By Count Friedrich von Olsen
If you are trying to find someone who knows as little as possible about computers and these newfangled portable telephones that have computers built into them, I’m your man. On the other hand, I know a whole lot about encryption. I guess it is not surprising that I have an opinion or two about this current controversy involving Apple and the U.S. Government, which wants Apple to hand over, or create, a disencryption key for its devices…
As everyone knows, this fellow Syed Farook and his wife killed 14 employees of the San Bernardino County Public Health Department on December 2 before they were gunned down by the police later that day. An investigation has of course ensued and one of the items investigators have come across is his county-issued cell phone, which was manufactured by Apple. Quite understandably, authorities want to access its contents to ascertain whom he was in contact and consultation with prior to his act of mayhem, and determine what his motivation was and if perhaps there are other targets yet outstanding, along with anything more that can be gleaned from the device…
In my view, and it seems in the view of others, there are grounds – i.e., probable cause – to take a gander at what is contained within that device. That is, there is likely something of consequence on the phone and as such, given the nature of what occurred on December 2, the community and society at large has an interest that overrides whatever privacy interests attend the late Mr. Farook’s Apple phone, which after all, was not actually his, but a piece of equipment issued to him by the county. So far, so good…
Where this issue becomes problematic, however, is the phone’s contents were encrypted and the government is demanding that Apple provide a disencryption key for the device. Apple has refused. It gets more complicated still. Apple maintains, as best as I can understand it, that no actual key exists because the encryption system in question does not employ an encryption mechanism involving an actual encryption/disencryption key, so that such a key does not exist. The government says that is hogwash and that if Apple created a device that encrypts what went into it, the company can disencrypt that data. The government is demanding that Apple do so. So far, Apple has refused…
An issue here, of course, is not just the privacy of the now-dead Mr. Farook, but everyone else who owns an Apple device. By handing over this disencryption key to the government, Apple will enable the government to disencrypt the until-now private communications of all other Apple device users. Moreover, since Apple claims that as of yet no such disencryption key actually exists, what the government is asking – actually demanding – is that Apple create such a disencryption key. This is significant, since in the past the government has been able to subpoena only things that actually exist. The government has never, at least to my knowledge, been permitted to subpoena something that doesn’t exist. There are tremendous implications here. If the government gets its way, this will set a precedent that would allow the government to order people or companies or organizations to do a whole host of things they have never actually done nor are inclined to do…
The United States is not my first country. I live here because I have chosen to do so. I have seen more of the world than most Americans. I have lived under regimes that foreclosed on the individual’s rights all across the board, including privacy. Many Americans, I fear, do not fully understand the value of the rights provided to them. At the same time, I understand how outrageous the acts perpetrated by Mr. Farook and his wife were. I understand the desire, even the need, to ensure that further acts of violence are not perpetrated against us by Mr. Farook’s confederates, if indeed he had such. My sense of this is Apple is not likely to simply knuckle under to the government’s request and the government, too, is going to dig in its heels…
Might I suggest this: The government should back off. At first, it presented itself as being clearly in the right and that Apple was merely being intransigent and obstructionist, not to mention greedy, in preventing investigators from completing their work. But already, even the most unquestioningly patriotic and simple minded of those among us are beginning to see that what the government is demanding is not just the ability to read the secret contents of Mr. Farook’s phone but the contents of the phones and computers of all Apple customers. Instead of forcing Apple, at the barrel of a gun, as it were, to meet its demands, it should instead hand Mr. Farook’s phone over to the company and commission it, at whatever cost Apple specifies, to retrieve simply the contents on the phone, without compromising or revealing the encryption system, and hand back those contents to the government. If, as the government contends, it is interested only in those contents and not obtaining an encryption key that can be used against everyone else, then this should satisfy the government. If it is not satisfied with this outcome, then we citizens, the subjects of our government, will then know that our government leaders are no longer loyal to the bedrock concepts and underpinnings of our democratic republic and are hell bent on becoming the totalitarians we as Americans loathe…