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might be recovered. But it turns out that the automatic backup feature was turned off the previous October, possibly by
Farook, to avoid just such snooping. After trying everything
they could think of, including things Apple suggested, the
FBI asked Apple to do something that the firm claims
is unprecedented.
The FBI wanted Apple to write a new operating system
for Farook's phone that would allow unlimited password tries
electronically, which would have allowed the FBI to access
the phone's data. They said it would only be used on Farook's
phone, so there was no risk to anybody else's phone. The FBI
put this request in the form of a court order, and Tim Cook
vowed to fight it.
Why? Apple claimed the risks of that system getting
loose, either accidentally or by command, were simply too
great, and dug in their heels. It was suggested that once it
became generally known that Apple had developed such a
backdoor, a repressive regime could order the firm to give it
to them or be kicked out of the country.
This is not the first time that Apple and the federal government have been at loggerheads over encrypted data. In a
2014 case, Apple was ordered to extract data from an iPhone,
but it is not immediately clear from the record whether they
complied. In both that case and the San Bernardino situation,
the FBI cited as its authority the All Writs Act of 1789, which
basically lets courts issue writs (orders) "necessary or appropriate in aid of their respective jurisdictions and agreeable to
the usages and principles of law." To the ears of this nonlawyer, it sounds like the law basically says that you can do
whatever you want. The Act is typically hauled out as a kind
of last resort, as subsequent case law has erected a set of four
conditions that must be fulfilled before a court can issue an
order under the Act. Of course, the FBI thought the conditions were fulfilled. Apple didn't.
Apple's stand was based on the idea, not that common
among high-tech companies, that even Apple doesn't have any
business with your personal data, which is why they designed
the iPhone operating system to be so hard to crack. This differs
from practices of other firms, who happily mine their customers' private data for commercially valuable things like brand
names and so on. Privacy advocates from across the political
spectrum joined Cook in his opposition to the order.
National Review commentator Kevin Williamson voiced
that the FBI took the easy way out by simply ordering Apple
to do the feds' job, and there is evidence to support this
claim. For example, in its instructions to Apple, the FBI
asked it to rig a Bluetooth link to the phone so the FBI could
try the 9,999 different number combinations electronically,
instead of making somebody do it by hand. This apparently
minor detail has the aroma of a royal order to underlings-
"and while you're at it, fix it so I don't mess up my manicure
wearing my fingers out on that touch screen of yours." Back
in the days of telephone hacking in the 1960s, teenagers with
time on their hands would amuse themselves by dialing all
9,999 numbers in a given three-digit telephone exchange

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(e.g., 292-0000 to 292-9,999) just for the thrill of discovering
the test and supervisory numbers the phone company used for
long-distance routing and maintenance. Apparently, the FBI
can't be bothered with such tedium.
This fight had a remarkable outcome. One day before the
FBI was going to court again to force Apple to comply, the
agency reported that a private non-U.S. company had succeeded in cracking the phone, and it turned out that the
phone's memory held nothing useful to the investigation. The
FBI did not disclose either the identity of the company or the
nature of their methods, and the White House said that it
wasn't going to intervene to release information about the
cracking, citing commercial privacy concerns.
There is little doubt that the FBI paid a substantial sum for
the anonymous firm's services. This incident is just the tip of
a vast iceberg of technology vulnerabilities that are traded on
the open market-a market that is at any rate open to spies,
companies, and governments who can benefit from such
tricks and are willing to pay for them. Of the three parties
involved-the FBI, Apple, and the phone-cracking firm-the
FBI came out looking the worst, showing themselves not
only technically incompetent but arrogant as well. And while
Apple is probably not happy that a private company has figured out how to crack their phone, at least the method wasn't
disclosed for all to see and use.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Karl Stephan (kdstephan@txstate.edu) is a professor at the
Ingram School of Engineering, Texas State University, San
Marcos. This article originally appeared in his engineering
ethics blog at www.engineeringethicsblog.blogspot.com on
22 February 2016.

READ MORE ABOUT IT
Kevin Williamson's column "Hurray for Tim Cook" can be found
at National Review Online at http://www.nationalreview.com/
article/431491/apples-tim-cook-right-resist-governmentsdemand. I referred to articles by ABC News reporter Jack
Date that appeared on 19 February 2016 at http://abcnews.
go.com/US/san-bernardino-shooters-apple-id-passcodechanged-government/story?id = 37066070 and 17 February
at http://abcnews.go.com/US/fbi-iphone-apples-securityfeatures-locked-investigators/story?id = 36995221.
For the private company cracking story, I reviewed a
report dated 13 April 2016 by Reuters at http://www.reuters
.com/article/us-apple-encryption-whitehouse-idUSKCN0XB05D and a report from 16 April 2016 by www.cnet.com at
https://www.cnet.com/news/fbi-apple-san-bernardino-iphoneterrorist-encryption-privacy/.
I also referred to an article in The Guardian online at
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/feb/19/applefbi-privacy-encryption-fight-san-bernardino-shooting-syedfarook-iphone, and Wikipedia articles on encryption software
and the All Writs Act of 1789.

http://www.engineeringethicsblog.blogspot.com http://www.nationalreview.com/ http://abcnews http://www.go.com/US/san-bernardino-shooters-apple-id-passcode http://abcnews.go.com/US/fbi-iphone-apples-security http://www.reuters http://www.cnet.com https://www.cnet.com/news/fbi-apple-san-bernardino-iphone http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/feb/19/apple

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