Wednesday, February 24, 2016

Should the Authorities Be Able to Access Your iPhone?



Syed Rizwan Farook who was responsible for killing 14 people in San Bernardino, CA left his iPhone 5C at the crime scene. The F.B.I cannot access this cellphone because his iPhone password is encrypted and the iPhone was designed to keep people’s information private.
This incident has opened the debate between the F.B.I and Apple administrators about the phone’s accessibility to one’s privacy. The F.B.I argument was that homes, cars and computers should not have unbreakable locks. In addition, they pointed out that computers and cellphones should not use passwords to keep the information secret forever. The F.B.I asked Apple to write a software program that would allow the government to have access to Farook’s cellphone. On the other hand, Apple argued that people keep their life events electronically, so it is not ethical that government has access to peoples’ private information.
Timothy Cook, chief executive of Apple, said that he was going to fight against this demand because unencrypting iPhones creates a dangerous precedent. Mr. Cook maintained that he understands the urgency of the FBI access. However, the worry is that once the FBI has access to Farook’s information everyone’s privacy will be in danger because nobody can guarantee that this accessibility is not going to be used again.


http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/18/us/politics/whether-phones-should-lock-out-the-fbi.html?_r=0

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