FBI Director James Comey defended the FBI stance on Capitol Hill \u2013 accused the federal government of seeking \u201cdangerous power\u201d through the courts and of trampling on the Cupertino-based company\u2019s constitutional rights.<\/p>\n

The arguments by Apple attorneys, outlined a day before the company\u2019s annual shareholders meeting scheduled for Friday, built upon those voiced by the company\u2019s chief executive and supporters in the last week and set the stage for a prolonged fight with legal arguments that may take the issue as far as the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n

The Justice Department is proposing an unprecedented and \u201cboundless interpretation\u201d of the law that, if left unchecked, could bring disastrous repercussions, the company warned in a memo submitted to Magistrate Sheri Pym in California that aggressively challenges policy justifications put forward by the Obama administration.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe government says: \u2018Just this once\u2019 and \u2018Just this phone.\u2019 But the government knows those statements are not true,\u201d lawyers for Apple wrote.<\/p>\n

The locked iPhone 5C in question was a work phone linked to Syed Farook, who with his wife Tashfeen Malik, killed 14 people in a Dec. 2 terror attack in San Bernardino, California, which was at least partly inspired by the Islamic State group. Two personal cellphones were found so badly destroyed that investigators couldn\u2019t retrieve data from them.<\/p>\n

Justice Department lawyers were reviewing Apple\u2019s brief and will respond, said spokeswoman Melanie Newman. She said Apple had reversed \u201cits long-standing\u201d co-operation with government requests, and that when Justice Department officials want to search a phone or another electronic device, \u201cwe narrowly target our request to apply to the individual device\u201d and get a judge\u2019s approval.<\/p>\n

The court fight is set on new ground that could create meaningful precedent and establish new legal boundaries on how technology is dealt with in the national security context when encrypted devices increasingly proliferate and so many of the overarching laws governing their use are antiquated.<\/p>\n

Over the last year, law enforcement officials have spoken out about their inability to access encrypted data. In the California case, the phone was found after investigators searched a car with a warrant after the attack and then couldn\u2019t access the locked iPhone, despite working with Apple and Farook\u2019s employer.<\/p>\n

Comey reiterated to lawmakers Thursday that the government owed it to victims\u2019 families to conduct a thorough investigation. Some family members and survivors of the attack have said they\u2019ll be filing a brief in support of the government\u2019s position.<\/p>\n

Pym directed Apple to help the FBI hack its phone by creating specialized software that will let investigators bypass time-delay and self-destruct security protocols so that it can repeatedly and quickly test passcodes in what\u2019s known as a brute force attack without risking loss of the phone\u2019s data after 10 tries.<\/p>\n

In court papers, Apple derisively called the specialized software the FBI requested \u201cGovtOS,\u201d a play off the formal name for its iOS operating software for iPhones and tablets.<\/p>\n

Apple, which must convince Pym that the order is an \u201cunreasonable burden,\u201d argues that her order expands judicial power and is a political issue that Congress should decide. Apple\u2019s attorneys also say the legal order is a new expansion of the 1789 All Writs Act, which has been used to require third parties to help law enforcement in investigations. A federal magistrate in New York remains poised to rule on whether the catchall law has the power to force Apple to bypass security protocols on its behalf in a drug case.<\/p>\n

Apple states in its filing that creating the new software would require \u201csignificant resources and effort,\u201d forcing it to dedicate six to 10 engineers for up to four weeks in a new \u201chyper-secure isolation\u201d room.<\/p>\n

The order would \u201ceffectively require Apple to create full-time positions in a new \u2018hacking\u2019 department to service government requests and to develop new versions of the back door software every time iOS changes\u201d plus those engineers would likely have to testify as government witnesses in trials.<\/p>\n

Plus, \u201cif the new operating system has to be destroyed and recreated each time a new order is issued, the burden will multiple,\u201d the filing states.<\/p>\n

Apple\u2019s attorneys said \u201cthere are hundreds of demands to create and utilize the software waiting in the wings,\u201d noting Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, who\u2019s said his office has 175 iPhones it can\u2019t open. Apple is opposing requests to help extract information from 14 Apple devices in California, Illinois, Massachusetts and New York.<\/p>\n

Should Apple not destroy the new operating system, it would have to protect it from \u201ccriminals, terrorists, and hackers\u201d gunning for code to access material on millions of iPhones, the attorneys state.<\/p>\n

Apple compared forcing it to create software that doesn\u2019t exist to weaken the iPhone\u2019s locks to forcing a journalist to publish false information to arrest a fugitive or forcing another software company to implant a virus in a customer\u2019s computer so the government could eavesdrop. It argued that such a precedent could lead to many other potentially more invasive requests.<\/p>\n

Attorneys for Apple also argued that forcing Apple to use its cryptographic signature to validate the code so that Farook\u2019s iPhone would recognize and accept the new operating system would be \u201ccompelled speech and viewpoint discrimination\u201d and violate the First Amendment. Prior court precedent has treated computer code as speech and Apple\u2019s attorneys say that the government is forcing Apple to speak on its behalf through code, adopting a security and privacy viewpoint the company does not support.<\/p>\n

The government\u2019s response is due by March 10. A hearing is scheduled for March 22.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON \u2013 In its first salvo in a court fight that pits digital privacy rights against national security, Apple Inc. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":34738,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[1080],"class_list":["post-71516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-ap","mauthors-tami-abdollah","mauthors-eric-tucker","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71516"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71516\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}