Apple v. FBI
Photo courtesy of SCAD’s Ex Libris’ Facebook Page
Written by Brittany Landry
Editors note: it is Jose Gonzalez, not Gonzales. We apologize for the mistake.
SCAD students cannot avoid Apple products. Not that we would want to. SCAD students are artists and we are attracted to both how aesthetically pleasing Apple products are, and how helpful they are as a tool in our chosen majors. But recently the FBI asked something of Apple that might have you looking at your iPhone in a new way.
Apple is in the top of the field when it comes to encryption. Something that cannot be said for our Federal Bureau of Investigation. It has been three months since the San Bernardino shooting and the FBI has yet to get through the encryption on the terrorist’s standard iPhone. Until recently Apple has been assisting the FBI with the San Bernardino case.
But according to a letter written by the Apple’s CEO Tim Cook, “the U.S. government has asked us for something we simply do not have, and something we consider too dangerous to create. They have asked us to build a backdoor to the iPhone.”
Cook, Sundar Pichai, Google’s CEO, Gen. Michael Hayden, former NSA director, and others agree that creating this backdoor would have enormous consequences.
“People use [smartphones] to store an incredible amount of personal information, from our private conversations to our photos, our music, our notes, our calendars and contacts, our financial information and health data, even where we have been and where we are going,” said Cook. Once the FBI has the ability to access this information what is there to stop them from using it to spy on any American with a smartphone? What if this backdoor got into the wrong hands?
“It’s easy to say ‘I have nothing to hide, so it’s okay,’ but that’s not looking at the long-term question. It doesn’t matter in whose hands the software is in, the ability to access your information (and this can easily be modified to surveil you in real time) would be in someone’s hands,” said Jose Gonzalez, first year senior, Interactive Design major at SCAD.
As SCAD students, we have some idea of what goes into creating a product. Apple designed and programmed our devices to make our lives safe and easy. Now they have been asked to corrupt that design. “Ultimately, we fear that this demand would undermine the very freedoms and liberty our government is meant to protect,” said Cook.
The FBI investigators and lawyers don’t seem to understand the long-term effects of their request. However, Apple and possibly even FBI engineers see the potential and cringe. This is why so many people including Edward Snowden say that this is one of the biggest tech cases in decades.
