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They should have left Apple alone from the beginning

Bill Barr looks mad.


It now appears that there was never any reason for the US Justice Department to pick any fight with Apple over the encryption of its iPhones.

Things happen so quickly now that events from as far back as 2015 are chiefly forgotten, but I'm going to resurrect this one. On December 2 of that year, a married couple targeted a Christmas Party being held by the San Bernardino Health Department to commit a terrorist attack. They killed 14 people and seriously injured another 22.

Authorities covered one of the conspirators' work phones (they successfully destroyed their personal phone.) It was an Apple.

In the aftermath of that attack, the US Justice Department received several court orders requiring Apple to cooperate with it is unlocking that phone. Apple objected to and challenged all such orders.

 As it happens, it was not necessary, for national security or for law enforcement or for any other urgent purpose, that Apple put itself in the business of ratting out its customers. Believe it or not, The FBI has quite clever computer geeks on the payroll, and the figured out how to get the information. Having got the information, they apparently determined that it was of no value. Farouk used his work phone for work data. 

  All of this is old settled news. Even as I say mostly forgotten. Or it was until last December, when we got a replay. This time it was a Saudi officer, training at the Naval Air Station at Pensacola, Florida, who killed three people and left behind two locked iPhones. And again the Justice Department, since put under new management, demanded Apple's help. They didn't get it. They didn't need it. 

 Yet Bill Barr is shocked, shocked, that Apple has any interest in keeping faith with its customer base. 

 Yes, Apple could create a "backdoor" allowing law enforcement types access. But as the company has aptly said: there is no such thing as a backdoor that works only for the phones of the bad guys. Also, there is no backdoor that is employable only by law enforcement with which you or I might sympathize. If the US Justice Department  can use a backdoor, then so can the analogs in North Korea. National security and privacy and not in this case opposed interests. They are one and the same.  

https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/5/18/21262731/fbi-apple-unlock-iphone-encryption-bill-barr-alshamrani
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