Apple vs. the US Government: 10 Questions You May Be Asking

So far, of Silicon Valley's biggest tech giants, Facebook, Twitter and Google have all sided with Apple.

Apple CEO Tim Cook has written another open letter.

In this letter "to our customers", Cook says Apple has refused a demand from the US government, which wants the company to unlock an iPhone used by a criminal suspect. His tone is grave and direct. He calls this kind of "backdoor" intolerable, because:

"The government's demand threatens the security of our customers, and we oppose it because its implications go far beyond the case at hand."

Cook usually writes an open letter when something is serious enough to affect Apple's image. The last one came after an Apple store in Australia refused to let a young Black man in.

This letter has drawn varying degrees of support from tech companies including Facebook, Google and Twitter.

This is not the routine surveillance that everyone dislikes. The target of this investigation is the main perpetrator of a terrorist attack, hardly someone the public will sympathize with. So why would Apple risk a confrontation with the government over him?

How did this start?

It started with a terrorist attack in California last December. Two suspects burst into a center for people with disabilities, killing 14 people and wounding 21. It was the deadliest shooting in the US in nearly three years.

Police killed both gunmen at the scene. During the investigation, the iPhone 5c belonging to one of them, Syed Farook, became an important piece of evidence.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation asked a court for an order requiring Apple to provide "reasonable technical assistance." In his letter, Cook says Apple has already done what is "within our power and the law," such as sending engineers to advise investigators.

The FBI then asked Apple to build a "backdoor" into the phone so it could extract the data. Apple found this unacceptable, hence the open letter.

What exactly is the "backdoor" the FBI wants?

You might ask: why does the FBI, all-powerful in the movies, need Apple's help to crack one small phone? Independent analyst Ben Thompson, drawing on Apple's iOS Security Guide, explains how this works in some detail:

• Since iOS 8, iPhone data encryption has become much stronger. The FBI can open up an iPhone and copy the data on its flash storage, but that data is encrypted.
• On the suspect's iPhone 5c, the key that encrypts the stored data combines a lock-screen passcode chosen by the user with a number unique to each phone. Brute-forcing it (trying every possible combination, for instance) would take years.
• So guessing the lock-screen passcode becomes the easiest option. But iPhone 5c users can turn on a protection feature: after 10 wrong passcode entries, the system permanently erases the device's data. After repeated failures, the system also adds a delay between attempts.

The FBI wants Apple to build a special operating system that does two things:

• It does not erase the data after 10 wrong passcodes;
• It accepts passcodes over a wired connection, so that instead of someone tapping the screen by hand, thousands of passcodes can be tried in quick succession.

Put plainly, with such a system the FBI would not need to crack the encrypted data at all. It could break the iPhone's lock-screen passcode and get all the data directly.

The FBI wants a solution that works once and for all. On models after the 5c, a separate chip and fingerprint-assisted encryption make cracking the data directly far harder. If Apple lowered the barrier to brute-forcing the lock-screen passcode, those added protections could be bypassed.

Why is Apple so resolute?

Cook's main reason for refusing the FBI is that far more than one iPhone is at stake.

This is a new problem of the digital age: the FBI is asking a safe manufacturer to cut a key for a terrorist's safe.

The FBI stresses that the system would be used only on the phone in this case, but such a system could be used to get around iPhone encryption and unlock other people's phones. All of Apple's work on user security would be wasted.

In Cook's own words: "In the physical world, it would be the equivalent of a master key, capable of opening hundreds of millions of locks—from restaurants and banks to stores and homes. No reasonable person would find that acceptable."

How have others reacted?

Privacy touches everyone's personal interests, and Apple's statement set social media alight. Reuters cited figures from a third-party firm showing that most Twitter users support Apple.

Tech companies feel it most keenly. Google CEO Sundar Pichai posted five tweets in support of Apple:

"We build secure products to keep your information safe. Compelling access to data can be legitimate when backed by strong legal grounds, but requiring companies to hack their own users' devices is a very different matter, and could be a troubling precedent."

Pichai did not take a position on the specific case Apple is caught up in, and was criticized for hedging. Still, it is a good start that Google's CEO was willing to speak up at all.

Jan Koum, CEO of the messaging app WhatsApp, was blunt in his statement yesterday. Koum, whose service has hundreds of millions of users, shared the open letter on Facebook: "I have always admired Tim Cook for his stance on privacy and Apple's efforts to protect user data... We must not allow this dangerous precedent to be set."

