FBI vs Apple

The Federal Bureau of Investigations has filed a court order to Apple Inc to have a code written to unlock an iPhone so they can have full and complete access to it. It should be said that this isn't just some random iPhone, this one in particular belonged to the San Bernadino attacker Syed Rizwan Farook. This is all part of their, rightfully, thorough investigation of the terrorist attack. Apple is in return filed for a motion to dismiss this court order claiming among other things that this is a violation of the first amendment. Apple's legal council, in short, stated that if their client writes this code it could put hundreds of millions of phones at risk of being accessed or monitored remotely. This is an interesting topic for me, as I come from a family of law enforcement and fully understand how important it is to be as thorough as in these types of situations. However, writing this code is tampering with a power that has yet to be tapped into yet. If this code were to leak or if the government decided to take liberty with it, the results could be catastrophic. Like in many of my other blogs, the question is where do we draw the line?

How much access is too much access? In this CNBC article, the author clearly believes Apple has a strong case. Their argument has won in cases like this before but, it seems especially in recent history that "national security" trumps everything else.