14 DAY TRIAL // The United States President Barack Obama is the latest important figure commenting on Apple’s fight with the FBI over an iPhone used by terrorists in the San Bernardino attacks in December 2015.
During the 2016 South By Southwest conference, Obama was asked whether he thinks that Apple should hack the San Bernardino iPhone and thus help the FBI look for more details in the fight against terrorism, or stand for full privacy and refuse to build a backdoor.
Obama started his answer by emphasizing that he is not a technical expert and “can't comment on that specific case,” but he explained that tech companies should help the government in cases that have an impact on national security.
“A backdoor only available to a small group of people”
Of course, nobody wants the government “looking through phones willy-nilly,” he said, adding that software that could help the FBI break into phones used by terrorists could indeed be developed but only become available to “the smallest number of people possible for a subset of issues that we agree are important.”
Apple’s CEO Tim Cook has previously warned that if such software is created, it’s only a matter of time until both the good guys and the bad guys get their hands on it, but Obama thinks that the US can control who has access to this technology.
“If it's technologically possible to make an impenetrable device or system, where encryption is so strong that there's no key - there's no door - then how do we apprehend the child pornographer? How do we solve or disrupt a terrorist plot? What mechanisms do we have to even do things like tax enforcement? If you can't crack that at all, if government can't get in, then everyone's walking around with a Swiss bank account in their pocket, right?” he said, adding that “we need the tech community to help us solve this.”
Apple and the FBI are expected to appear in federal court later this month, with Cupertino having until March 15 to file a new formal reply in the case.