Facebook, WhatsApp's parent company and the world's largest social network, also issued a direct statement today. It said that while it understands the US government's efforts to fight terrorism, it will fight aggressively against measures that require companies to weaken the security of their systems. "This is a chilling precedent for companies protecting their own products."

Twitter's support was more direct still. Its CEO, Jack Dorsey, simply tweeted: "We stand with Tim Cook and Apple (and thank him for his leadership)!"

Microsoft did not explicitly "support Apple," but its chief legal officer, Brad Smith, retweeted a statement from Reform Government Surveillance (RGS). It said that while fighting terrorists and criminals is important, the government should not require tech companies to build backdoors into their products.

Edward Snowden, who leaked US state secrets and now lives in exile abroad as a wanted man, also spoke out on Twitter against the government:

"The FBI is creating a world where citizens rely on Apple to defend their rights, rather than the other way around."

Some do not support Apple, the government above all.

Donald Trump, a presidential candidate this year, said in an interview: "Apple doesn't want to let us into their iPhone? Who do they think they are?"

Hillary Clinton, another candidate, backed the government more obliquely: "I am glad the Obama administration is going to Silicon Valley to open this kind of dialogue, especially on questions of privacy and security."

Security expert and former FBI agent David Gomez accused Apple of hypocrisy, noting that Silicon Valley companies have for years collected huge amounts of information through all kinds of internet services.

Even at Vox, a publication that does not usually side with government surveillance, writer Timothy B. Lee questioned whether Apple was wise to confront the government head-on over a terrorism case and over the 5c, whose security is weaker. In his view, Apple had picked a battlefield that favors its opponent.

Does Apple have a commercial motive?

Cook has shown again and again that he is willing to work for civil rights and the environment. But in the end, a public company answers to its shareholders.

Challenging the government over a terrorist attack is no small matter. But beyond principle, Apple today also has a commercial reason to do it.

Apple is the world's most valuable company (it was briefly overtaken by Google not long ago), but it is very different from past business giants such as ExxonMobil, IBM and, earlier, Rockefeller's companies. Apple serves the general public, every ordinary consumer. It does not need oil-drilling rights that the government controls. Next to the hundreds of millions of people around the world who spend money on Apple phones and computers every year, government purchases hardly matter.

Since Steve Jobs returned to Apple, its strategy has been to offer computers and devices that are better to use, and to charge more for them.

That business model gives Apple more reason to protect individual consumers, and more reason to share their values.

Since the PRISM revelations, privacy has become an even more sensitive issue.

If you remember the iCloud celebrity photo leak or the XcodeGhost incident, you can understand Apple's caution: any problem involving user privacy has an enormous impact.

In recent years Apple has repeatedly stressed its privacy technology and policies, and security has become a must-mention topic at every product launch.

Apple is an American company, but its business has long spanned the globe, and 1 billion of its devices are now in use. Giving in to the FBI could cost it the trust of the people behind those 1 billion devices.

You can see similar incentives at Google, Facebook, Twitter and Amazon. All of their businesses depend on users around the world trusting them.

Before this clash, each of these companies had already had friction with the government over privacy.

By contrast, Randall Stephenson, CEO of the US carrier AT&T, which relies heavily on its government relationships, said: "I don't think it is Silicon Valley's decision to make on whether encryption is on or off. I understand Tim Cook's decision, but I don't think it's a decision he can make."

Have tech companies opened backdoors for the government before?

Yes, quite often. But their attitude is changing.

The contest between encryption and the government began almost as soon as the technology reached the public.

In 1991, computer engineer Philip Zimmermann created an algorithm called PGP, short for Pretty Good Privacy.

It is a program for encrypting and authenticating messages. Email encrypted with it is protected from leaks, because only the sender and recipient can encode and decode it, and the data stays encrypted in transit.

In the spirit of sharing, Zimmermann posted PGP on an FTP site for anyone to download for free. But the US government later opened an investigation into him, on the grounds that encryption technology counted as munitions and had to be controlled. Zimmermann was accused of violating the Arms Export Control Act, a law often used to prosecute arms dealers.

This episode became known as the "Crypto Wars." After a three-year investigation, Zimmermann was never charged, and encryption began to move into commercial use. But for a long time afterward, the government did indeed shape how strong encryption could be.

Twenty years later, in 2013, the Snowden affair reignited the fight over encryption and the government.

