Nick Siano is a sophomore telecommunications and journalism major and writes "Nick and Tired" for the Daily News. His views do not necessarily agree with those of the newspaper. Write to Nick at ncsiano@bsu.edu.
Imagine you live in a wonderful apartment building, with state-of-the-art locks keeping you safe every night. Sure, you might have paid a lot of money for that apartment, what with how apartment builders engage in planned obsolescence, but you tell yourself it’s worth it, considering how safe you’ll be with those locks protecting you. Everyone has these locks, and no one’s key will open any lock but their own.
One day, however, someone engages in an illegal activity and the FBI asks the owner of the building for a master key - one that can unlock not only the apartment in question, but any other apartment.
Now, instead of an apartment, imagine that the item in question is the iPhone you probably have within a foot and a half of your being.
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If Apple creates a backdoor for the FBI to get into one of the San Bernardino shooters’ phones, that backdoor will exist for every cybercriminal. The FBI wants a super key in the form of an operating system that will not wipe the iPhone’s memory after 10 failed attempts at unlocking it, allowing them to run thousands of passwords at a time until it unlocks.
While the FBI and the judge ordering this act suggest that this tool would be used once, that likely is not true. If Apple is compelled to make this operating system, it could be used countless times on any iPhone.
This isn’t the sort of question that has an immediate and final outcome. Apple is being asked a favor, and a small one in the eyes of the FBI. This may lead them down a slippery slope, with no definitive end.
In the letter Apple CEO Tim Cook wrote to customers, he said this request could result in the government tracking phones. And we all remember how well the American public reacted when they learned that the NSA was collecting years’ worth of metadata from their phone calls and text messages. In fact, it speaks volumes when an ex-NSA director backs Apple’s decision.
This key will do more harm than good. If legal precedent is established, hundreds of seized iPhones could be unlocked. You can’t make a backdoor like this without dealing a blow to the security of the device. It would be a short-term solution that creates a point of vulnerability for the company. Apple is international, and if this backdoor is established, suddenly there will be a world's worth of data being used for terrible ends. You shouldn’t be sacrificing your privacy for such a false sense of security.
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