I
find it fascinating when old laws come into conflict with new technology. Online
gambling was the first of these interesting cases. Can a state forbid online gambling
if the server is out of the state? Then there was the issue of “virtual child
porn” – child porn images created with graphics programs, where no real child
was ever involved. Is that still prosecutable? And of course there is the continuing
issue of big data – companies that collect data on us from our web use (without
our permission or knowledge) and then lose it to a hacker. Who is liable?
The
current issue between the FBI and Apple is the newest of these. Apple built
serious security features into its latest iPhones. Now the FBI has an iPhone 5c that belonged to
one of the two terrorists who shot so many people in California before he
himself was killed. They have asked
Apple to bypass the security for them so they can read the contents of that
phone. Apple has refused, claiming it
sets a bad legal precedent for the country.
The
security community is pretty sure Apple can technically do what the FBI asks,
because this is a slightly older generation phone. It may not be possible to
circumvent the security features of the newer iPhone 6 and 6s, even by Apple. But if it is, you can be sure Apple will make
sure the next generation is simply impossible for even the manufacturer to
crack, so as to avoid court orders like this one.
The
government argues that national security needs override the individual right to
privacy, and that the need to obtain a warrant before making such requests is
protection enough for individual rights.
That claim is a little weak in the light of all the “secret” warrants
issued by the secret Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Court
over the past decade, as revealed by Edward Snowden. Clearly this is a precedent open to abuse by the
government, and since we have recently seen agencies from the IRS to the NSA
abuse their powers in pursuit of partisan political ends, the threat is real.
This
continues the ongoing battle between law enforcement and homeland security
agencies, who want to be able to read everyone’s communications at will, and
privacy advocates who claim Americans have a fundamental right to privacy,
whatever the circumstances (the “unreasonable searches and seizures” part of the US Constitution). Of course
it is technically possible, and not even very hard, for anyone with a modicum
of skill to encrypt their data so that not even NSA with their supercomputers
could ever decrypt it again. But the
real issue here is the conflict between government needs, even legitimate law
enforcement or homeland security needs, and personal privacy.
It will be an interesting
case to watch.
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