Should Apple Help FBI Unlock Terrorist's Phone? They Say No

Crime scene tape blocks off the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, Calif. following the deadly terrorist attack on Dec. 2, 2015. Patch photo by Renee Schiavone.

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RIVERSIDE, CA - Arguing that he was acting to protect consumers, Apple Inc. CEO Tim Cook Wednesday rebuffed the order of a federal judge in Riverside to help the FBI get around the encryption keeping data secret in a cellphone that belonged to the two terrorists who killed 14 people in San Bernardino last year.

Authorities are trying to determine the couple’s movements between the time of the attack at the Inland Regional Center the morning of Dec. 2 and their deaths in a battle with police hours later. The FBI also wants to know if the two received help planning or carrying out the strike.

Syed Rizwan Farook, the man in the husband-wife terror crew, apparently turned off the phone’s iCloud remote storage function some six weeks before the shooting, according to a government memo, which said he may have done it to conceal evidence.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Sheri Pym in Riverside directed Apple Tuesday to help the FBI defeat the phone’s passcode protection and any auto-erase functions incorporated into the device.

“The government has been unable to complete the search because it cannot access the iPhone’s encrypted content,” Los Angeles-based U.S. Attorney Eileen Decker wrote in a 40-page motion to the court. “Apple has the exclusive technical means which would assist the government in completing its search, but has declined to provide that assistance voluntarily.”

Cook made clear in a statement Wednesday morning that Apple would continue to resist federal authorities, notwithstanding Pym’s order.

Apple has “no sympathy for terrorists,” Cook said, but what the government is doing constitutes “overreach.”

“When the FBI has requested data that’s in our possession, we have provided it. Apple complies with valid subpoenas,” he said, arguing that the request for encryption-defying technology is different.

No such technology now exists, he said

“In the wrong hands, this software -- which does not exist today -- would have the potential to unlock any iPhone in someone’s physical possession,” he said.

“Customers expect Apple and other technology companies to do everything in our power to protect their personal information, and at Apple we are deeply committed to safeguarding their data.”

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— By City News Service.