14 DAY TRIAL // Many believed that the San Bernardino iPhone saga ended when the FBI eventually managed to break into the device with help from an undisclosed group of hackers, but Apple is still facing problems for refusing to help authorities hack phones involved in criminal activities.
The New York County District Attorney Cyrus Vance wants President-elect Donald Trump to introduce laws that would require the likes of Apple and Google to hack the devices they manufacture and which are used by criminals.
In most of the cases, these phones are believed to hold information that would help during the investigation, but given the advanced protection systems used on them, authorities cannot extract the data. The only way to deal with this is the company that built the phone to step in and break into the device, but Apple has until now refused to do so, and the San Bernardino case was the tip of the iceberg.
Donald Trump himself, who has now been elected President of the United States, requested Apple at that time to hack the iPhone used by one of the terrorists in the San Bernardino attack, calling for a boycott of Cupertino’s products should the company refuse to do so.
423 iPhones that officers can’t hack
The NY DA office issued a report called Smartphone Encryption and Public Safety, revealing that there are no less than 423 iPhones that local authorities can’t break into right now and which were involved in criminal activities. 36 percent of them were involved in cybercrime and ID theft, 24 percent were essential in drugs/narcotics investigations, while 9 percent were used for sex crimes.
Cyrus Vance explains that hacking an iPhone doesn’t mean that Apple has to install a backdoor on its device, but only break into a phone when it’s requested to.
“Complying with judges’ warrants for smartphones never involved a government backdoor. It never meant that the government held a key to anybody’s phone. It never enabled access to real-time communications, and it never meant collecting bulk data on anyone,” he said.
“What [default device encryption] does do, is thwart law enforcement’s ability to identify the perpetrators, and take them out of the game. That is the great irony at the heart of this debate. In their purported attempt to provide more cybersecurity, Apple and Google have empowered cybercriminals to act with impunity.”
Apple is yet to issue a statement on this new request, but the next four years are going to be very difficult for the company, as President-elect Donald Trump himself is very likely to push for laws that would require manufacturers to hack devices involved in criminal activities.