Friday 19 February 2016

FBI orders Apple to build a ‘backdoor’ on iPhones


The intelligence community(FBI) is pressuring the tech world to help them break encryption systems and create a backdoor into privately held devices. Apple was instructed by the FBI to build a version of IOS that would let the FBI install that version on a terrorist's phone enabling it to use a brute force method of pushing through every possible combination of passwords into the phone until it unlocked the phone. The goal is to find out if there is anything of value to the FBI's investigation into a horrific terrorist act.
In an open letter, Apple CEO Tim Cook has drawn the company’s line in the sand when it comes to federal intrusion of privacy. It reads in part:
“We have great respect for the professionals at the FBI, and we believe their intentions are good. Up to this point, we have done everything that is both within our power and within the law to help them. But now the U.S. government has asked us for something we simply do not have, and something we consider too dangerous to create. They have asked us to build a backdoor to the iPhone.
Specifically, the FBI wants us to make a new version of the iPhone operating system, circumventing several important security features, and install it on an iPhone recovered during the investigation. In the wrong hands, this software — which does not exist today — would have the potential to unlock any iPhone in someone’s physical possession.”
The FBI demand is coming in the wake of the San Bernardino shooting (On December 2, 2015, 14 people were killed and 22 were seriously injured in a terrorist attack at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, California, which consisted of a mass shooting and an attempted bombing). The FBI has demanded that Apple create a software that would allow the agency to unlock the shooter’s iPhone which was running iOS 9 and was locked with a pass-code. The FBI believes the phone contains information that could help the ongoing investigation..

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