By Andrew Mason, Staff Reporter.
In an ongoing battle of the FBI vs Apple, things are starting to get interesting. Many tech companies like Google, Twitter, Facebook among other companies in the ACLU have all backed Apple, some even filing friend of the court briefs, and court statements.
On the side of the FBI, the Department of Justice has stepped in and decided to aid the FBI in hopes that they will be able to get Apple to give them what they want. The Department of Justice filed a motion against Apple compelling the company to follow the FBI’s request to create a back-door to the iPhone. The motion was ultimately shut down by a federal judge in Brooklyn, saying that Apple would not have to create the software that the FBI is looking for.
The FBI has come out with arguments against Apple, including the claim that says Apple handed over the source code to their iOS software to the Chinese government. The FBI argues that they are basically asking Apple to do the same thing, and that if they did it with the Chinese, why couldn’t they do it for them?
Apple ultimately denied these claims saying that they have never given out their source code to iOS, and that they have never built a back door to the iPhone. Apple says that software that doesn’t exist, because they know the harm that software can cause. The company is afraid that once the software is created, the FBI will use it for every case involving an iPhone, and that hackers may be able to get ahold of it and wreck havoc on the cyber world.
The situation Apple believes will happen is very dangerous, and we should be frightened by it if the software is eventually created. If the FBI has access to all of that information, that puts 100 million iPhone users at risk in the U.S. alone, and if hackers do eventually get their hands on it then no iPhone user is safe. Apple has given the FBI different ways to try and access the information on the iPhone of the San Bernardino killer, and the tech company has complied with everything else the FBI has asked them to do. If they are unwilling to create such a software, then we must honor them.
