Today we’re all quite used to a certain degree of prying into our day-to-day activities. We live in a generation of monitoring, our emails and web history even certain phone conversations can be monitored if necessary and our movements captured all in the name of public safety or to expose a criminal.
If you’ve seen the news recently you may be aware of quite a high profile disagreement over mobile privacy. The FBI asked tech giant Apple, to unlock the phone of the one of the two San Bernardino killers. Prior to the deadly shoot out, the killers had destroyed all electronic deceives apart from an iPhone 5c, believed to be a work phone. The FBI was convinced that the phone held key information about the incident. However Apple has refused to unlock the device on the grounds of that hacking of any device compromises uses privacy. The FBI has now brought a court order against Apple under the All Write Act of 1789.
So what would it mean if the FBI won the court order? Certainly in this instance, to be able to obtain information from this device would obviously be a positive. Interestingly, the software needed by the FBI must have the digital signature from Apple to allow the iPhone to trust the system. If the FBI were to win, it would mean that there would be no reason that they couldn’t ask the same of any software company. For example, other mobile providers such as Samsung and HTC wouldn’t stand much of a chance against the FBI, if they were to request a password bypasser; thereby allowing the FBI and the government to gain access to any device they wish.
If you’ve seen the news recently you may be aware of quite a high profile disagreement over mobile privacy. The FBI asked tech giant Apple, to unlock the phone of the one of the two San Bernardino killers. Prior to the deadly shoot out, the killers had destroyed all electronic deceives apart from an iPhone 5c, believed to be a work phone. The FBI was convinced that the phone held key information about the incident. However Apple has refused to unlock the device on the grounds of that hacking of any device compromises uses privacy. The FBI has now brought a court order against Apple under the All Write Act of 1789.
So what would it mean if the FBI won the court order? Certainly in this instance, to be able to obtain information from this device would obviously be a positive. Interestingly, the software needed by the FBI must have the digital signature from Apple to allow the iPhone to trust the system. If the FBI were to win, it would mean that there would be no reason that they couldn’t ask the same of any software company. For example, other mobile providers such as Samsung and HTC wouldn’t stand much of a chance against the FBI, if they were to request a password bypasser; thereby allowing the FBI and the government to gain access to any device they wish.
As a B2B PR agency who has a strong insight into the technology industry we believe in privacy and security when it comes to a personal device. Would it really be the best outcome, if the government were allowed to access all our private data or is big brother destined to snoop into our personal affairs more than ever before?
Katherine Wilding is Skout’s newest recruit and a PR apprentice.
