![]() ![]() While Apple may not have been back in court over this issue, others have.īruce Sewell, Apple's general counsel, testifies before a House Judiciary Committee hearing on March 1 about Apple's refusal to help the FBI hack an iPhone 5C. As of January, more than half the volume of internet traffic is now encrypted, according to Firefox browser maker Mozilla. No other encryption bill has been proposed since. ![]() In late May, that bill - which was never actually introduced to the Senate - died. "It would mean the end of any actual privacy protection." "The consensus among security and privacy and legal experts was that was a terrible idea," said Larry Downes, project director for the Center for Business and Public Policy at Georgetown University McDonough School of Business. Tech companies essentially would be legally required to build back doors into their products, the very thing Apple fought against. The bill would have given federal judges the authority to order tech companies like Apple to help law enforcement officials access encrypted data. The same time Apple was battling the FBI, draft legislation leaked for a possible encryption bill from two US senators, Richard Burr, a Republican from North Carolina, and Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat from California. Watch this: FBI drops Apple court case after unlocking terrorist's iPhone Facebook-owned messaging app WhatsApp rolled out end-to-end encryption in early April, which means it doesn't have access to those messages and can't be forced to surrender them to the authorities. The government and law enforcement officials counter that encryption hurts their ability to investigate criminal and terrorist activity.Īpple's battle with the FBI got the average consumer and Congress thinking about the once wonky topic of encryption. Tech firms and privacy advocates argue that encryption is essential to secure personal information and communications. And if investigators entered the wrong passcode 10 times, the iPhone's data would be wiped. If investigators copied the hard drive, the data would remain scrambled. The technology scrambles data and requires a passcode before letting you have access. What the fight came down to was the encryption used on Farook's iPhone 5C. "I would characterize this as the opening volley in what's going to be a very long-term conversation," said Paul Rosenzweig, a former Department of Homeland Security official and founder of cybersecurity company Redbranch Law and Consulting. Here's a quick refresher: In early 2016, the FBI wanted Apple to create software to unlock an iPhone 5C used by Syed Farook, who weeks earlier had killed 14 people in a terrorist attack in San Bernardino, California. ![]() And we just fought." What happened again? And so we had a choice to just blindly do what the institution said to do, or to fight. Last week at the University of Glasgow in Scotland, he said that "it wasn't that we were being activists it's that we were being asked to do something that we knew was wrong. "The notion that privacy should be absolute, or that the government should keep their hands off our phones, to me just makes no sense given our history and our values."Īpple CEO Tim Cook, meanwhile, has continued to champion strong encryption and Apple's efforts to protect customer data. "The logic of strong encryption means that all of our lives, including law enforcement's life, will soon be affected by strong encryption," he said. The FBI referred CNET to comments made by FBI Director James Comey in April, when he talked about how the US has always balanced privacy with public safety and how encryption has upset that balance. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |