In a recent letter to Apple users and customers, Apple CEO Tim Cook took a firm stand against a recent request from United States Federal Government.
The government, specifically the FBI, has requested Apple conceive and construct the technology permitting authorities to access encrypted data on smartphones.
“They have asked us to build a backdoor to the iPhone,” Cook said in the letter.
Throughout the letter, Cook asserts his company’s compliance with legally legitimate requests by the federal authorities but this request sets “a dangerous precedent,” he said.
Cook described the technology as “capable of opening hundreds of millions of locks — from restaurants and banks to stores and homes. No reasonable person would find that acceptable.”
On the other hand, the federal government is citing the All Writs Act of 1789 to legitimize their power.
The All Writs Act essentially validates the power of federal entities and courts to exercise provisionary and necessary jurisdiction in order to obtain evidence.
The text of the Act explicitly states “the Supreme Court and all courts established by Act of Congress may issue all writs necessary or appropriate in aid of their respective jurisdictions and agreeable to the usages and principles of law.”
Director of Intellectual Property, Information and Communication Law at the MSU College of Law Adam Candeub said there are a lot of issues with this situation.
Primarily, the issue at hand with the FBI requesting a “back door” entrance to Apple product. First, Apple itself is not the defendant, it is a third party to the prosecution, Candeub said.
“Courts have limited power —particularly to demand third parties do things beyond turning over relevant evidence,” he said.
Candeub said the most common way to retrieve testimony or other relevant information from third parties is a subpoena, something Cook stressed his company is fully willing to do in his letter to customers.
This invoking of the archaic federal statute is “unprecedented,” as Cook suggests, but there is some precedent that suggests the government is on firm ground.
Candeub drew attention to a past Supreme Court case where the All Writs Act was used.
In 1977, in the case United States v. New York Telephone Co, the FBI sought to place pen registers on telephone lines for a sustained period to track criminal activity, a notion the phone company contested.
The Supreme Court however, ruled in favor of the FBI, citing the All Writs Act as appropriate in garnering the FBI extended jurisdiction in order to place the pen registers.
"There is a big difference between a pen register that just records the numbers of calls made—and making Apple decrypt the iPhone. Whether the All Writs Act can make that jump—or you need a new law for Congress—is the heart of the legal question," Candeub said.
However, this frightfully similar situation today is a matter of principle and, as Cook points out in his letter, “the implications of the government’s demands are chilling.”
“If the government can use the All Writs Act to make it easier to unlock your iPhone, it would have the power to reach into anyone’s device to capture their data,” Cook said in the letter.
Students also find themselves apprehensive about a federal government body forcing Apple to create a new technology to access personal data.
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Genetics senior Bogdan Pozderca said the existence of such technology gives hackers the opportunity to target for specific security flaws in the iOS technology.
Further, he said this request by the FBI is setting a "legal precedent" for courts to demand backdoors to this technology.
"I don't think that the idea of the government having access is nearly as bad as the possibility of hackers being able to gain access to one's data," Pozderca said.
