Reading 06: Apple vs. FBI

I guess I have a mixed opinion on whether or not companies like Apple should weaken their encryption for the purposes of government surveillance. On the one hand, I am not so concerned with the idea of the government watching me because I do not really have anything to hide, and I understand that the government should be keeping our best interests and safety in mind. On the other hand, it feels creepy to me to let the government be so involved. Now, I realize that the San Bernardino case isn’t necessarily about Apple letting the government have backdoor access to everyone’s phones, just the specific one (though it could be used for other iPhones too). There’s the part of me that says “Yes. We should let the government have GovtOS because if they do have it, they can do a better job of keeping us safe.” However, are we really so naive to think that the government will one hundred percent keep this intelligence and software safe? It’s not like the government has never had leaks or been hacked before or anything… (oh wait). I think Apple is ethically responsible for protecting the privacy of their users, and I also think they are ethically responsible for helping to prevent violent or harmful activities that their platforms may enable. These may seem conflicting (and in some ways it can be), but Apple does think that they are doing both. So much of our lives are defined by the information we transmit, receive, and store on our phones. We’re in a different age than the past where criminals would just go to our homes and steal from us and that’s an invasion of our privacy. Unfortunately, even though we want the government to protect us, what they’re asking could potentially lead us to be less safe from criminals. In the Times article, they say, “if Apple created what amounts to a tool for cracking open iPhones, Cook argues (and security experts tend to agree), and that tool got out into the wild, through hacking or carelessness, the security of every iPhone everywhere would be compromised. This is not an unlikely scenario: code, like the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park, often finds a way to get free. Under this scenario, GovtOS would be the holy grail for hackers everywhere and a gift to authoritarian governments willing and eager to pry into their citizens’ secrets. ‘To invent what they want me to invent,’ Cook says, ‘puts millions of people at risk.’” (Grossman). In the same article, Tim Cook also makes the argument that even if they do make GovtOS, then “the bad guys will use encryption from non-American companies, because they’re pretty smart, and Apple doesn’t own encryption” (Grossman). This argument stands out to me because even if Apple does make the tool for the government, most average Americans will probably still use their iPhones. The serious threats, though, are usually the smartest, and they would just use different phones from manufacturers not under US jurisdiction that can encrypt their data. I wrote earlier that we should not be so naive to think that government secrets can get out of government hands. If that were to happen, well what stops the hackers from sharing it with other hackers,? This makes any iPhone of the average American in jeopardy. I really want the government to be able to keep us safe, but while what they’re asking may keep us safer to some degree, I’m just not sure that what they’re asking keeps us safer overall.