In spite of all the headlines that make Apple sound like a villain who supports terrorism, this is a very complicated issue…for more complex than you can imagine. In simple terms, the FBI wants Apple to simply unlock a phone used by one of the two Muslim nut jobs who killed all those people in San Bernardino a few months ago.
First of all, this phone did not belong to the terrorists. They destroyed their phones before the attack. This phone belongs to the San Bernardino County Health Department who employed one of the killers. It is encrypted, like all iPhones. Even Apple cannot undo or break that encryption. The FBI wants to try it themselves. All they want Apple to do is write a simple program that unlocks the phone.
For those of you who own an iPhone, you know the device is unlocked when you enter a 4 digit passcode that only you know. Apple does not know it. This 4 digit code has over 10,000 permutations…but if you attempt to unlock it using random numbers, the phone will brick itself after 10 incorrect entries. Then no one will ever get in.
The only way for Apple to help the FBI get into it is to write a special program for the FBI that will unlock the phone and shut down all the security protections Apple has built into the phone…which is what the court ordered Apple to do.
The problem is if that program is given to the FBI, they now have access to almost every iPhone in the world. Then every iPhone becomes completely insecure. Not only that, if that program gets into the wild, well you can guess the rest. Think it can’t happen? With the government’s track record of security, I guarantee you that this program will soon be in the hands of bad people. Your iPhone would become an open book for all to exploit.
It is extremely doubtful that the FBI will be able to decrypt the phone, even if they get into it. Apple has one of the finest encryption programs in the world. Not only that, it is extremely doubtful that if they could decrypt it, they would find anything useful. The good stuff was probably on the phones the killers destroyed. Not only that, but the two terrorists are dead, so the info is not going to be used in any prosecution. So do you want your iPhone put at risk for such a dubious undertaking? I sure don’t.
There is much more to it than I have explained here. I suggest you read the first two stories to get more facts. Besides this issue, there is more here today that can help you (hopefully) with your computing needs. Enjoy. -JRC
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