Valuing privacy

The FBI wants to get inside the iPhone of Syed Rizwan Farook, one half of a radicalised Californian couple who went on a bloodthirsty shooting spree. Unfortunately, a password stands between the authorities and their objective. Apple could hand over software that would grant them access – but argues that this could then be used as a “back door” to break in to any other iPhone in future. Google, Facebook and Twitter have now expressed solidarity with Apple’s refusal to comply.

On the face of it, it is hard to sympathise with a company that has made huge profits from mobile phones being so uncommunicative. The democratically elected government of a nation threatened by terrorists is seeking information to help track down co-conspirators in an attack that killed 14 people. It is asking for the assistance of a company that has come to symbolise America’s ingenuity and technological supremacy. That assistance could potentially save lives by preventing a future attack. Still Apple refuses to comply.

Yet while the company is motivated in part by a commercial imperative to reassure customers, its behaviour may not be as egregious as it first appears. For Apple is right in thinking that its customers value their privacy and worry that, given the chance, authorities would love to deprive them of it. Moreover, authoritarian regimes would doubtless greet news that an iPhone “back door” existed with glee. In this digital era, in which we will confide ever more personal data to electronic equipment, state access to such devices must be determined by a wide-ranging debate, not granted on the hoof through the precedent of this case.