Apple and the FBI showed no sign of compromise in their fight over encryption as the battle moved to Capitol Hill for a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee.
Bruce Sewell, Apple’s general counsel, said in written testimony that the FBI’s demand for the company to break into an iPhone that belonged to one of the gunmen in the San Bernardino, California, attacks that left 14 people dead “would set a dangerous precedent for government intrusion on the privacy and safety of its citizens.”
FBI director James B Comey emphasised the importance of law enforcement’s ability to get access to data for criminal investigations.
He said the agency had increasingly confronted cases in which significant evidence resided on devices such as mobile phones, tablets and laptops.
“If we cannot access this evidence, it will have ongoing, significant impacts on our ability to identify, stop and prosecute these offenders,” Mr Comey said.
The battle between Apple and federal law enforcement has come to symbolise a long struggle between technology companies and the government over privacy and national security. The FBI’s court order for Apple to provide access to the iPhone used by the San Bernardino attacker, Syed Rizwan Farook, has divided the public and lawmakers over the responsibility of private companies like Apple to protect the civil liberties of users while also assisting the government in efforts to combat terrorism.
Mr Sewell said in his written testimony that Mr Comey and other law enforcement officials had indicated their desire to create a legal precedent to make similar demands to break into iPhones in other cases. Separately yesterday, US attorney general Loretta Lynch challenged Apple’s refusal to comply with the judge’s order that it help unlock the dead terrorist’s iPhone, bluntly questioning the company’s insistence that it has the right to refuse to cooperate.
"Do we let one company decide this issue for all of us?" Ms Lynch said in San Francisco. "Do we want one company to say this is how investigations are going to be conducted and no other way?" Ms Lynch made her most expansive comments to date on the government's battle with Apple during a discussion on Bloomberg Television. – (New York Times service and Bloomberg)
