WHY PRIVACY IS THE MOST IMPORTANT
ISSUE OF OUR TIME
Many of us may now be used to the new age
of intense privacy debates in the wake of the
Edward Snowden fiasco, but it seems that
this intensity has just stepped up yet another
notch with the tussle that has broken out
in recent days between Apple and the FBI.
Whichever side of the debate you are on - if
you take a definite stance at all - the latest
debate surrounding our attitudes to encrypted
technology in the wake of the San Bernardino
shooting has implications for us all.
It is a debate that has its roots in the most
terrible tragedy, of the deaths of 14 people
and serious injuries to a further 22 in a terrorist
attack at the Inland Regional Centre in the
Californian city of San Bernardino on December
2 last year. The perpetrators of the latest mass
shooting to shock America were a married
Redlands couple - Syed Rizwan Farook and
Tashfeen Malik - who were later killed by police
in a shootout.
This is where the difficulty truly begins for
Apple - Farook owned an iPhone 5c that
authorities want to unlock as they continue
their urgent investigations into the appalling
events at a training event at the San
Bernardino County Department of Public
Health. The FBI turned to Apple for help to
access the device’s data - only to be rebuffed
in the kind of spectacularly public manner that
has prompted frenzied debate across America.
COOK MAKES HIS STAND
In an open letter to Apple customers that was
published on February 16 and can still be
viewed online, Apple CEO Tim Cook outlined
his version of events of what the United States
government had asked his company to do -
“build a backdoor to the iPhone”.
He added that the FBI had requested that Apple
“make a new version of the iPhone operating
system, circumventing several important
security features, and install it on an iPhone
recovered during the investigation. In the wrong
hands, this software - which does not exist today
- would have the potential to unlock any iPhone
in someone’s physical possession.”
Cook also criticised the FBI’s “unprecedented”
attempted use of the All Writs Act of 1789 to
justify expanding its authority and effectively
force Apple to remove security features and
make it easier for an iPhone to be unlocked by
“brute force”. He continued: “The implications
of the government’s demands are chilling...
ultimately, we fear that this demand would
undermine the very freedoms and liberty our
government is meant to protect.”
STRONG OPINIONS ON BOTH SIDES
OF THE DEBATE
As one might imagine, those taking either or
even no stance to Apple’s approach had strong
words to add to the ensuing public discussion.
A highly understandable critic of the
Cupertino firm’s stand against a federal
judge’s order was Ryan Reyes, the boyfriend
of one of the 14 victims, Daniel Kaufman.
Describing himself as “extremely pissed-off”
over an announcement that had also caused
him to reconsider his ownership of Apple
products, he opined: “It’s infuriating to me,
because I feel like all companies - especially
US companies - should do what they have to
do to protect our country”.
Republican presidential frontrunner Donald
Trump was another to weigh in against
Apple, declaring: “I agree 100% with the
courts... who do they think they are? They
have to open it up.” However, Cook also found
plenty of support, including from transgender
woman and activist Evan Greer, who said she
had seen “the deeply chilling effect of overly
broad government surveillance”, adding in
reference to her now 5-year old son: “What type
of world is he going to grow up in? Will it be
one in which he’s constantly being monitored
... where he feels that he has no privacy?”
Cook also received plenty of backing
from the tech community, Silicon Valley
entrepreneur Alex Lindsay even stating: “Any
communications/tech CEO that isn’t standing
with Apple against the FBI is basically admitting
that they’ve already been compromised.”
THE IMPORTANCE OF GOOGLE’S ROLE
Sure enough, even Google - the developer of
the open-source Android software - voiced
its qualified support, CEO Sundar Pichai
tweeting: “We [Google] build secure products
to keep your information safe and we give law
enforcement access to data based on valid
legal orders, but that’s wholly different than
requiring companies to enable hacking of
customer services and data.”
Pichai added that the case could set “a
troubling precedent”, but - as if to emphasise
a rather softer attitude than Apple’s to such a
critical issue - concluded that he was “looking
forward to a thoughtful and open discussion”
on the matter.
Indeed, this case represents a potential public
banana skin for Google, given its famously lax
attitude to security compared to Apple - the
search giant’s entire business model, after
all, is based on the collection of data from its
users. Furthermore, Android is not only open
source, but also much more fragmented and
less tightly controlled than iOS, with only 1.3%
of Android devices even running the most
recent, Marshmallow version of the software.
It may also be noted that Pichai only made his
public intervention after calls for him to do
so by the likes of WhiteHat Security founder
Jeremiah Grossman and Snowden, who
surmised that “this is the most important tech
case in a decade. Silence means Google picked
a side, but it’s not the public’s.”
Quite frankly, we would struggle to disagree
with Snowden’s take on this crucial matter. In
today’s age where it is becoming increasingly
apparent that privacy is under greater threat
than ever before, Google’s slack attitude
would seem to represent a trap for users, who
are coming to view companies that know
absolutely everything about them with evergreater
suspicion.
WHAT COULD - AND IS LIKELY TO -
HAPPEN NEXT
Whatever way this hugely controversial and
momentous case ultimately plays out, there’s
no question of where the wider public stands.
In a 9to5Mac poll entitled “Should Apple
break into the San Bernardino iPhone?”,
16,594 or almost 85% of respondents
expressed the view that it should not do so.
11.37% - more than 2,000 votes at the time this
article was being written - were in favour of
Apple complying with the FBI, while 2.69%, or
just over 500 people said they were indifferent.
No less interesting was an accompanying
poll on the site that asked the question, “How
important is privacy to you?”, to which a
whopping 70.91% of people responded that
“Privacy is one of the most important features
for me”, and more than a quarter said that while
they cared more about other features, privacy
was nonetheless important to them. That left
a mere 1.49% of respondents who described
themselves as indifferent about privacy in
general, and 1.2% who felt privacy didn’t affect
them at all.
With petitions having been started to urge
the White House to relent in its efforts to
make device makers create a “backdoor” for
the government to access citizens’ data, even
while the Senate Intelligence Committee
Chairman Richard Burr reportedly plans a
new bill that would criminally penalize firms
failing to comply with such orders, it’s clear
that this issue will run and run and run.
Our own stance is a very strong one - that
this case is quite simply one of the most
important of our generation, and that Apple
must be supported in spearheading this battle
to protect your privacy rights. For as long as
we all believe in the personal privacy of all
good and ordinary citizens, even as we stand
resolutely against terrorists, this is a battle
that simply has to be won.
by Benjamin Kerry & Gavin Lenaghan
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