Ethical Writing Assignment 4

When we look at the current case of FBI vs Apple, there is a lot of controversy around that argument. Should Apple create the backdoor just for the phone for a one time use in order to help the investigations? It could end up with a simple answer, at the eyes of all the common people. Yes. But what are the implications around this from the privacy point of view? As Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis state, in their review article called "The Right of Privacy", - the individual shall have full protection in person and in property. If we look at the limitation they have set on the long review article that covered many matters that go against and protect privacy, we cannot find any that can be applied to this case. They talk about the fact that the right of privacy to cease if the facts are published by the individual, if the facts are true or not, or even if the matter is of public or general interest. Well, the last limitation I talked about, the fact that the matter is of public interest, could be the only "exploitable" limitation in this case. Though, this limitation is contradictory to every other single line of the article that is trying to cover every peculiar aspect of the right of privacy, because at the end of the day, even the two words, private and public are the opposite. In fact, if we would apply this limitation not only to the Apple-FBI case, but to others, then whoever would be a public figure, will find themselves deprived of their privacy, even if not asked for. But the privacy matter in this case it is not only limited to the San Bernardino attackers, but to anyone that has an iPhone in their possession. As Tim Cook explained in his open letter on February 16th, "Some would argue that building a backdoor for just one iPhone is a simple, clean-cut solution. But it ignores both the basics of digital security and the significance of what the government is demanding in this case. In today’s digital world, the “key” to an encrypted system is a piece of information that unlocks the data, and it is only as secure as the protections around it. Once the information is known, or a way to bypass the code is revealed, the encryption can be defeated by anyone with that knowledge." which means that if Apple was going to comply with the FBI requests, it would be a disaster on a massive scale, giving the opportunity not only to the government, but also to whoever has the knowledge of hacking, to access the data of millions of users. Are the people around the world ready to give up their privacy for this matter? I personally don't think so. Is Apple doing the right thing? Well apparently yes. In fact, it has emerged in one of the court sessions, that the government "has failed to demonstrate that the requested order was absolutely necessary to effectuate the search warrant, including that it exhausted all other avenues for recovering information", therefore it cannot force Apple to comply with its requests. The real question now is, why hasn't the FBI asked the NSA yet, to hack the terrorist's iPhone? Are they exploiting this case to force apple to create a backdoor in order to control all its users? Who knows. As per Warren and Brandeis, I think they would stand besides Apple in this matter. But who knows. Technology has made such an advancement in the last 100 years that they probably could not even imagine how privacy could be compromised like it is right now. Sources: http://www.english.illinois.edu/-people-/faculty/debaron/582/582%20readings/right%20to%20privacy.pdf http://www.apple.com/customer-letter/ http://www.ibtimes.com/apple-asks-why-hasnt-fbi-asked-nsa-break-iphone-encryption-2325047