San Bernardino Shooting Sparks Major Tech Privacy Battle

Apple at Loggerheads with FBI.

- Benjamin Kerry & Gavin Lenaghan

WHY PRIVACY IS THE MOST IMPORTANT ISSUE OF OUR TIME

Many of us may now be used to the new age of intense privacy debates in the wake of the Edward Snowden fiasco, but it seems that this intensity has just stepped up yet another notch with the tussle that has broken out in recent days between Apple and the FBI. Whichever side of the debate you are on - if you take a definite stance at all - the latest debate surrounding our attitudes to encrypted technology in the wake of the San Bernardino shooting has implications for us all.

It is a debate that has its roots in the most terrible tragedy, of the deaths of 14 people and serious injuries to a further 22 in a terrorist attack at the Inland Regional Centre in the Californian city of San Bernardino on December 2 last year. The perpetrators of the latest mass shooting to shock America were a married Redlands couple - Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik - who were later killed by police in a shootout.

This is where the difficulty truly begins for Apple - Farook owned an iPhone 5c that authorities want to unlock as they continue their urgent investigations into the appalling events at a training event at the San Bernardino County Department of Public Health. The FBI turned to Apple for help to access the device’s data - only to be rebuffed in the kind of spectacularly public manner that has prompted frenzied debate across America.

COOK MAKES HIS STAND

In an open letter to Apple customers that was published on February 16 and can still be viewed online, Apple CEO Tim Cook outlined his version of events of what the United States government had asked his company to do “build a backdoor to the iPhone”.