DOJ Says Apple iPhone Privacy Claims Are ‘A Diversion’
The Justice Department on Thursday accused Apple ( AAPL ) of deliberately raising technological barriers to prevent law enforcement officials from accessing data on its smartphones. The FBI is seeking Apple’s assistance to unlock an iPhone used by one of the two now-dead assailants in the Dec. 2 terrorist shootings in San Bernardino, Calif. It needs to bypass the iPhone’s security to see if the device contains data useful to the investigation. Apple has resisted a federal court order to unlock the iPhone, claiming government overreach. The company says it would have to write software that doesn’t exist to get around the security safeguards on its phones, effectively making it an agent of law enforcement. Once that software is created it could be used as a back door by hackers, criminals and spies, exposing customers’ personal data, Apple said. In its filing Thursday, the Justice Department said Apple and its supporters are trying to alarm the court with talk about network security and privacy. “That is a diversion,” the DOJ said. The court’s order is “modest,” “narrow” and “targeted” to a single iPhone, the filing says. “Apple deliberately raised technological barriers that now stand between a lawful warrant and an iPhone containing evidence related to the terrorist mass murder of 14 Americans,” the DOJ filing said. “Apple alone can remove those barriers so that the FBI can search the phone, and it can do so without undue burden.” The Justice Department criticized Apple’s argument that unlocking the iPhone would be an undue burden. “As Apple Inc. concedes in its opposition, it is fully capable of complying with the court’s order,” the DOJ said. “By Apple’s own reckoning, the corporation – which grosses hundreds of billions of dollars a year – would need to set aside as few as six of its 100,000 employees for perhaps as little as two weeks. This burden, which is not unreasonable, is the direct result of Apple’s deliberate marketing decision to engineer its products so that the government cannot search them, even with a warrant.” Last week, a host of technology companies and civil liberties groups filed legal briefs in support of Apple’s position. Companies backing Apple included Amazon.com ( AMZN ), Alphabet ’s ( GOOGL ) Google, Facebook ( FB ) and Microsoft ( MSFT ). The next court hearing on the case is set for March 22 in the federal court in Riverside, Calif. RELATED: Tech Rivals Unite To Support Apple In iPhone Privacy Case Vs. FBI