Apple reiterates no to unlocking iPhones after FBI request
Apple is poised for a new showdown with the U.S. government to defend secure encryption of services and devices. "Building backdoors into encryption" is not a solution, said privacy chief Jane Horvath at the CES tech show.
That's a familiar Apple position - but its repetition carries particular weight because just hours earlier it was revealed that the FBI is again asking the company to help unlock an assassin's iPhones.
At issue are devices belonging to the man who killed three people at a Marine base last year. The FBI exhausted its options to gain access to the two phones without success, wrote the New York Times with reference to informed persons. Content on iPhones is encrypted and usually cannot be accessed without a passcode. Apple emphasizes that it will hand over the available information to authorities if ordered to do so by a judge.
The U.S. authorities even filed a lawsuit against Apple in 2015 to force the company to develop methods for cracking the iPhone code lock. In the end, however, the FBI said it was able to get into the phone with the help of an external service provider and dropped the lawsuit. At the time, Apple had argued, among other things, that backdoors for authorities could also be abused. Horvath now emphasized that health and payment data on the devices, among other things, make robust encryption indispensable.
Horvath spoke at CES during a panel discussion in which her Facebook colleague Erin Egan also took part. Egan rejected accusations that the online network collects too much data or engages in "surveillance capitalism" with its advertising model. "I think people's privacy on Facebook is protected today," she said. At the same time, she said, Facebook brings added value to users with its ad-supported business model. The online network may have a different business model than Apple - but privacy is protected at both, she said.
Rebecca Slaughter, a member of the U.S. consumer protection agency FTC, disagreed with her. After more and more data breaches and scandals, it is impossible to conclude that online companies are doing enough to protect data or that users' privacy is being protected, she criticized. The FTC is also responsible for data protection supervision in the U.S. - and last summer imposed a fine of five billion dollars on Facebook, among other things because of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. (SDA)
