Rigby family attack Apple for ‘protecting privacy of murderers’
Firm has previously unlocked iPhones for the FBI 70 times
THE family of Lee Rigby yesterday accused Apple of putting the privacy of terrorists ahead of public safety by refusing to unlock the phone of an IS-inspired killer.
The uncle of the fusilier, who was murdered by Islamic extremists in London in 2013, said the company was acting like it had ‘ sympathy for terrorists’.
Apple is refusing to comply with a court order demanding that it unlocks an iPhone belonging to one of the terrorists behind the massacre in San Bernardino, California, in December.
Fusilier Rigby’s uncle, Ray McClure, said the company and chief executive Tim Cook were ‘ protecting a murderer’s privacy at the cost of public safety’.
He told the BBC: ‘Valuable evidence is on that smartphone and Apple is denying the FBI access to that information.
‘If a court issued a warrant in the UK or United States to search somebody’s house, you wouldn’t stop them, you would allow them in. Why should a smartphone be any different?
‘If Mr Cook has no sympathy for terrorists, why is he stopping the FBI accessing those phone records?’
It was reported yesterday that Apple has previously unlocked iPhones 70 times in criminal cases far less serious than terrorism.
Court documents said the technology firm did not like doing so because the disclosure that it was working with law enforcement could ‘substantially tarnish the Apple brand’.
Apple has refused a court order to unlock an iPhone belonging to Syed Farook, who along with his wife Tashfeen Malik shot and killed 14 people at a Christmas party in San Bernardino, California, on December 2 last year.
The couple, who had been radicalised to become IS supporters on the internet, were later killed by police in a shoot- out. Earlier this week Mr Cook said he was refusing to co-operate because the implications were ‘chilling’ and it ‘threatens the security of our customers’.
But Mr McClure said the company was forgetting about the victims of crime and their families. ‘I would hate to see on the streets of London another murder like happened to Lee Rigby, I’d hate to see another attack like happened in Paris,’ he said.
‘How many victims of crime are not getting justice because of Apple’s stance?’
Google chief executive Sundar Pichai tweeted his support for Apple and said for it to comply with the court order would set a ‘troubling precedent’ and could ‘compromise’ the privacy of users.
Fusilier Rigby, 25, was stabbed to death outside his barracks in Greenwich, south London, by two Islamists who said they were avenging the deaths of Muslims killed by the Army.
Relatives of the San Bernardino victims also called on Apple to obey the law. Mandy Pifer, whose fiance Shannon Johnson was killed, said: ‘I feel like now there are a bunch of terrorists running out and buying iPhones, like the little ‘I’ in iPhone should be for ISIS.
‘A lot of these privacy questions are hypothetical. But we know for a fact Syed Farook killed 14 and there are missing pieces there.’
It was reported yesterday by the Daily Beast, a US news and culture website, that in a case in New York last year it was revealed that Apple had unlocked phones for the FBI 70 times since 2008, figures the company does not dispute.
But in a briefing for the court Apple said it did not want to do so because ‘forcing Apple to extract data… absent clear legal authority to do so, could threaten the trust between Apple and its customers and substantially tarnish the brand’.
Republican Senator Tom Cotton said Apple was choosing to ‘protect a dead terrorist’s privacy over the security of the American people’.
An Apple source said the New York case involved an iPhone that had an earlier version of its operating system. Farook’s phone has a later operating system that Apple says it can’t unlock.
Alex Brummer – Page 17
‘Victims of crime not getting justice’