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Apple on wrong side

Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, certainly is welcome to argue that Apple shouldn’t help put together an investigation to find out why a couple of people, one of whom was using a government-provided iPhone, decided to shoot up a workplace in San Bernardino, Calif. In America, we have room for such arguments and discussions.

He’s welcome to argue the issue, but we think he is misguided on this one.

The slippery slope argument doesn’t apply here, unless he thinks Apple’s own people are going to sell out to, or become, hackers.

What the federal government appears to have done in the investigation of the San Bernardino terrorists is to come to a place where it needs technical assistance that can be provided by Apple. It has asked Apple for help and Apple apparently decided to let the issue go the legal route. The government obtained a judge’s order. And Cook thumbed his nose at a federal magistrate.

It’s hard to argue that all of us will suffer on this one. His letter to millions of customers detailing Apple’s reasoning is flawed, at best. He argues that encryption is needed to protect our private information contained in our smartphones from hackers and theives. He argues that the feds want a new version of the iPhone operating system with a back door for authorities, and that would lead to government intrusion on our lives.

Nowhere in the government’s requests does it appear to be asking for anything other than a way, in this one case, on this one phone, to prevent destruction of data by inputting an incorrect password a number of times. It’s asking, in this one specific case, to prevent destruction of data. Cook contends that once the ability is created on this one phone, it can be done over and over again on all iPhones.

If that’s the case, why can’t the system be well protected? Why would it not be possible to configure the system in such a way to require the government, every time, to make a public request for a court order? What Cook proposes is the kind of privilege in iPhones that people enjoy in attorney-client privilege, doctor-patient privilege or the sanctity of the Catholic confessional, that what we tell our phones stays only with our phones. It’s a tool, not a confidante.

To think hackers aren’t sitting out there right now working to break into iPhones and their vaunted protections is to live in a fantasy world.

To think of this as a personal privacy issue in a world where people willingly conduct banking and go shopping with their phones, post pictures of their loved ones in hospital beds with tubes hanging out of them or unwittingly give up data about their location, their shopping preferences, what they like and what they don’t like via where they go physically or on the Internet, is a little ludicrous.

It’s not the sort of intrusion presented by a government program collecting data about all of our locations and our phone calls and texts and storing them. Cook contends it’s a step in that direction. But, if he’s been paying attention, the feds have been trying their best at that wide net stuff already. They got caught by whistleblower Ed Snowden.

In this case, it’s a criminal investigation. Folks ignored the protests of Snowden and others about personal freedom in a case where all Americans with smartphones were involved. We can’t figure out how people could possibly support Cook’s arguments in a case where criminality isn’t a question. The phone’s users shot up their co-workers.

The government can bust down doors of meth labs in residential kitchens with battering rams if necessary.

This case simply is about getting a battering ram that doesn’t destroy all the evidence when it’s flung into the door.

Seems to be a simple case. Do we really think preventing the government from collecting evidence in a criminal case protects some right to privacy? Or is it a case of allowing the criminals to hide behind their encrypted phones while the rest of the world is revealing everything possibe about their personal lives, intentionally or otherwise, everywhere on the Internet?

Cook isn’t taking some technical high road against Big Brother here. He’s protecting criminals.

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