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| © Jim Mone |
"The San Bernardino litigation isn't about trying to set a precedent or send any kind of message. It is about the victims and justice. Fourteen people were slaughtered and many more had their lives and bodies ruined. We owe them a thorough and professional investigation under law. That's what this is. The American people should expect nothing less from the FBI," director Jim Comey said in an open letter released Sunday night.
He said that the legal issue in question is actually quite narrow.
"We simply want the chance, with a search warrant, to try to guess the terrorist's passcode without the phone essentially self-destructing and without it taking a decade to guess correctly. That's it," he wrote.
The phone in question was in the possession of Syed Rizwan Farook. He and his wife Tashfeen Malik, went on a shooting rampage in December that killed 14 people and wounded 22.
Farook's phone, which belonged to his employer San Bernardino County Department of Public Health, is believed to be locked using a security feature that automatically deletes the cryptographic key necessary to un-encode it if ten failed password attempts are made.
U.S. Magistrate Judge, Sheri Pym ruled Feb. 16 that Apple must provide the FBI the means to overcome that particular security feature. That would allow the agency to make unlimited tries to guess the passcode and thereby gain access to whatever is on the phone.
"We don't want to break anyone's encryption or set a master key loose on the land," Comey said.
"I hope thoughtful people will take the time to understand that. Maybe the phone holds the clue to finding more terrorists. Maybe it doesn’t. But we can't look the survivors in the eye, or ourselves in the mirror, if we don't follow this lead," he wrote.
The issue has quickly become a flash point in the tech world, with Apple's CEO Tim Cook writing a public letter on Feb. 16 saying the FBI was asking for something "we consider too dangerous to create. They have asked us to build a backdoor to the iPhone."
Comey responded that he hoped "folks will take a deep breath and stop saying the world is ending, but instead use that breath to talk to each other. Although this case is about the innocents attacked in San Bernardino, it does highlight that we have awesome new technology that creates a serious tension between two values we all treasure — privacy and safety."
The issue shouldn't be decided by "corporations that sell stuff for a living" or even the FBI, but should be "resolved by the American people deciding how we want to govern ourselves in a world we have never seen before. We shouldn't drift to a place – or be pushed to a place by the loudest voices — because finding the right place, the right balance, will matter to every American for a very long time," he wrote.
It is his hope that with the memory of those who died in San Bernardino in mind, "Americans will participate in the long conversation we must have about how to both embrace the technology we love and get the safety we need."
Since a federal magistrate ruled Apple must assist the FBI, the Silicon Valley-based company and federal government have engaged in a legal and public-relations game of ping pong.
Late Friday, Apple executives said the ID passcode to the iPhone the FBI wants Apple to hack for information about one of the San Bernardino, Calif., terrorists was changed less than a day after the government gained possession of it, accidentally re-setting the passcode.
That same day, the Justice Department filed a motion seeking to force Apple to comply with Tuesday’s court order. The filing said Apple's refusal was "based on concern for its business model and public brand marketing strategy."
In the government’s filing, the Justice Department acknowledged the password was re-set in the hours after the attack by authorities with San Bernardino County. The county owned the phone and provided it to Farook.
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