The populist press has hammered the question of Apple versus the FBI into the ground. Should a generic backdoor into phones be provided to all law enforcement? I think not. A search warrent for a specific phone would be acceptable, in my opinion. One Paul Ruppert, CEO of a security consultancy group, advanced the security issue discussion in a February 19 opinion piece "The Threats Of Dark Matter" and a following March 11 piece on "The Case for a Presidential Advisory Board on Cybertechnology Intelligence". Both writings have ideas that can be argued pro-and-con. The thought of creating another advisory board troubles me, however. From an organizational point of view, the federal government is already laden with multiple agencies and boards nibbling at pieces of cyber security and technology. I wonder if a top-down reorganization of current paricipants wouldn't better serve government, law enforcement and taxpayers.
It is a thorny issue, certainly, but I think using a warrant system is probably one of the better options for solving the problem. I certainly don't want to give up my privacy--though these days everything seems so accessible anyway.
This as been a hot topic recently, and I can see why. While on the one hand people obviously don't want to give up their privacy, but on the other, if it helps the government to fight terrorism then is it something worth considering? I don't think there is a right or wrong answer, so for the time being at least, I think it's a debate that's set to run and run.
We have a right to privacy, as outlined through multiple amendments in the Constitution. There should not be open access by law enforcement into everyone's phone. Either way though I feel like if they want to obtain the information they already have the ability to do so.
I think the FBI made errors in their procedures and were trying to clean things up. It seems everyone in the world knew there were white hat hackers out there who could help (which they did in the end) so how many meetings and brain cells did they need to just do that instead of making a court case? Did the public need to know they messed up the investigation by tampering with the phone, or that they don't have in-house hackers?
I don't see why Apple was against this. I really don't. A crime was obviously committed and they could help to shed some light on why and how it happened... so why say no? And before you go with "ohh they want to protect our privacy!" just keep in mind that according to their own transparency reports (http://www.apple.com/privacy/transparency-reports/) they have handed out information regarding devices and accounts in tens of thousands of cases last year alone.
Apparently after all of this they say they found nothing on the phone. It's clear that terrorists or people with things to hide will delete all information or use phones that can't be traced in any case. I am all for privacy laws, but surely the safety of a nation and humanity is more important? I do think if some of the Apple executives family had been killed, the answer may have been different.
I think that there should be access in specific cases like this, but not unlimited access to all phone accounts. There shouldn't be any more infringement on an individual's right to privacy then there already is. Just make access acceptable on case by case basis. Not a key for preemptive access to our personal information.
The FBI knew they could get into the phone anyway, all they was trying to do was set a precedent that in future any company would have to do it for them on request. That didn't work out aswell as they planned, so they went ahead and just got another company to do it instead.