Since then, pressure on tech companies has kept growing. Apple's relationship with the Department of Justice has been deadlocked since 2014. In an investigation involving guns and drugs, Apple was asked to provide the text messages on a suspect's iPhone; it said iMessage is encrypted, so it could not cooperate.

WhatsApp encrypts users' chats. After it refused to hand a criminal's data to a Brazilian court, it was blocked in Brazil for a day last December.

Microsoft has faced something similar. In a criminal investigation, a New York court ordered it to hand over a suspect's emails stored in a data center in Ireland. Apple publicly backed Microsoft's refusal at the time.

According to The New York Times, Obama has asked homeland security and cybersecurity officials, along with officials from the Justice Department, the FBI and the intelligence agencies, to draw up proposals for getting information from tech companies.

According to people familiar with the matter, they are still trying to settle their differences.

Why does this matter so much?

Because it concerns far more than one company.

American companies have often confronted the US government and brought about change. A well-known example is the Pentagon Papers case of 1971:

The New York Times and The Washington Post each obtained a 7,000-page classified Pentagon study and used it to reveal a great deal that the Nixon administration had concealed.

Courts soon ordered both papers to stop publishing the government's information. After a few days' pause, the papers' parent companies appealed to the Supreme Court, which ruled against the government. From then on, it became far harder for the government to use the courts to suppress speech.

The Pentagon Papers case was one of the finest moments in American journalism.

The two newspaper giants were defending not only their own freedom to report but also that of their peers. As one defense lawyer in the case put it, it is not only big media that need protection. When newspapers and radio stations in cities and small towns, smaller outlets without the money to fight, are pressured by local governments and end up in court, they can cite the Pentagon Papers precedent.

Clashes between tech companies and the US government have never stopped. A recent example is Lavabit, the encrypted email service Snowden used, which refused to hand over its decryption keys.

Lavabit was a small company, and its fight with the government ended with it shutting down. Its courage is moving, but it did not beat the government. The Apple now challenging the US government is the most valuable company in business history, and Google and Facebook, which back it, each have more than a billion users and market values in the hundreds of billions of dollars.

If the conflict between Apple and the Justice Department keeps escalating and Apple wins in the end, it may well set a benchmark for privacy protection.

What happens if Apple loses?

If Apple loses this case and gives in, it will set a precedent for opening a backdoor in a phone and handing the government the key to its data. In the US, at least.

Start with the FBI's tactics. It is invoking the All Writs Act, a US law passed in 1789, to try to force Apple to comply. The act is sweeping:

Within the limits of the law, the Supreme Court and all courts established by Congress may issue all writs necessary or appropriate in aid of their respective jurisdictions.

Courts generally turn to the act when they cannot find a conventional way to gather evidence. So although it is ancient, it still often appears in tech-related fraud and criminal cases.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Apple was caught by it as early as 2008, when the act obliged it to help New York police examine the phone of a couple accused of child abuse.

Ben Thompson, the analyst mentioned above, argues that the biggest difference from earlier cases is that older versions of iOS were not especially secure. Now the court is asking Apple to fit its encryption with a weakened mechanism the government can use whenever it likes.

And if Apple, the richest company of all, loses and sets a precedent, who knows which tech company will be next? By then, the concessions would probably go well beyond phones.

Should the government get every piece of information that exists?

Things did not get this way overnight. Before smartphones became widespread, the government had no way to watch the public on a mass scale either.

In the eras of print, radio and television, the US government could track very little personal information. What it could control were the publishers: newspapers and magazines, radio stations and TV stations.

In those days, it was not too hard for an ordinary person to keep a few small secrets.

Even later, when personal computers and the internet let people write and send messages online, computers were still fairly expensive and not portable. At most, the government could know what you were doing for two or three hours a day.

A smartphone, by comparison, is a miniature networked computer within reach all day long. That makes it the government's best tool for collecting personal information about the public.

Everywhere you go, everything you say, everything you do can be monitored. The government can know far more about you than it could 50 years ago.

But does the existence of the data mean the government should have it?

What does this have to do with Chinese readers?

Frankly, not much.

Cook's fight is not easy. But he really does not have to worry that the courts will deny him a chance to appeal; that his company's website will suddenly become inaccessible in the US because of something he said; that he will lose contact with his family and company the moment he steps off a plane; or that he will be made to confess in a prison uniform in front of FOX or NBC cameras.

How the fight between Apple and the US government turns out has little to do with us here.

Cover image: Flickr | thierry ehrmann