Experts Warn FBI's Demands From Apple Could Weaken Security For Americans
SACRAMENTO (CBS13) — Apple announced it will not comply with a federal judge's order to help the Federal Bureau of Investigation hack into an iPhone belonging to one of the San Bernardino shooters.
As people rely more on their smartphones, the devices store some of our most intimate details, including conversations, banking and medical records that they hope won't get in the wrong hands. Apple says that encryption offers us protection.
"There have been people to suggest we have a back door but the reality is if you put a backdoor in, that backdoor is for everybody, good guys and bad guys," CEO Tim Cook said in December.
Now, he's put similar words in a letter to customers explaining why the company is rejecting the FBI's demands to break into the iPhone of one of the San Bernardino shooters, calling it an overreach by the U.S. government.
"The government does it, then it makes it weaker for others to come up with some sort of hack to do it too," said cybersecurity expert Ryan Eldridge.
Currently, Apple's hardware doesn't let them get into an encrypted iPhone that has a passcode, so the company would have to create a way to get in.
"This program would give the FBI an unlimited number of guesses of the passcode to get into the phone," Eldridge said. "Right now if you guess 10 times in a row, it just wipes the phone clean and makes it unusable."
But are Americans even concerned about encryption?
"Encryption to the average American doesn't make a lot of sense, and they don't care, but they would care if someone has access that they don't want to have," he said.
Assemblyman Jim Cooper has introduced Assembly Bill 1681 to ban devices with unbreakable encryption in California. He calls Apple's rejection a financial move.
"Apple's definitely wrong. Sad commentary—profits over people," he said. "I've seen cases of child pornography and trafficking information extracted before by Apple, but now all of a sudden we can't do it, and the whole thing is a selling feature."
The FBI is asking for access to the shooter's work-issued iPhone, because the device hadn't backed up to iCloud in a month and a half. While prosecutors contend it could be an effort to hide evidence of the plot, iCloud backups are known to stop once users reach a relatively small 5GB limit on their account.
That iCloud data is available on Apple's servers and is not protected by the same on-device security the FBI wants to circumvent. That data can be made available through a subpoena.
Apple has five days from Tuesday's decision to appeal the judge's order.