Despite the creation of Homeland Security following 9/11, and the massive bureaucracy it created, I feel no safer walking through airport security now than I did in 1985. The good people at TSA have stopped nothing. They have caught no one. True, they have confiscated firearms, but they were confiscating firearms 30 years ago. They have been most successful in confiscating breast 
milk, toothpaste, bottled water and frisking 90 year-old, wheelchair-bound WWII veterans. Now we face issues regarding protection through data encryption.
We are told that TSA is a balance between invading privacy and national security. What it is, is a massive inconvenience and a massive waste of taxpayer money. The joke in regard to airport security is that the people most likely to (God forbid) place an explosive on an airliner are those loading baggage, cleaning (hah!) the aisles and delivering peanuts. No one, it seems, checks them.
Recently in the City of San Bernardino, a terrorist madman and his mad wife, killed 14 people. Why? Because they were lunatics who believed their particular brand of radical ideology gave them the right. To get to their home in the City of San Bernardino, they flew on commercial airlines. Just sayin.’
The iPhone and the aftermath
The FBI and all of the associated Homeland Security agencies responsible for protecting us from terrorism missed the madman and his wife. After the mass murder, and the couple then killed in a shootout, the agencies scoured the apartment of the lunatics for any links to other terrorists. They presumably went through everything the couple owned or touched, all of their friends and contacts and known associates. Then they came to the iPhone.
The government could not find a password to unlock the iPhone to determine who the radical couple might have been communicating with prior to the shooting spree. The FBI then went to Apple Computer and asked for their help in unlocking the mobile device. Provide the government the key so to speak to break data encryption.
Apple said “no.”
Here then, is the basis for an ethical whopper. The FBI acknowledges that companies who make the technology should not have the right to always refuse. At the same time, the FBI understands that they should not have the green light to always investigate.
The FBI says that in this isolated case, Apple should provide a backdoor into the iPhone system to unlock the data encryption feature. Apple is digging in by saying that if they provided the backdoor, every potential hacker and certainly every government agency would figure out how to do it.
I am being naïve and simplistic, I know. I involve myself with ethics, not with complex computer programs.
I should note that the government and also Apple’s competition is doing a great job of demonizing the situation. In truth, the government has come to Apple on numerous occasions to get them to unlock their phones. This is not the first attempt. It also has international ramifications. What makes the iPhone unique is the encryption, and not only the FBI, but foreign manufacturers, for example would just love to grab hold of the technology.
In addition, the FBI is pretending to come to Apple and saying, “We just want to be able to have you help us find the backdoor just whenever we really, really need it.”
Does anyone truly believe that? Or do we believe that this will set a precedent for “anyone and everyone” to get at even more of your personal information?
Congress? Are you kidding me?
According to recent polls, about 50 percent of Americans want Apple to provide tools to the government to help them bypass the encryption. About 38 percent of Americans are adamantly opposed to it. Since the argument began, it has been suggested that the case should be put into the hands of “Congress.” That is correct. The same body that currently enjoys a 12 percent approval rating among all Americans should decide this case? I believe not.
If I am an inventor and I discover a unique technology, am I obliged to turn the technology over to the government before I can commercialize it? If I develop software that is intended to keep information private, am I responsible to first turn over the solution to the FBI?
Or, is all of this pressure being brought to bear on Apple because despite the billions of dollars of Homeland Security boasting, two low-level terrorists managed to embarrass the collective intellect of all the agencies and murder 14 people? If we cannot stop these lunatics, who are we honestly prepared to stop?
There is no easy solution to this mess, but my strong suggestion is to place this case in the hands of ethical thinkers, not of politicians, software developers or law enforcement agencies. It is a radical approach, I know, but it is a radical issue.
One thing is clear: after the tragedy of 9/11, we as a nation made some impassioned, poorly constructed decisions. The world is still reverberating from those decisions. This is not another time to jump in and blindly charge forth. Whatever we give up, we will never get back. It is worth a deep, ethical discussion.
YOUR COMMENTS ARE WELCOME!
