How safe is the information you have stored on that little portable everything that buzzes in your pocket every two minutes? In case you've forgotten, it was a little over one year ago that Apple locked horns with the FBI, regarding an order from a federal magistrate in California, ordering the tech giant to help federal investigators try to get into an iPhone used by San Bernardino gunman Syed Rizwan Farook.
It all started on Feb. 16, 2016 with an order from Judge Sheri Pym. After weeks of legal wrangling ended on March 29, 2016, Judge Pym vacated the order.
The Justice Department withdrew legal action against Apple after a third entity, believed to be Israeli mobile forensics innovator Cellebrite, enabled the FBI to crack the IPhone’s security function — without erasing its contents. The information on the phone, used by Syed Farook, was seen as vital to the case. Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, carried out the Dec. 2, 2015 mass shooting in San Bernardino leaving 14 dead.
It's reasonable to accept that Apple had a right to protect its customers but the fact that a private organization could decrypt the iPhone and provide that technology to the government raised many eyebrows.
With so much vital information being stored on mobile devices, is our un-copyrighted intellectual property safe on our phones? Trade secrets, travel plans, even our personal and financial information could be potentially at risk if that decryption technology fell into the wrong hands. The question arises, should large technology companies or tech firms be forced to bow down to government entities?
Then there is the 4th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, prohibiting unreasonable search and seizure. It establishes a requirement for governmental searches and seizures to be conducted only after the issuance of a warrant, one judicially issued, and one with probable cause; supported by oath or affirmation, one specifically describing the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized.
For the federal government to single out the millions of Apple customers by sanctioning the creation of a decryption mechanism potentially exposes them to fraud should that mechanism fall into dishonest hands.
Technology and information storage and transfer has been the foundation of modern life for the past generation — whether we like it or not. This vast technological backbone has a finite structure held together by security. When government strong-arms private businesses into compromising their relationship with consumers, it opens a Pandora’s box of potential infringement.
We have seen how easily groups like Wikileaks and Anonymous have penetrated government networks. The potential for hackers and cybercrooks to destroy our sense of security regarding the private data we store on countless tech devices is a very real concern in our lives in the 21st century.
Not only are potential privacy violations from the government as they solicit 3rd parties to create backdoors into our "personal effects," are an area of concern. Also conerning is that Apple and similar companies now have to reexamine their own encryption methods, to not only stay ahead of not only cybercrooks seeking private data on vulnerable sources such as our cell phones and personal computers, but legitimate governments as well. This certainly is not fair to the private sector.
Most people are not aware of the protections we waive when we click on that little box to accept the terms and conditions of the software platforms we store our precious data on. Perhaps we should take the time to read them and educate ourselves on the way we potentially hand back the constitutional rights our brave founders risked their lives for with the simple click of a mouse.
Julio Rivera is an entrepreneur, small business consultant and political activist. He contributes to RightWingNews.com and NewsNinja2012.com, and had previously covered boxing and baseball for the now defunct "The Urban News" in his native Paterson, N.J. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.
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