“Those who would give
up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither
Liberty nor Safety.” Benjamin
Franklin
The FBI has a court order to force Apple to disable a
password feature on the iPhone of the San Bernardino murderers so the FBI can
look at data possibly stored on that device.
So far, Apple has refused.
Trump has said Apple is wrong, and that it should just do
what the FBI wants. Others agree.
I don’t.
The FBI isn’t asking that Apple simply unlock the phone –
which is what the FBI and the Obama Administration want everyone to
believe. No, what the FBI is demanding
is that Apple engineer a special program the FBI can use to defeat Apple’s
built in protections against hackers.
Right now if you enter the wrong password a set number of
times, all the data on that device are deleted. The FBI wants Apple to provide a tool so it
can use what’s called “brute-force” hacking – generating and trying as many
password combinations as needed – to access data.
Those in favor of forcing Apple to do this say that in this
day and age law enforcement should be able to access encrypted data to prevent
acts of terror. Further, they say that
if you have nothing to hide, you shouldn’t be opposed to this; it would only be
used under strictly controlled circumstances, and only with the approval of a
judge, so your private data will be protected.
To those people I have two words: Eric Snowden.
If Apple makes that tool to unlock data for the FBI, how
long do you think it will be before the government, as usual, screws up and
that tool gets out? How long do you
think it will take before China, Russia, Iran, and other totalitarian regimes
have that tool to spy on their own citizens – or on our own citizens? At the very least, they’ll demand Apple unlock
phones just as for the FBI.
Think of the data people have on their iPhones. Many bank online. Access their medical
records online. Store passwords for all
their accounts on their iPhone, as well as send personal and business e-mail
though their iPhone. Do you want all
that available to the FBI and others?
I’m not a big Apple fan. I think they make decent,
well-designed products, but usually charge a ridiculous premium simply because
of the Apple name. Their services – like
iTunes – are nice, but again overpriced.
Apple sucks at making browsers and a lot of other applications.
They also make mistakes. But this time they haven’t. They
intentionally built protections into their iPhones and related devices to
thwart hackers, whether those are criminals operating out of Eastern Bloc
countries or bureaucrats operating out of our own government agencies.
Will this make it harder for law enforcement to track
terrorists? Probably.
But the tradeoff in our freedom and liberty for greater
security is far too great. If the FBI
gets its way, what’s to prevent other government agencies from also demanding
access for “national security” reasons?
When the government asks us to sacrifice our rights for
security, they are overreaching. And as
we’ve seen too many times recently, the erosion of our rights ostensibly for
the common good gives the government too much power which it will surely
abuse.
Apple is correct to resist.
I don’t trust our own government to keep our private data
private anymore.
I certainly don’t trust that our government won’t ultimately
misuse that data for its own purposes.
There’s too much history that shows it will.
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