A battle for your privacy, along with everyone else's in the United States, is occurring right now. It isn’t being waged in a hack war, or even on a conventional battlefield. Rather, it is being fought in the room of a United States Federal Court Room. And the leaders on both sides are as unconventional as this battle is. The FBI is leading the charge against encryption, an idea for which Apple is fighting.
Before we go into the nitty gritty of what this argument is, I feel we need to understand what encryption is exactly. Encryption is defined, by Dictionary.com, as: “The process of encoding a message so that it can be read only by the sender and the intended recipient. Encryption systems often use two keys, a public key, available to anyone, and a private key that allows only the recipient to decode the message.”
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Now, this case isn’t simply over unlocking iPhones when the FBI requests it -- when they have a subpoena or a warrant. This case is about a certain iPhone: the iPhone of the San Bernardino Shooter. The shooter’s iPhone has a feature enabled that causes, after multiple failed entering of the passcode, the phone to self-destruct or to delete all the data off the phone. This feature is not something he hacked or jailbroke into it, but rather this a common feature on most iPhones and iPods. The FBI has ordered, along with the courts, that Apple develops a special iPhone Operating System (iOS) that would allow for the FBI to circumvent this feature and essentially use brute force, meaning that they try out as many combinations as it takes to open the iPhone.
Now, Apple is objecting to and challenging the order. They say that this creates a backdoor that would compromise the security of their consumers, and ultimately their data. This is new operating system is not simply something that can be destroyed after one use. The knowledge and code will still exist and this creates a dangerous weapon of sorts: the ability to access someone’s phone as long as you have physical possession of it. Forget putting a passcode on your phone, all that will do now is prevent your friend from posting silly updates on Facebook or Twitter. Because if someone were to get a hold of this info and sell it on the black market, your iPhone is suddenly not so safe anymore.
Another reason Apple opposes the case is a precedence. There is no precedence for what kind of situation would warrant this kind of technology. The FBI has made numerous other requests for this kind of program to be developed, including a drug case in New York. What are the guidelines for the kind of situation that warrants the usage of this program? As of now, the answer is a whopping ZERO. Plus, who is to say the FBI or other government agency won’t misuse this technology? It’s happened before, revealed in Edward Snowden’s NSA leaks. The incident is now called LOVEINT, short for Love Interest. What happened was that NSA agents were using their ability to monitor calls and steal data to monitor their girlfriends, boyfriends, exes, love interests, husbands, wives, significant others etc. This was a major abuse of their powers and a major violation of privacy. At worst, they were demoted in position or handed down sanctions. They were not fired though. Some resigned before they could be punished.
To help us understand this case better, I believe an analogy would help. One of my favorite ones is from Facebook user Tony Rush. Rush said it best, in my opinion, when he said:
“Imagine if you owned hundreds of rental homes. And imagine that one of your tenants in one of your homes committed a horrendous crime. If the FBI got a search warrant for that house and asked you to open the door to investigate, you wouldn't have a problem with that, would you? Probably not. But imagine they didn't do that. Imagine, instead, that they said: 'Hey, all these locks and doors and other security features you have on your rental properties are too difficult for us to get through when we need to search somebody's house... so we want you to give us the keys and alarm codes to ALL your rental properties, even though no one in those houses committed a crime.' That's a much different situation. And that's what the argument between Apple and the FBI is about. The FBI is not asking Apple to unlock a single phone. They're trying to force Apple into giving them the key to every iPhone in the world. That's why this is important. And it's got the potential to turn into history's biggest battle over your right to privacy.”
That’s what this case is about, essentially: privacy. It’s not about the iPhone, Apple, or even San Bernardino. It’s about privacy. It's about whether or not you have the right to have your information remain private, and it's about whether or not the government has to respect the right to privacy.
A common argument that many against privacy say is the age-old adage, "If you aren’t doing anything wrong, why do you need privacy?" This phrase is best countered with Edward Snowden’s quotation: "Arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say."
The Apple vs. FBI case will have rippling effects and repercussions on privacy in the coming future. Especially now with the technology sector growing bigger and bigger every year. I firmly believe what Snowden said: that we need privacy, not because we are doing something wrong, but because it is a right we have. And I will continue to advocate and fight for this right. I will do all that I can to not let Big Brother win, and if Big Brother does win, at least, I can say that I stood up to them and fought for the right.
(Comic from moviepilot.com)
(Cover photo from technewstoday Image)
