Civil liberties and public safety are often at odds, and questions often arise about how to balance the two. Last week, Attorney General of the United States William Barr may have tried to tip the scale a little further his way on the issue of cell phone encryption. Once again, the U.S. government asked Apple
The suspect in question was involved in a shooting that happened last December on a Florida naval base. The shooting, which was carried out by a Saudi Air Force officer, resulted in the death of three Americans and was called an act of terrorism by U.S. officials. The shooter, Saudi Air Force 2nd Lt. Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani, was fatally shot during his attack. Since that time, officials have come to suspect that Alshamrani wasn't acting alone.
During the A.G.'s investigation, 21 Saudi military trainees were found to have "derogatory material" in their possession. According to the description in the investigation report, these individuals had "some jihadi or anti-American content", " had had some kind of contact with child pornagraphy", or both. Since the time of the investigation, these individuals have returned to Saudi Arabia where they were "dis-enrolled from their training curriculum" and where they will face criminal and military investigations.
Which brought the U.S. investigation back to the suspect's phones. Alshamrani owned two iPhones, and he had both of them with him at the time of the shooting. More importantly, he removed one of them from his person and shot a round into it. The second was also damaged, but the FBI was able to repair both of them. Despite being able to fix the damage to the phones, the crime lab was unable to crack their password protection. In order to discover "with whom and about what the shooter was communicating before he died," Barr requested assistance from Apple.
"So far Apple has not given us any substantive assistance... it is critical that investigators be able to get access to digital evidence once they have obtained a court order... We call on Apple and other technology companies to help us find a solution so that we can better protect the lives of Americans and prevent future attacks." Barr told reporters last Monday.
Apple put out a statement responding to Barr's remarks later the same day. They argue that the A.G. misrepresented the assistance their company has given the FBI in this case. The company said it had provided "gigabytes of information" to the investigators. In response to government requests, Apple handed over "iCloud backups, account information and transactional data for multiple accounts."
Apple says that they wish to cooperate with the investigation, but that "there is no such thing as a backdoor just for the good guys". The technology giant argues that encryption is a key component of protecting "our country and our users' data."
The FBI has requested that Apple help them break the encryption on their devices before. At that time, the bureau was investigating another mass shooter. The attack occurred in San Bernardino in December 2015 and left 14 people dead. The issue was resolved when a third party was able to assist the FBI with unlocking the device. It's not yet clear whether or not a similar solution will be found in this case, but if not, there's likely to be a battle in the courts.
