USA TODAY International Edition
Our view: Blaming Apple on gunman's iPhones isn't enough
The government has twice now chosen to publicly shame Apple for not helping to crack a terrorist’s iPhone after a horrific attack, rekindling a debate over personal security versus the need for law enforcement to do its job.
After a 2015 mass shooting by terrorists in San Bernardino, California, the Obama administration demanded that Apple create a “backdoor” allowing FBI agents access to all iPhones with a court order. “The government is asking Apple to hack our own users,” company CEO Tim Cook said.
This month, Attorney General William Barr said the company must unlock two iPhones left by a Saudi shooter who killed three sailors at a Navy base in Pensacola, Florida, in December.
President Donald Trump weighed in on Twitter: “We are helping Apple all of the time on TRADE ... yet they refuse to unlock phones used by killers, drug dealers and other violent criminal( s).”
Although Apple said it turned over to the FBI many gigabytes of information from iCloud backups and transactional data, neither side is budging on the core issue of phone security.
It’s an emotional and nearly irreconcilable argument that hasn’t changed in four years: Weighing law enforcement demands to quickly investigate when lives might be at stake, against the security of hundreds of millions of iPhone users who keep everything from health to financial records on their devices that would be more vulnerable to hackers and other criminals.
To comply with Barr’s demands, the company would have to create software capable of unlocking phones by means other than a passcode. That would risk the security of iPhones everywhere. “There is no such thing as a backdoor just for the good guys,” the company argued.
The dilemma cries out for a third way satisfactory to both sides.
That seemed to emerge in 2016, when the Obama Justice Department dropped legal action to force Apple to comply after investigators hired a third- party hacker to crack the device.
The Pensacola shooter’s two locked iPhones are dated models, and vendors have gotten more sophisticated and less expensive since 2016. Local law enforcement agencies, as well as federal authorities, have successfully used their services, according to The Wall Street Journal. But the Justice Department has said that third- party hackers aren’t always able to help.
Why Barr’s investigators haven’t cracked the Pensacola phones is unclear. The gunman did try to disable them before dying, damaging one and shooting a round into the other. But the attorney general told reporters that FBI experts restored their functions.
In any case, Barr hasn’t provided any details other than his claim that all other efforts to unlock the phones have been exhausted.
That’s not enough. For the public to make such a tough call, Barr needs to be forthcoming about why he can’t break into those phones without undermining the security of millions of Americans’ private information.