The question of security backdoors and phone hacking looms large again. This time, U.S. Attorney General William Barr is asking Apple to unlock the phone of the alleged shooter who killed three people in Pensacola, Florida, The New York Times reports,
If this sounds familiar, it’s because we’ve heard it before. In 2016, Apple refused a court order to remotely unlock the phone of one of the San Bernardino shooters, a terrorist attack that killed 14 people. The FBI ended up paying a private Israeli firm Cellebrite nearly $1 million to unlock the phone. The exact number has never been disclosed, but the debate over privacy versus access is likely to gear up again with this latest request.
Since the San Bernardino debate, law enforcement and tech companies have locked horns again and again over the question of security backdoors, including late in 2019 when high-ranking law enforcement officials from the U.S., Australia, and Great Britain sent a letter to Facebook asking CEO Mark Zuckerberg to not go forward with plans to encrypt the Messenger app, arguing that it was essential that a backdoor be left accessible to law enforcement.
Facebook’s response was in line with Apple’s 2016 answer: Nope. Their reasoning was simple — there is no such thing as a backdoor when it comes to encryption.
A spokesperson for the El ..
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