The FBI selected the San Bernardino shooting as a "poster child" for their cause to open up encrypted phones to Government snooping. FBI for the past year has been complaining about the need for access to encrypted phones. This situation looked like the perfect Trojan Horse for them to use the horrible nature of the crime as leverage to build public consensus to force companies to provide the Government a back door to our phones.
Other than the horror of the shootings, there is probably little merit to getting into the phones. The two shooters, Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife Tashfeen Malik, are dead, and they made sure that their personal phones were totally destroyed. That certainly makes it appear that those phones were probably the location of any information that might incriminate others. This phone is a county government phone.
Also, in this case, the Government made two serious mistakes. First, San Bernardino County should have paid the small additional amount for the Apple-provided service that would allow the County to always be able to track and open the employee's phone. Second, the Government shouldn't have changed the iphone cloud password (see this Wired link). That made it impossible with the current technology to get into the phone in question. So, the Government made 2 serious mistakes, and now wants to put all phone owners at risk to be able to get into that phone and possibly find that there might have been someone else partially involved with the crime.
Of course, the FBI knows that as soon as Apple would create the capability to break into this phone, they would be following up with hundreds of more requests. Other US police agencies would also want to get into our phones. Every country where Apple sells it's phones (probably all countries) would also demand the same capability or they would "ban" apple from selling in their country. Apple, of course, would have to comply. From then on, nobody who travels to those countries would be safe from foreign government snooping through their phones. Worldwide privacy would be gone!
Other than the horror of the shootings, there is probably little merit to getting into the phones. The two shooters, Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife Tashfeen Malik, are dead, and they made sure that their personal phones were totally destroyed. That certainly makes it appear that those phones were probably the location of any information that might incriminate others. This phone is a county government phone.
Also, in this case, the Government made two serious mistakes. First, San Bernardino County should have paid the small additional amount for the Apple-provided service that would allow the County to always be able to track and open the employee's phone. Second, the Government shouldn't have changed the iphone cloud password (see this Wired link). That made it impossible with the current technology to get into the phone in question. So, the Government made 2 serious mistakes, and now wants to put all phone owners at risk to be able to get into that phone and possibly find that there might have been someone else partially involved with the crime.
Of course, the FBI knows that as soon as Apple would create the capability to break into this phone, they would be following up with hundreds of more requests. Other US police agencies would also want to get into our phones. Every country where Apple sells it's phones (probably all countries) would also demand the same capability or they would "ban" apple from selling in their country. Apple, of course, would have to comply. From then on, nobody who travels to those countries would be safe from foreign government snooping through their phones. Worldwide privacy would be gone!
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